Woman journaling to release the emotions

Journaling: Release the Emotions

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“I don’t journal to ‘be productive.’ I don’t do it to find great ideas or to put down prose I can later publish. The pages aren’t intended for anyone but me. It’s the most cost-effective therapy I’ve ever found.” – Tim Ferriss

Keeping a journal can help you process caregiving’s complexities – the emotions, the fear, and the confusion. Writing offers a release and reprieve from the swirling sensations. It can help you capture the fun and funny moments. You will have a record of the experience, a travel journal that documents your caregiving journey. It will shine a light on the growth and how far you have traveled. The opportunity to reflect can help you stay focused and productive during a time when both focus and productivity fluctuate from minute to minute. You will be able to look back at this time and remember what it felt like, what it looked like, how you spent your time. A record of this transformation will be a powerful reminder of your strength. 

Journaling thoughts and exploring them with curiosity and objectivity is a form of venting and can be therapeutic. Self-reflection throughout the caregiving experience can be healing. It provides raw self-awareness, which can help when our sensitivities are heightened due to stress combined with feelings of guilt, anger, and resentment. We sometimes feel shame about these emotions and a journal is a safe place to store them. You may never read your journals because the act of writing in them served you well and that chapter is closed. Or, you may decide to read your journals. If so, you can look back with self-compassion and clarity that comes from distance. This process can be reaffirming and help you process that transformational part of your life.

Your Travel Journal

Documenting the experience can take any form. Your journal may be a spreadsheet, a handwritten or typed diary, a photoblog, videos, drawings, or any combination that will allow you to capture the story. You might keep a journal to document your experiences. The journal could be in the form of anecdotes that describe the challenges.

Writing about the frustrations provides an opportunity to analyze a situation from all angles. As you explore the thoughts, you can explore the resulting emotions. You might color code emotions with highlighters so that you can find them quickly when you flip through your journal. You might highlight other keywords. If the source of particular frustrations occurs repeatedly, you can see the pattern by reviewing your entries. If you are not sure where to start, just start writing and see where it goes. There is no right or wrong way to write. Let your thoughts and words flow like a raging river, a gentle stream, or a waterfall spilling and splashing onto the page. 

Problem Solving

Another strategy to track cause and effect is to note each morning how well you slept and each evening how you felt overall about the day’s events and possible contributing factors. Often, we react disproportionally to the severity of the incident when we are tired or experience one challenge after another until we break. Then, we beat ourselves up for over-reacting. When you journal the encounter, you may see more clearly the connection between how you felt during a stressful event or interaction and a lack of sleep or other missed opportunity for self-care that may have changed the outcome. Over time, with mindfulness and awareness, you will recognize that you are becoming physically tense or your thinking is less clear. You will begin to pause and take proactive steps to reset and relax or re-energize before your reaction catches you off guard. 

You can use your journal to track the effectiveness of solutions. Trial and error is such a large part of any caregiving experience, and it can be helpful to keep a record of what worked and what didn’t. We learn more from failures than we do from successes, and it can be validating to know that you learned a lot over the months and years of caring for your family member. Another reason to record results is that what didn’t work one month may work the next month as the situation and needs change. Documenting the results will prevent you from relying on memory, which stress makes even more ambiguous. 

Compassion, Humor and Gratitude

You can use your journal to practice self-compassion and write positive self-talk statements to recognize and reinforce your achievements and accomplishments. A journal is a great place to collect the motivational mantras you create or discover and use. It is also essential to record happy moments and humorous events. However, when it feels like you are in the rapids without a paddle, there may be little humor to document. As you begin to navigate the experience, you will likely find many opportunities to laugh. When we are not fearful of drowning, we can take ourselves and our situation less seriously. The opportunity to look back on the funny moments will be a future gift that you will receive from yourself. 

