I had the weird moment a few weeks ago when I was standing in the well known outlet store ‘TK Maxx’ in the stationary and journal section, where I was joined by….another man in the aisle, looking for a new suitable journal. It was a rare experience. I have never encountered another man in the journal section of either TK Maxx, Waterstones or WHSmith. The lesser spotted male journaller.
In amongst the array of pink, peach, ‘self care for you’ , ‘be your better self’ journals, that were mainly targeting the female journaller, in conversation we realised we were both looking for something very similar. A plain looking, plain inside journal. No ‘Year planner’ no ‘Goal setting’ no ‘write your dreams for 2026’ – just plain, so that we could write, and write without prompting.
Oh it wasnt allowed to be pink. Sorry. Just plain. A blue, green, black or purple.
I didnt feel like asking this random stranger male what he journaled, or what he wrote, we just looked for a while trying to find what we were both looking for.
Given that its incredibly important that we men have healthy avenues to try and describe, write and formulate our thoughts and feelings – that it seems that its a market more targeted to women, is another tiny obstacle men face when beginning the inner journey. (dont mishear, this is not an excuse..just an observation)
So, I journal. And I realise that over my lifetime I have written down my thoughts in different ways.
Firstly, given that bedrooms weren’t safe, there was no way I could write about what was going on at home as a child, nor leave it in a place. Some of my girl friends (friends who were girls) wrote diaries, as did the girls in TV shows, but rarely did boys. The times that I did I kept everything factual and boring, like the weather that day, school homework and probably football scores. Thats all that was safe to be left in my childhood bedroom.
Between then and 5-6 years ago I would write thoughts and ideas down, usually stemming from what I had read in the Bible, talks or conferences, training notes or my academic notes or ideas for essays. Rarely entering the world of my feelings, or heart – just ideas, thoughts, concepts.
I probably baulked at the idea of doing journaling back 6 years ago. It seems like a ‘girly’ thing to do. But that I know now was my reactions to it, because it wasnt a safe thing to do in the recent or long term past. But now, I had my own flat, my own space, and I was learning to realise that i was safe to write, safe to express myself and safe to put anything I want down on paper and in any shape or form. Even if at times this had to be fought against the inner voices that were inhibiting it at times.
I would say that I have used writing in four main ways in the last 5 years, the private stuff, not what I write here.
Free writing – This can take the form of wax crayons, colours and plain paper, closing my eyes and just scribbling, and writing anything on the page depending on the feeling that wants to come out, anger, rage, frustration, hurt, pain, and it can be anything, swear words, scrawl – anything at all – sometimes its a fight to come out but I just sit there and let it, however much thought resistance there might be.
Therapy homework and dreams – After one particular time of therapy I was introduced to inner child writing, and so, i have a journal in which i have an ongoing inner dialogue with my ‘self’ or my feelings, my childhood ego state, and listen, love and care for it. I do this one more often when feeling anxious, depressed, or fearful – but also, when calm too, as it’s a good way of assessing my inner feeling temperature. I followed the ‘discovery of your inner child’ book by Lucio Cappacione for a very long while. I needed to do..not just understand.
Dreams. I write them down. So that I notice what my subconscious is having a play around with during my sleep.
Raging words and trying to understand things. One of my journals was about trying to understand things, trying to write out the questions, the reasons, the hurt and pain of what I suffered.
My Affirmation journal. I began this in 2023 (Here is the story), and continued it each day (give or take a few) , in which I write to myself affirmations, no negatives, no questions, just positive affirmations, as if the universe and its angels were looking at me with delight and then telling me, or as if I as a friend to myself was telling me my truth. Who I am. This has been utterly transformative, not using the language of lies and limitations to shape my inner voice or self any more. To re – orientate my inner critic into something small, and let me heart and soul speak into my life.
