The first time I trauma dumped was when I was 20.
I was on a surf trip with some Christian friends in California, and one night, we all decided to take some time to go off and find a spot by the ocean by ourselves and reflect on pain in our lives.
As an Enneagram 7 and generally gregarious dude, I hadn’t ever tapped too deeply into my pain. It was always just easier to just “look at the bright side” and stay optimistic about life. This wasn’t necessarily intentional, I just couldn’t seem to access my emotions very easily.
In high school, I remember sitting through many small group gatherings with close friends who would share about their parent’s divorce, or their struggle with depression or their recent traumatic break up.
I often wished I could access my own difficult emotions to process them myself and to connect with the pain my peers were expressing, but usually by the time the talking stick was passed to me, I would come up empty handed and share some highlights, and a half baked, superficial “low-light” that I didn’t particularly have an emotional attachment to.
I definitely had my fair share of pain and mental health issues when I was younger (in middle school), but as I grew up and moved to Colorado for college, that pain, and those memories felt like a story from someone else’s life. I couldn’t relate.
But here I was at 20, sitting out on a cliff in Pismo Beach California, smudging my scribbled handwriting in a journal with my tears. I had brought this journal on the trip and had yet to write a single word in it until this moment.
It was with me just in case I stumbled upon some thought or idea I wanted to remember, but this time, instead of waiting for thoughts to come, I just started writing. One sentence about my day lead into one about the year I was having, which lead into a paragraph about my childhood, and then it happened. A burst of emotion welled up in me and my pen developed a life of it’s own.
For maybe an hour or two, I angrily filled up page after page with my raw, honest pain. It had quite a range to it. Family relationships that felt unfair, friendships that were one sided, confusing stuff that happened when I was young that no one ever talked about, things I still disliked about who I was and how I showed up in the world — that kind of stuff.
This journal was the first person I really trusted with all of it.
To be honest, I didn’t know I had most of it in me. Somehow the journal did, and it held my pain so gently within it’s pages. No judgement, no reaction. Just empty space for me to fill until I understood what exactly what was going on inside of me.
This was the first moment I really understood what a journal was.
A journal is more than a tidy space for task lists, goals and documentation. It is a mirror, reflecting the parts of you that you’ve been too scared to look at your whole life. It is a punching bag that welcomes your anger. It is a magnifying glass for each bruise, scar, scrape and break in your heart — to see what is.
The problem is that it didn’t become this for me until I respected it enough to sit alone with it for more than a few minutes and get the ball rolling. But once the ball gets rolling, it wants to keep rolling. I had primed the pump. Sometimes this requires getting though a few paragraphs of gobbledygook before you can say something you mean. That’s what happened for me.
I must admit, moments like this are still rare for me in my journaling practice, but there’s no way I’ll ever experience them if I’m not willing to sit alone with the blank pages of journal consistently.
If you’re like me and tend to disassociate from your emotions/ pain, consider buying yourself a journal and a pen you like.
Spend time with them. Get to know them. Let them get to know you.
And if you don’t know what to write about, try this simple prompt every morning:
What is painful in your life today?
What is joyful in your life today?
Use those questions as a launch pad, and yourself permission to go well beyond them. The point is not to write an analytical essay, the point is to explore.
If you’d prefer to work with a different question every day, check out the Soul Care Journal. I created it as a 90 day journaling resource for Christians looking to get back in touch with God and their own souls. There’s some amazing questions in there. Even if you’re not Christian, I think you’ll find a ton of value in processing this stuff.
Just as a preview, here’s a few of my favorite questions in there:
-What is possible this week that was not possible last week?
-What is your favorite memory with God?
-Who has embodied love to you most this week?
-How would you spend a day if you had 24 hrs of solitude?
-How has your understanding of God changed over time?
Creating a journal was my first foray into product design, and while I definitely felt out of my comfort zone in learning that whole world, I had a ton of fun creating it. I hope it serves you well if you choose to snag one!
Without journaling, I don’t think I’d really know myself at all. It’s spooky how easy it is to go for months without taking the time to really check in with yourself with unabashed, raw honesty and reflect on where you’ve been, where you are, and who you want to be.
The problem with not doing this, is that we never really grow if we can’t see exactly where we are. We are just blown around by the random gusts of life, social media, and the people around us.
A journal grounds us in naked reality and teaches us stillness, persistence, and free play. I hope you’ll make one a daily part of your life if it’s not already.
Author: Jonathan Caliguire
Source: Friendology - Substack