By Maria Miller, MA, PLPC
In a world that tells us to go faster, perform better, and shout louder, journaling can be a salve for the soul. According to these studies, people who journal enjoy a variety of health benefits including stronger immune systems, managing stress more effectively, and, in one particularly tangible study, arthritic patients who journaled regularly experienced a marked decrease in their arthritic inflammation.
So why isn’t everyone journaling? There are a lot of valid hesitations including:
“I don’t know what to write” (what if you had an easy framework to help you fill in your own words?)
“I don’t have time” (what if journaling could take as little as 15 seconds?)
“I am not a good writer” (what if you could succeed without even writing complete sentences?)
“I feel stuck when I write about my problems” (what if you had a structure to make meaning of it all?)
I’d like to offer you a tool that takes into account just about all of these hesitations. Let’s dive in.
This journaling tool is as simple as T, F, A. Here’s how it works. Pick some moment from your day to write about – a moment that you’d like to explore or learn from. Now, answer three simple questions:
T: What were your thoughts during the situation?
F: What were your feelings during the situation?
A: What were your actions during or after the situation?
You can answer these in any order that makes sense to you.
For example, Sally is feeling really distraught about the criticism she received from her daughter today, so she quickly writes down:
Thoughts: “I won’t ever be enough for her” + “She doesn’t appreciate me at all”
Feelings: hurt, unappreciated, disgusted, unloved
Actions: ruminated about how bad of a mother I must be, then I journaled.
That’s it! The practice of noticing your feelings, thoughts & actions is a way to get better at increasing your self awareness. It can take as little as 15 seconds, provides a non-judgmental framework to process your experience, and it builds self awareness over time. As you do this practice regularly, you’ll find that you not only notice your emotion and thought patterns more, but you’ll start to link together what behavioral patterns you partake in as a response.
