Journaling

Journaling to Help with Sleep

One of the best ways to ensure a good night’s sleep is to practice a coping skill called containment — and one of the most universal mediums for that is journaling. Containment allows you to temporarily “put away” upsetting or difficult thoughts and feelings by mindfully and consciously giving them a place to go. This way you can continue on with your day, or your rest, without those things intrusively revisiting you.

Everyone has experienced sleep made more difficult by even mild stress throughout the day, but triggers you've encountered, worries and fears you have about the upcoming day, memories you’ve been wrestling with, and all sorts of similarly challenging material can make it a million times harder. Taking a moment to write about some of these things gives your mind a chance to acknowledge and validate how much they are affecting you. (And this is important because it keeps you from stuffing them, or pretending they don’t exist or faze you, which nearly always leads to them thrusting themselves back into your awareness whenever they feel like it. ...any way to not be ignored or forgotten. That includes in your dreams.) But, more importantly than just validating the tough stuff, journaling also gives it a place to go. The journal gets to hold on to it, and when you shut the book, it's contained within its pages -- allowing your mind the freedom to concentrate on more pleasant, calming thoughts so you can drift to sleep faster. Thinking of it in this way, and making the conscious effort to believe the difficult items are contained tight within your journal until you want to revisit them (whether that means the next day, in therapy, or weeks from now), you're far less likely to have your dreams disturbed by their content. This skill is especially important if you’ve been triggered that day, are dealing with really difficult memories or therapy material, or have been having an excess of nightmares or unsettling dreams.

“How long should I journal?” “What should I write about?” “Won’t thinking about all the hard stuff right before I lay down just make me feel WORSE?” “I’m so tired before bed, I don’t have time for that, I just wanna sleep!” “I have never journaled before and I’m not a writer.”

Fear not, we’ve got some answers! Firstly, you don’t need to have ever journaled before to be able to benefit from or be “good” at this skill. Because the cool thing is, you don’t even need to write full sentences. In fact, many avid journalers can even get swept away in their storytelling and get themselves worked up and fully “in it” again. And we don’t want that before bed! So, some useful tips include not only setting a time limit for yourself, but consider keeping it a short one. If you want to do longer journaling (which we highly support and recommend!), you can do so any other time of the day! We just don’t want you to do that right before bed. Keeping it simple is just as effective and doesn’t get your neurological system all revved up and firing again when we just settled it down through your routine. Take only a short moment to write a bit about your day, some of the things that are recycling through your mind or upsetting you, and a bit on how it made you feel. For some, this may literally just be in a bulleted list, no sentences at all. If the material is particularly triggering, writing a full sentence about it may even take you right back there - so an effective tool around that is to just give it a headline. What would a newspaper title the full story? You’ll know what it means without needing to write any more detail. For anything else, it's possible just listing what you did or what happened that day through timestamps is appealing to you, while others care less about the events of the day so much as the emotional experiences in it. There are so many different journaling techniques (we will likely even make another post about them at some point!) but there are many ways to do this, so personalize it. Some may work better for you than others. Don’t give up if it the first tries haven’t gone perfectly!

(As an aside, another common objection to journaling is being afraid that someone will read it. While we love the thought of you getting a journal that feels like a really personal, inviting place to hold all of your experiences for you — there is nothing wrong with or ‘lesser' in just writing via the Notes section of your phone. Then it is always on your person, you can lock entries so no one can find them, and you still help your mind displace some of its recursive thoughts by putting them somewhere outside of your pretty little head.)

Final thoughts on this! Ultimately, the purpose of journaling right before bed is to put away the day’s worries and stressors - but, some really like to use it as more than that. While we highly recommend following up your journaling with pleasant imagery and “good vibes” once you lay down, many incorporate that into their journaling. They use their 'good thoughts' as a bookend to their writing so it doesn’t feel as if all the “yuck” is just left open-ended on the page. If this appeals to you, you can do so in various ways:

Some choose to end by further describing a container they’d like to place these specific things in - such as a chest under the sea, flown away on a private airplane, a flood of emotions filling up an entire canyon that you can walk away from, images projected on to a movie screen that you can leave in the theater, a filing cabinet with an elaborate system of locks..so many possibilities. Those struggling with the emotional side of things may like to end their journaling with 5 to 10 statements that challenge any upsetting beliefs or distorted thoughts. Statements like, “I have worth.” “I am safe and can protect myself.” “Their beliefs about me do not MAKE me those things. I know who I am.” “I am not to blame; they made that decision when I wasn’t even there.” “My needs are important. I am not too much.”. Many like closing up with 3 positive things they like about themselves, several grounding statements, 5 wonderful things about the day, or a handful of things they are grateful for. There are many positive, uplifting, affirmative, or calming things you could use. Choose whatever feels right to you and what best meets your needs so that your mind is in a more peaceful and light place before you even close the book. Then, that satisfying close of the cover, locking up all the hard stuff, will feel that much more satisfying because you’re already in a much better place before you shut the book.

Journaling to Help with Nightmares

Journaling isn’t only a great tool to use before you go to sleep, it can also be incredibly useful after you’ve had a nightmare. Some nightmares are just too stubborn and intrusive that all the coping skills in the world before sleep can’t keep them from finding you. And, returning to sleep after one can be positively dreadful, if possible even at all. Keeping your journal nearby may be all that lends a hand when little else does.

Similarly to above, this can work as a kind of containment that your mind really needs after all that distressing content was pulled to the forefront of your mind. Though you may be exhausted, and your handwriting illegible, scribbling down a bit of your nightmare can help you ‘get it out’ so you’re less likely to just keep thinking about it as you try to fall back to sleep. It also allows your journal to “hold it” for you and keep it away from you and your sleep. You don’t have to write much detail or elaborate heavily, just hitting the key components that are most distressing to you is what matters most. Just list them, give them a headline, name a few feelings or objects or people, draw something if the words are too hard....anything to get the bulk of the nightmare out on paper and out of your poor head. For good measure, a lot of people like to fold that page of their journal over so they can’t even see it anymore. It gets extra-contained in that folded page. Then you can close the book up tight, set something heavy on top of it if you please, shut it tight in a drawer, and even move to the other side of the bed if you feel you need to. …nothing is too silly if it helps you feel it can no longer reach you. Now you're free to think about whatever pleasing scenery or place you wish to be instead, knowing it is tight and secure in its square on the page, and you’re in your safe place heading toward more pleasant sleep.

As a bonus, jotting these nightmares down can be incredibly useful to bring to therapy. If you have a particularly recurring dream, there are strong themes in your nightmares that may be trauma-related, or you’re having actual flashbacks in your nightmares, these notes can be extremely valuable when you’re in sessions. Having them written down the moment you woke from them, as authentically and raw as they get, can help you tackle things in much more nuanced way. This can get you through them more quickly and more accurately, which inevitably leads to better solutions for them all-around. Nothing could be more relieving than that.