Why is Journaling so important for your recovery?

Greetings, fellow fapstronauts. I'm currently 158 days free of porn, and I was going through some pretty tough urges today, so I thought it might help me to start a new thread here about something that I think is easy to overlook in your recovery: journaling.

Journaling is such a massively helpful tool in your recovery, but I never really understood why until today. I think there are three main reasons journaling is so helpful. The first is that it gives you a way to have empathy for yourself. The second is that it helps you track your progress (not just your daily counter, but more qualitative progress that bears so much more meaning than a number). The third is that it allows you to express your emotions without judgment. I'll write about each of these topics briefly.

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Having empathy for yourself - Think about the last time you came across a character in a fiction novel that you really empathized with. Try to remember a part of the novel where you wished you could have jumped into the story and given them advice on what to do. "Don't open that door!" or "Tell her you love her!" or something like that. It's amazing that writing can invoke those sorts of feelings within yourself.

When you write in a journal, you turn yourself into a character, in a sort of way. A journal entry is a snapshot of your life. It's basically a chapter in the novel that is your life. When you go back and read old journal entries you've made, you have moments where you wish you could jump into the story and give the main character advice on what to do, or give them encouraging words. However, it's not just a "main character". It's you. This idea is really simple, but it's very effective, and the more you do it, the more you'll realize that you're healing yourself, and that the advice you wish you could give to yourself is really making an impact on you.

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Tracking your progress - Imagine you're parked at the top of a ninety-story parking garage and you have to drive your car all the way out. As you start to drive downward, you start to notice that the floors seem pretty similar. By the time you reach the 60th, 50th, or 40th floors, you start to wonder if you really are making any progress. It doesn't look like you're making any progress at all, because every floor looks almost the same as the last one. You might even start to question whether or not you ever will reach the bottom of the garage, and you start to think that maybe the garage is just infinitely high.

The top floor of the parking garage is your addiction, and driving down to the bottom is your 90-day reboot. Sometimes, you start to doubt how far along you are in your recovery. Things start to look the same, even though you're so far from where you started (just like the floors in a parking garage). You might be two, three, or even ten weeks clean of PMO, but you still have urges to open your incognito browser. In those situations, it's easy to tell yourself that you haven't really made any progress at all. (As an aside: I'm 158 days clean of porn, but I still have urges from time to time. It can be really frustrating to still have to attend to urges even after so many days of recovery, and sometimes it makes me think that I haven't been recovering at all).

But what if you weren't the one driving the car? What if you were standing outside the parking garage on the ground, watching the car drive from the 90th floor all the way to the bottom. It would be easy for you to see that the car is making progress with every floor it descends, and that each time it reaches a new floor it's that much closer to recovery. Journaling allows you to take this perspective on your recovery. When you go back and read old journal entries, you can see that you've been driving down this parking garage for a while, and you can see how your mindset has changed over time. This is so much more encouraging than just looking at a number on a counter.

I see so many people on this forum who religiously track their progress by their streak counters, and I think that those people are missing the point of what recovery is really all about. Recovery isn't measured in the number of days you've abstained from your compulsive behaviors. Rather, it's measured in how much you have changed as a person. Writing in a journal (and reading through your old entries) is a way for you to see how much you've changed since you started your addiction, and it will tell you so much more about yourself than a daily counter ever could.

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Expressing your emotions without judgment - Sometimes, you feel like total crap. You're horny, pissed off, sad, lonely, tired, bored, frustrated, angry, whatever. Journaling gives you an opportunity to just let all that out. You don't need to pick it a part. There's no one telling you why you should or shouldn't feel that way. You just feel that way, and once it's on paper, it's not your burden to carry any longer. Simply identifying and noticing your emotions is an extremely powerful tool.

Today, I was feeling very sad and lonely. I spent my entire daily journal entry writing about how I felt sad and lonely and why I felt that way and how I wish I felt instead etc. After I finished writing that entry, I closed my journal, went outside for a walk, and realized that I felt much, much better. It was as though a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I can't quite explain it, but there's something magical about identifying and describing your emotions in a judgment-free environment that's just really liberating. I can't recommend it enough.

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Closing thoughts:

If you aren't currently keeping a journal, I highly encourage you to start one. I believe it will greatly help you in your recovery. There are no right or wrong answers for what you have to write about.

A lot of people keep their journals public on this forum, which is cool. It encourages feedback and accountability, which are all positive things. However, I don't think it's necessary to make your journal public. I prefer not to share my journal with anyone other than myself. The fact that I know nobody else is going to read what I've written really allows me to write about whatever I want without fear of judgment.

Another problem I have with keeping my journal on this forum is that it's not as tactile. I keep a physical journal next to my bed. Something about writing by hand makes it feel more personal and organic. Just a personal preference of mine, and it probably doesn't make that big of a difference.

I hope this has been helpful for some of you. I wish you all the best of luck with your recovery!

 

I agree! I think that releasing your emotions in a journal is particularly useful because there's nobody there to judge you about how you're feeling.

 

Thank you

And I think it's a matter of personal preference. A lot of people like to keep a public journal here on the forums because they like the feedback they get from other users and because there's a certain amount of accountability that comes with it. If you're keeping a public journal that other users are reading regularly, it makes it harder to stop journaling because of the social pressure. Personally, that's not really my cup of tea. I like my journal to be something that's just for me. Ultimately, it's up to you, and I think you'll get the three benefits I was talking about in my OP whether you keep your journal public or private.

 

That's a really good point, too. I've mentioned all these amazing benefits of journaling, but it's worth mentioning that you won't necessarily start to see these benefits right away. It takes time and practice before you start to get it right.