Listening to Self
3.3 Journaling as Listening to Self
Psychologists Mildred Newman and Bernard Berkowitz suggest that getting to know yourself as “your own best friend” is the beginning of a genuine, authentic, and happy life. [1] All mature friendships involve self-revelation, including our relationship with ourselves. I suspect that, for many individuals in industrialized modern countries, life has not afforded them with extended periods of intensive self-reflection. For at least some of these individuals, there are undiscovered landscapes in their self-identify maps. Or, in the words of Newman and Berkowitz, they have not learned how to be their own best friend.
One way to begin learning more about oneself and becoming one’s own best friend is to listen to ones life story. In the process of listening and reflecting while creating a life story, one discovers (or rediscovers) what is vital to life. In the process of committing the story to writing, areas of life are revealed that provide meaning, purpose, and satisfaction, in addition to areas that need attention, growth, and healing. A comprehensive life story is a milestone in self-reflective listening that can be facilitated through a journaling process. I consider three types of journaling as self-listening practices: a daily journaling process called neurocycling, a short-term journaling for healing, and comprehensive life journaling.
Listening as Neurocycling to Integrate Daily Life
Neurocycling is a method of daily journaling designed to integrate life as it is lived each day.[2] I consider neurocycling a scientific-based method of listening to self. Neurocycling involves five sequential steps, gathering, reflecting, writing, rechecking, and active reach.[3] The gathering step involves listening and observing our thoughts and emotions. The second step of reflecting is an active dialogue with ourselves about what we are thinking and feeling. The third step of writing provides an organizational framework for the thoughts and feelings. In the rechecking step the writing is reviewed for accuracy and completeness. The final step of active reach is the application of what was learned.
Caroline Leaf’s clinical research and case studies uses biological and psychological markers to demonstrate the efficacy of neurocycling over time. Some of the statistically significant positive changes from nerocycling (based on experimental and control group comparisons) are cellular telomere increases, electrical brain activity coherence, psychosocial improvements, and decreases in cortisol and homocysteine from blood tests. In sum, neurocycling benefits “. . . mental health, brain health, blood physiology, and cellular health . . .”[4] The next method of journaling I describe is a short-term form of journaling that also shows positive impacts on health.
Short-Term Journaling for Healing
In several short-term journaling experiments, James Pennebaker compared college students writings about a personal traumatic experience or superficial experiences.[5] Initially, results for the trauma group indicated that journaling increased stress levels. However, by the end of the week of daily journaling, most individuals in the trauma group were able to create a cohesive story about the stressful event instead of living with the uncertainty and anxiety of an incomplete and chaotic story. Across several studies, results for the trauma group, compared to the superficial writing group, showed psychological (mood and positive outlook) and physiological (better immune function and fewer doctor visits) improvements, which persisted after six weeks.
Listening to Self to Heal through Journal Writing
To obtain the healing benefits of listening to self through short-term journal writing, Pennebaker has several recommendations that I paraphrase here. First, write about a stressful issue that you need help resolving. Explore both objective facts surrounding the issue and feelings about the issue. Write when you feel the need, but do not use writing as a substitute for action. Keep the writing confidential for yourself. Knowing that the writing might be disclosed to someone restricts the content of the writing. Ideally, the writing should be free flowing and uninhibited.
Expect to have some negative feelings immediately after writing. This is normal and the feelings should dissipate within the hour or within a few days. Writing is not a miracle cure for tragedy. In severe cases with long-term negative emotions, one should seek professional help.
Listening to thoughts and feelings through short-term journaling about a stressful event has many positive benefits. In Pennebaker’s words, most people that follow the protocol for writing about a stressful event for several days in a row report, “. . . feelings of relief, happiness, and contentment soon after the writing studies are concluded.”[6]
Comprehensive Journaling for Life
As an undergraduate, I had the good fortune of taking a Death, Dying, and Religion course from former Trappist monk Richard Keady. Part of the course introduced Ira Progoff’s practice of comprehensive journaling.[7] There are four dimensions of self that one can listen to and reflect on in Progoff’s journaling process. The life-time dimension introduces chronological time in the external world and the subjective inner perceptions associated with events on the external timeline. One creative time-line journaling technique includes “time stretching” into the past and future to uncover life lessons from the past and aspirations for the future. The dialogue dimension includes relationships with persons, work, body, senses, circumstances, and society.
There is a separate section in the journal for prompts and writing about each of these areas. For instance, one might journal about an interpersonal conflict to identify and integrate the shadow side of personality. The depth dimension of self encourages unconscious content to take form in consciousness via dream logs, twilight images, imagery extensions, and inner wisdom dialogue. As one example, there is a meditation for discovering a wisdom teacher in a nature setting, posing a question, and dialoguing about the answer through journaling. Finally, the meaning dimension of self invites one to listen for whatever brings meaning and purpose to life. This includes philosophical and spiritual reflections about the purpose in life. Listening to all four “self” dimensions through Progoff’s journaling process provides a comprehensive view of self, allowing for an expanded and integrated sense of self.
In the concluding section of this chapter, I introduce class meditation as listening to self in the SONG life course. In this extended autoethnography, I begin with an anecdote and then develop the why and how I teach listening to the self as meditation in the classroom.
- Mildred Newman and Bernard Berkowitz, How to Be Your Own Best Friend (New York: Random House, 1971). ↵
- Caroline Leaf, Cleaning up Your Mental Mess: 5 Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2021). Leaf is a neuroscientist and presents original empirical experiments to support the efficacy of her system of journaling called neurocycling. ↵
- Caroline Leaf, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, 2021, 52-53. ↵
- Caroline Leaf, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, 2021, 65. My outline of Leaf's steps of neurocycling does not include the complexities and nuances of the process. Leaf 's book presents a detailed account of the mechanics of neurocycling. ↵
- James W. Pennebaker, Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions (New York: Guilford Press, 1990), 31-41. The experiments involved a protocol of writing for 15-20 minutes (depending on the experiment) for four consecutive days about either a personal traumatic event or superficial topics. Students in the trauma condition were instructed to let go and write their deepest thoughts and feelings, while the superficial topic participants were "…asked to write about superficial or irrelevant topics, for example... describe in detail such things as their dorm room or the shoes they were wearing." ↵
- James W. Pennebaker, Opening Up, 1990, 42. ↵
- Ira Progoff, At a Journal Workshop: Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1992), 27-30. In Keady's class, we used Progoff's book to practice journaling throughout the course. The details of how to engage in this self-listening reflective journaling process are covered in the book. Here, I outline the self-dimensions to provide a sense of the scope of Progoff's comprehensive journaling process. ↵