The blank one. There always a blank journal on the go, for anything else, just to grab it and write something, a sentence, a phrase, a line from a book, a meme. It’s a bit like the journal equivalent of saving screen shots from healing memes on fb, that also include stuff from books too. Sometimes words just find me, and so I let them arrive and put them down, sometimes these become titles for blogs too. Oh and more recently writing poetry has begun from this.
For most of these I use coloured pens, to express myself inwardly, and also because blue and black are too close to official colours of study or work. My inner life deserves purples, pinks, greens and yellows, and feelings often emerge in colour.
I have used writing in a number of ways to listen, and speak from my pain and trauma, from my heart and to my wounded parts, and as the process has continued I have developed different strategies as different aspects have required attention.
I definitely didnt start this process thinking ‘I am going to journal’ though maybe it was likely given my blogging history and love of writing academically, that writing was going to be one way that was going to be a very useful tool for my healing processing and journey. I did find it painful to start, to force myself to write deep things, as I had spent so long writing thoughts and ideas and my inner heart and feelings were so locked, shamed and hidden away. It was always going to take time, and the guidance of psychological professionals to help me unlock and unblock.
Sometimes it’s a quick grab of the paper and write down something, sometimes I realise that ive been fighting myself for hours and I just needed to sit, and write and listen and respond. It doesn’t matter, it’s just day by day doing the work, rebuilding, noticing, revealing and loving my self through its own expressions.
This has been, so far my journey of journalling, what about you? Id love to hear in the comments below your hints and tips for journalling and how it has been part of your healing journey through whatever the situation has been for you.
I had one of ‘those’ kinds of days today. The kind of days I used to have a lot of, and the kind of days I never used to notice.
Today I had one of those days when I just felt a bit ‘meh’ a bit ‘unsettled’ a bit ‘I had expectations to try and do a bit of writing and creative thinking and it didnt quite happen and so I was a bit frustrated’ days.. and then I got frustrated, because I was frustrated….
I sometimes call them ‘treacle days’ – just a bit stodgy, for no real reason, when nothing happens, just that there’s an inner fight.
But I realise, that I dont get them very often. Which is a nice thing to be reminded of..and thats why they’re unusual and help me stay a little in check, a little moment to remember my vulnerable new humanness with all its emotions having space to play.
But the reason I get them at all, is that I realise that I am in a good place generally, and that not quite every day can feel calm, can feel easy – especially creatively easy, not every day feels like flow. But thats the thing. Its because I now I feel more feelings, that I can sense that there’s something not quite right.
It may be absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things, not a big problem, but thats not what my inner critic wants to hear…… and when it starts to latch onto the tiniest of anxieties, or self doubts, or moments…
The everyday ‘recovery’ from childhood trauma, and the associated behaviours, continues to be a daily, ongoing piece by piece listening, attending and loving these wounded parts, even if they might just be a bit of frustration……unsettled……
And so, in a way I realise that I am grateful for the treacle days or treacles moments, because its a part of me thats alive, its apart of me thats allowed and safe to be wanting to tell me something, or do something.
What I used to have was continual un-dealt with bottled up emotions so that every day was painted in survival stony grey. No treacle days as there was no contrast, just stoic grey, avoidance and dissociation and self soothing one day to the next.
And back today, what I stopped myself from doing, which I have done in the past is attach the frustration with negative self shame talk like this:
‘Ive done all this therapy and healing, I shouldn’t feel like this’
but thats not the reality is it. Most days are good, most days I feel alive, whole and in the main secure.
But there are treacle days. Even, actually especially in the process of learning to be our loving whole selves….
And treacle days or hours that require a little attention, a little love, and little bit of gratefulness, for the feelings, and thoughts themselves.
So , instead of continuing the inner self fight, I moved, I went out, and I took myself off out for a walk instead, breathed windy air and sunshine, watched ospreys land, and watched as the lizards moved around my feet.
