Journaling prompts for healing inner wounds
Writing is healing. You probably heard that before, especially if you are in the online mental health space, but also from authors over the decades. As someone that writes journals, fictional works and also this blog, I can attest to this. That’s why I wanna share a few essential journaling prompts for healing inner wounds with you.
How am I currently feeling?
In daily life we tend to mask our true feelings to fit into what society wants from us. If someone asks how we are we usually lie to a degree. That’s why getting more honest about this again in written form can be a crucial step in reconnecting with your feelings again. It can help to pull up one of those handy emotion wheels to help name your feelings correctly.
What made me feel like this?
Once you’ve named your current emotions you can dig deeper into why you feel that way. Maybe something a couple hours ago made you feel stressed. It could also be a repeating thought crossing your mind or a fear. In the beginning you will only find surface level reasons for emotions, but the better you become at healing work the more you can trace each emotion back to patterns you adapted in childhood.
Why did it make me feel like this?
We know the emotion we have and what triggered them, but why did that trigger make you feel that way. Maybe you thought about a fear you have for your future and it stressed you out. Why did it stress you out? Because it is out of your control? Then you can work on accepting things that are out of your control and rationalizing the likelihood of your fears.
Does this connect to a pattern of my childhood?
I already mentioned above that this is hard in the beginning and gets easier with time. But with things you feel over and over again you might have an easier time pinpointing it. Maybe you always empty out all your energy for others because love in childhood was determined by how much good you did. Maybe you avoid things because you don’t have a good track record with them in childhood.
How can I change my perspective on this?
Firstly I’d always recommend feeling your feelings, but if it is a pattern in your mind, you might wanna write down how you can change the perspective. Maybe you are often stressed because you tend to be a perfectionist. In that case you write down how you will try to not push yourself to your energy limits for your perfectionism. A quote that helps me with this is “Done is better than perfect.”
How can I be there for myself when this part of me is triggered?
When this emotion you are currently looking into is triggered, you have your common response, which often isn’t ideal in case it is a pattern. So you need to figure out what a healthier and sustainable way of coping with it looks like. If you are easily stressed you identify your stressors, set limits and boundaries with work and other stressors, and schedule in time for restorative self care.
These journaling prompts for healing inner wounds are the best “in the moment” journaling framework that always works. You will internalize these questions and journal the answers for these out without a second thought after a while. But in case you want more prompts to journal with I have 90 journaling prompts waiting to be sent to you here:
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Journaling prompts for healing inner wounds by Rabea