Like humor, gratitude may feel elusive when you are overwhelmed and simply trying to survive each day. You might start small, and each evening, list one or two reasons for gratitude that are in some way connected to caregiving. As you begin to perceive more and more opportunities to feel grateful, your list will grow. Once you see gratitude, it can’t be unseen, and the experience can be transforming. You may use your journal to explore how obstacles lead to gratitude. Here are some examples of challenging caregiving realities that might also inspire gratitude:

Caregiving is lonely. Who are the helpers who have joined you on your journey? How have they supported you and your family member? What has that support meant to you?

  • Caregiving is stressful. What skills have you developed to better handle the stress? How can these coping skills serve you outside of your caregiving role?
  • Caregiving leaves little time for self-care. How have you been able to reimagine self-care so that it fits within your caregiving day? What benefits have you experienced from taking moments to relax, regroup or reenergize?
  • Caregiving is a reality check. What have you learned from the caregiving experience, and how will it shape your future?

Organize thoughts

When the work feels overwhelming due to the number of tasks, you might find it helpful before going to bed to list the top three items to complete the next day. When the priorities are on paper, they often stop bouncing around in your head. The following evening, the task may be checked as complete or added to the next day’s list with no judgment. This mini record of completed tasks will provide a great sense of accomplishment as you look back at all that you were able to do each day under demanding conditions. Your journal will document the growth that you have experienced. You will look back and see that the struggle was real, and you overcame many obstacles. You will not only acknowledge your strength but may find even more gratitude for the opportunity to grow.

Healing and Growth

Journaling is empowering because we write about wounds and the process of healing. The act of journaling is a part of the healing practice. Our journal becomes a beautiful reflection of our experience and our journey. When we journal, we employ several Sustainable Caregiving strategies during this one activity. Journaling works together with each of the strategies because when we process our thoughts and the circumstances that led to stressful events, we can make adjustments that will improve our situation and ultimately our well-being.

  • Self-care: Journaling the challenges is a self-care activity that allows you to release the built-up pressure from stress.
  • Routines: Incorporate journaling into your routine to help you prioritize and protect the activity.
  • Mindfulness: Awareness will facilitate writing and processing our thoughts and emotions so that we learn and grow from the challenges. When we learn and grow, we can more easily move with the flow of our experience.
  • Forgiveness: Grudges can be a source of stress and frustration that keeps us distracted and focused on negative thoughts. When we write and work through our thoughts about who and what to forgive, we lighten our emotional load.
  • Boundaries: When we write our experiences, we process each experience in a different way. With perspective, we may identify where new or modified boundaries may serve to better protect our well-being.
  • Compassion: Opportunities for compassion become evident when we process the events that caused us and others pain. We can journal about our need to express and feel self-compassion. 
  • Accept help: When we journal we are able to process the events that cause stress. We are more likely to identify where we could accept help. We can list the opportunities to delegate and begin to match up people and services for each opportunity.
  • Planning: When we are consumed with worry or ruminating on the future, awareness will help us identify that our worry needs a plan. You can record the plan in writing moving it from your thoughts to paper where it will empower rather than paralyze.

Get Started

Reflect

  • How do you currently release your frustrations?
  • If you were to keep a journal of your caregiving journey, what form would it take? Would it include anecdotes, an exploration of the emotions, poetry? Would it be handwritten, typed, kept on an app, photos, video?

Journal

  • The negative emotions are normal and natural and very painful. Begin to identify and explore the negative emotions that come to the surface throughout the day. Record these emotions in your journal.
  • Write about a challenging episode and describe how you felt before, during, and after the interaction? Reflection may provide a different perspective or helpful insight.

Practice

For more on the 12 Sustainable Caregiving Strategies check out Navigating the Caregiver River: A Journey to Sustainable Caregiving, available on Amazon, and the Self-Caregiving Strategies Podcast.

Schedule Theresa Wilbanks to speak on caregiving and empower the caregivers in your workplace or community with the 12 Sustainable Caregiving Strategies.

Advice offered is for general information only; please contact your healthcare team, legal or financial advisors to guide your particular situation.

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