by Fiona likes to blog | Sep 2, 2024 | ANXIETY, WRITING
Journaling has never been a daily habit for me.
As much as I would LOVE to tell you that I wake up with the birds and gleefully open my notebook to do morning pages (look up The Artist’s Way if you’re not sure what that is) the reality is very different.
I journal in bursts. Sometimes multiple times a day, on my phone and in several notebooks. Other times, I’ll manage one paragraph of incoherent ramblings and resist trying again for months. There’s no shame in this, and it doesn’t mean that you’re not ‘good’ at journaling.
Personally, I’ve been seriously struggling to organise my thoughts recently and wondered if this focus mapping technique would help you. While it isn’t going to solve all of life’s problems, it has helped me get back into a groove with writing, after many many months of feeling unable to get started. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you might enjoy these other therapeutic writing techniques.
Forget ‘perfect’ journaling. Journaling doesn’t have to be a long, linear story of your day. Our thoughts jump around – let’s allow ourselves a more natural way of organising our ideas.
Try Focus Mapping
Focus mapping is a visual technique that can help you journal more easily. Here’s how to do it:
1. Grab a blank sheet of paper.
2. Write today’s date in the centre and circle it.
3. Draw 4-5 lines branching out from the date.
4. At the end of each line, write a topic on your mind (e.g., work, family, goals).
5. Add more branches to each topic with specific thoughts or ideas.
6. Keep expanding until you’ve written everything on your mind.
7. Review your map and choose one topic that stands out to you, and journal further on it.
Why it works
– It’s visual and fun
– Helps organise scattered thoughts
– Shows connections between ideas
– Lets you choose what to focus on
And hey, there’s no right or wrong way to journal. This method is just a tool to help you get started AND gives you a bank of ideas to work from the next time you open your notebook.
Try it out and see if it works for you.
by Fiona likes to blog | Oct 18, 2023 | WRITING
When I started sharing my writing on the internet back in 2012, it wasn’t because I’d written anything I was proud of. It was because I had hit rock bottom and had nowhere else to go.
I was too depressed to go to work and too anxious to socialise. My ‘professional working woman’ outer shell, the one I’d spent years creating, had all but disintegrated and I was…. confused.
Writing online was my way of figuring that out and a few years later it turned out rather well. I published two books and was paid to write for magazines. I began to host online writing courses for others, finding satisfaction in pulling others up to where I felt we all deserved to be.
But this time, writing explicitly about the gurglings in my subconscious through personal essays or a memoir hasn’t felt quite right. It hasn’t felt enough.
But over the last few years, amidst coming out as a lesbian and processing a painful divorce, I’ve felt that urge return again. An urge to find myself through writing.
I’ve written a few blogs, regularly written to my newsletter fam (I see you!) but there is something more potent stirring that needs a unique outlet.
Non-fiction has always been my jam.
A true story tugs on my heartstrings everytime, I’m a nosey bugger and I want to know about people’s lives and the stories they survive. But this time, writing explicitly about the gurglings in my subconscious through personal essays or a memoir hasn’t felt quite right. It hasn’t felt enough.
I’m only just finding the courage to really say what is going on in my brain and to shape it into something subjective, something that cannot be bumped up by a clickable headline or polished by a professional editor.
I need a fresh set of paints to create my art.
And I really do mean art, because after writing books as part of the traditional publishing model I feel as though I disregarded myself as an artist completely. I tweaked my words and edited my ideas to make my writing profitable.
Do I regret it? Not necessarily.
It’s a process I had to go through to experience first-hand. I have tangible proof that I can write professionally (which not everyone needs, but I’m insecure so it helps) but now I want to prove to myself that I can write artistically too.
My approach to non-fiction has always been about the internal monologue mixed in with external events. But there aren’t always words that express the wild and unspeakable things that go on in our heads.
So I turned to poetry to figure out what was going on in there with the hope of alchemising it into something that I feel is an artistic representation of who I am.
I’ve been writing poetry for over a year, but more recently something shifted in me. I gave myself permission to really dedicate the time to my craft. To read more poetry, to learn about technique, take part in courses and begin editing and sharing my work.
This is all vulnerable in a way that feels rather dramatic. Who cares if I’m writing poetry? Does anyone care? I have no idea and maybe that’s what I’m finding so unbearably raw. That I’m only just finding the courage to really say what is going on in my brain and to shape it into something subjective, something that cannot be bumped up by a clickable headline or polished by a professional editor. This is all on me now.
I’m writing this because I don’t think enough writers talk about changing lanes. About getting out of a niche they’ve built for themselves and doing the scary thing of trying to break out of it.
Perhaps you’ve told yourself that you could only ever write fiction because your life isn’t interesting enough to be a memoir.
Maybe you’ve stuck to poetry because a novel seems like a mammoth task you’re incapable of completing.
Or perhaps like me, you’ve stuck with the kind of writing that other people said you are good at.
Whatever your writing lane, consider this blog post a flashing green arrow encouraging you to merge into a new one, and allow your inner artist to take the wheel. Read more about my poetry.
by Fiona likes to blog | Jan 10, 2023 | WRITING
Looking through photographs of myself through the years has always been fun. Bad haircuts. Embarrassing outfits. Teenage romances. You know the drill.