‘Rather than trying to set out like some isolated cosmonaut in search of God, maybe the secret is to let God find you. Instead of endeavouring to reach out in order to first find God, you realise you are now in the matrix and the adventure is the discovering of the utterly new and unspoken dimensions of the inexhaustible divine ; this brings with it a new sense of ease with your self and your solitude ‘ (John O Donohue, Divine Echoes)
Just sharing this, as it’s rich with meaning and depth.
It’s time to just be open and accept that the divine is inside all along….
It just is.
Just that sometimes we’re peering in on it…but as we stay open love and energy flows through, as our ego gets out of the way.
Because, not for the first time in my last few years, it has been something that my partner at the time identified that I might have, or be in the midst of navigating the symptoms of.
Currently this has been because I have had some very close encounters with my abusive childhood in the last month, and needed to ‘re group’ in the way I have needed to – to feel safe, EMDR, journalling, sensing emotions/thoughts and loving them, and myself.
I guess I had been reluctant to self identify with ‘having’ c-ptsd before. WHY JAMES?
Maybe because i just existed and what I had to deal with was ‘normalised’ .
Maybe because I had to hide all experiences, and feelings, and knew that was my only choice to stay safe
Maybe because I didnt feel the need to categorise what I suffer from in such a way…. yet, given that my childhood was about survival, and counting down the days until my 18th Birthday (and leaving home when I was 18 1/2 and never going back) and survival in a marriage of limited emotional health (I’ll be kind) or support, and no supportive parents to go to… trapped, wasnt the word …….. but it was what I was used to.
The story of my childhood and surviving it, amid psychopathic parents is here
I took on their weight of expectations, shame, guilt, I hid my emotions, self soothed, self harmed in a variety of less seen ways, and then to add this, adapted this into a religious belief that also created self-loathing, shame and high expectations.
That was what happened to me….. that I took on as being my fault, and my responsibility to fix.
But…. none of these things are in my life right now.
Even if they have got a bit close in the last few months, for reasons I cannot go into here.
Even with safety, even with the tools, even with the measure of control I have.
Doesn’t mean to say it hasn’t affected. Doesn’t mean to say it hasnt required work.
Thats the thing…..
The Trauma has gone.
But it doesn’t quite shift.
‘I feel like I am an escaped prisoner’
William Cartier Bresson
And it’s not the ‘wanting to go back’ – it’s that the magnet of its emotional pull fights to go back, fights to cause sinkage, stuckness and have the voices of despair, doubt, pain. Past takes over when present and future had been almost blissfully enjoying themselves for a rarity.
I didnt want to say ‘I have c-ptsd’ because well what difference would it make?
and it would mean causing a fuss or a statement or recognition of this, as a thing. See how thats a symptom in itself.
But I do.
And the thing is, with what happened to me, and when, it has required a lengthy painful inner ‘journey’ to feel safe within, to feel safe without, to be able to feel emotions, and for my trauma brain to trust, its what Ive been doing and what I continue to do.
C-ptsd was my normal – it was a survival strategy.
And I lived in day to day trauma for over 40 years.
Yet. I wonder.
I wonder whether what happened to me, is not just for me any more.
What if it was something that might be a superpower to bring light and life to others? Not just a survivors gift….but a statement of what it is to be, to be fully human, and shine light
What if the very thing that I had to be, to survive, is actually a strength and a superpower?
What might my story or my sense of being from the post-traumatic growth I’ve encountered in the last 18 months – from a life of abuse survival – might bring to others?
As I shine light on what I did to survive, as I bring light into the wounds, as I notice and love myself to my fullest, i just carry on doing this, and being able to live, grateful, honoured and joyful in the open possibility of a future.
I don’t need to label myself.
I am not a label or a diagnosis
I just need to love myself.
I am me
I just keep being in love with me
one step and day at a time.
Mending the love pathways inside, where there was only fracture.
Maybe wounds are where the light wrestles its way in.
And those wounds keep opening every now and then, to reset and remind me, that I am someone now, I am love now, a trigger as a reminder that I can love myself….and a wounded part of me requires time, care and attention.
James Ballantyne 