Journaling

Some healing can only take place after we have addressed issues we have been avoiding.  In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel Van Der Kolk says, "the object of writing is to write to yourself, to let your self know what you have been trying to avoid." (pg 245)

As you write, you may notice patterns and it will help you recognize how you need to change or how you are contributing to the problems in your life.  Write the facts and then write how you felt about them.  Tying emotions into the events will help you process the emotions.  It may surprise you what surfaces that you hadn't realized before from childhood trauma or otherwise.  Some details may seem unimportant, but when you pause long enough to notice the small details, you can realize how trauma is sometimes trapped in relation to things like colors, for example.  

Just this past year I found an example of how keeping a journal can help you recognize patterns in your life.  I had rapidly gained 10 pounds in a month and couldn't lose it.  I didn't know what had caused such rapid weight gain and after about 4 months of not being able to budge the scale, I went back to my journal to see what had happened in the month of February that had contributed to my weight gain that month.  I knew there were some obvious factors such as I don't exercise as much as I should in the winter, and it was a particularly brutal winter this year.  But in my journal I had documented about two funerals I attended in the same week and how sad the circumstances were in both cases.  I didn't realize how much those deaths had affected me until I went back and read my journal entry.  Acknowledging that I was taking on other's grief and doing too much emotional eating helped me get back on track and start to lose weight again.