But last year, I found looking at those same images difficult. Who was I? Why didn’t I allow myself to unfurl naturally instead of pretending to be someone else to fit it?
Photographs of my married life were particularly triggering, because since coming out as a lesbian in January 2022, the woman who appears in those images isn’t just alien to me, she’s someone I’d come to detest.
Anger plays a role in everyone’s life, but I don’t think it’s uncommon for the majority of that anger to be directed at yourself. We all have regrets, but how do you let them go? How do you acknowledge that you did the best you could at the time, and so your past self-compassion for all that she’s been through?
These are the questions that came to a head last year as I went through the process of editing and rewriting my first book (Work it Out: Finding Connection in the Digital Age without Falling Apart) and although I haven’t fully let the anger towards my younger self go, I’m getting closer to that place. Therapeutic writing (and building a regular writing habit) has helped immensely, and my aim isn’t to shut out the past versions of me but to integrate them into my current self, to let their multitudes exist in my head and come and go as they need to.
What is therapeutic writing?
Different from psychotherapy, this is a form of writing that has therapeutic benefits. In the same way that yoga can relax your mind or painting on a canvas can express difficult emotions, therapeutic writing serves as a way to improve your well-being without (or supplementary to) expert medical support. It is not a substitute for mental health support, and I am by no means a therapist, but I have been writing for well-being for a decade and recently completed a 6-week course on the topic.
Here are a few of the writing techniques that have helped me recently.
1. Stepping stones
In the same way that you use stepping stones to cross a stream, it can be helpful to bullet point moments in your life that have brought you to where you are today. This technique can be used to frame your whole life or a shorter period of time such as a year or a decade.
Decide on the time frame you want to cover and write down 10-12 stepping-stone moments that have played a pivotal role in that period. Don’t allow self-doubt to creep in and don’t write anything more that a few words for each bullet point. The trick here is to write quickly to tap into your subconscious so don’t second guess anything that you’re writing, just get it on the page. It should only take a few minutes.
Now go back to the list and expand on 2-3 of the stepping stones by writing a paragraph about the person you were at that time.
- What struggles were you facing?
- What habits (good or bad) were you practising?
- How did you present yourself to the world?
- What was going on in your work and personal life?
- How was your physical and mental health?
Take a break and come back to what you’ve written. Reflect on whether there is any link between these snapshots if there are any recurring themes, and what you would like to say to that version of you now that they have lived through it. What would you say to that person if they were a close friend? Would you praise them for their resilience? Ask them if they are OK? Show as much compassion as you can at this point, but be honest if there are still feelings of resentment. Releasing all feelings on the page is better than keeping them locked inside.
Over time, feel free to go back to each stepping stone and repeat the exercise. To broaden your scope of what you have lived through and how each version of you has been an essential part of getting you to where you are today.
2. Shift perspectives
Looking back on things you’ve done is all well and good, but we forget that the person we are today has so much more wisdom that the younger versions of ourselves. Think of a version of you that you are struggling to align with. It might be the past self who drank too much and made bad decisions or the past self who spent her money on handbags instead of saving for a house deposit, or anything else that makes you feel sad, angry or regretful. Now set a timer for 10 minutes and write freely about that time in your life, from their perspective at that time.
So for example, I often think about how my teenage self kissed girls and brushed it off as ‘experimenting’ in her head. My journal entry for this exercise starts something like this:
I am 16, it’s 2002 and I don’t know a single lesbian in real life. Lesbian is a slur used to make fun of other people. Yeah, I like kissing girls but I know that having a boyfriend is what I’m supposed to have (that’s what all the love songs and TV shows tell me) so obviously that’s what I want. I feel sad and disconnected from the world and I assume that being open about how I feel about girls would only make that worse. I’d rather have a boyfriend and fit in. I feel unattractive and boys don’t pay me much attention, which makes me feel like an outcast.
You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can get into the mindset of your past self and remember all the environmental, physical and social factors that contributed to the decisions they made at the time. It’s humbling actually, to step into their shoes and remember how hard things have been and how much you’ve experienced.
3. Gratitude list
Gratitude journaling is the perfect way to round off doing one or both of these exercises, especially because they can feel mentally taxing and dredge up some painful topics. Pick a past version of yourself or an experience that you’ve lived through and write at least 10 things that you’re grateful for in relation to them.
For example, my gratitude list for my teenage repressed lesbian self is:
- I’m grateful that you had even just a few positive experiences with women at that age
- I’m grateful you wanted to keep yourself safe and therefore didn’t open up about it.
- I’m grateful you chose to be sociable and fun even when you felt you didn’t fit in.
- I’m grateful you chose to save some friendships instead of making them complicated.
…. and so on.
To finish your journaling session, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Imagine you’re outside under a sky full of stars, sitting around a roaring campfire with a group of women who are all celebrating, laughing and joking together. Some of them are hugging or holding hands. When you look closer, you see that these are all past versions of yourself and they are welcoming you in. Do this visualisation regularly to integrate the past version of yourself with love and peace.
Buy Work it Out here.
