Navigating your way through a cancer journey is tough. It is hard to find time to take care of yourself–to nourish your body, mind and spirit. And it can be hard keeping everyone in your life updated on your journey.
Journaling is one way patients can care for themselves. Writing down your thoughts gives you an opportunity to work out your feelings and emotions, which helps you think more clearly, relax and find things to be grateful for.
Methods of journaling
There are different ways you can journal. Here are a few to consider:
- Gratitude journaling: Write down everything you're grateful for. This focuses your attention on positive aspects of your life.
- Blog: A blog is a website that you can easily update by writing short posts. Blog posts can be as simple as commentary on your day-to-day life and treatment, or reflection pieces exploring your life's purpose or connecting with a higher power. CaringBridge is a free blog that we particularly recommend.
- Stream-of-consciousness writing: Write down everything that comes to your mind. This kind of unstructured, unedited writing will reflect your raw thoughts and observations.
- Art journaling: Draw, doodle or scrapbook what you're feeling and thinking.
- One line-a-day journaling: Feeling overwhelmed writing every single day? Try just jotting down to a single line or sentence for the day. Check out our favorite One Line a Day Journal.
Benefits of journaling
There's no right or wrong way to keep record of your experiences. Research shows that taking as little as 20 minutes a month for 3 months, to journal can produce long-lasting benefits to your physical and emotional health.
Journaling can help you sleep better, reduce fatigue and help you adjust psychologically to a cancer diagnosis and treatment plan. When journaling, keep these things in mind:
- Look for the positive: Journaling can help you identify positive situations or events that have happened since your diagnosis. This could be a reunited relationship or friendship, receiving an outpouring of love or support from those around you, or little miracles you’ve seen happen in your day to day life.
- Look for what you can control: Journaling can also help you map out and decide what things you can and do have control over and help you manage your reactions to the things that you cannot control.
- Find peace in your relationships: Journaling privately can even help with your day-to-day social interactions with friends and family, co-workers or even your doctors and nurses. Disclosing your deepest feelings in writing might prepare you to have a difficult conversation.
Tips for journaling
Consider these journaling tips as you start recording your journey…
- Journal for yourself. There is no wrong way to do it as long as it is what you want to do, and it makes you happy!
- Find a quiet space. Make sure you journal during a time you know you won't be interrupted, and try to write for 15-20 minutes. Find a safe, secure and comfortable area.
- Protect your thoughts and writings. If writing by hand, keep your journal in a safe spot where it is private and it won’t get lost or damaged. If you are typing your journal, password protect the document. If you choose to use a journal to update your friends and family, you can share the link to them so they can access it. Learn how to set up and do this through CaringBridge.
- Don't worry about grammar, spelling or sentence structure. No one will read this without your consent, so it doesn't have to be perfect. Focus on the following: What are you feeling? What thoughts come to mind as you recall these events? What do you want to make sure you don't forget?
- Seek professional help. If journaling about experiences and emotions leaves you more upset than relieved, seek help from a counselor or mental health provider to help you work through your feelings. Your medical institution and/or social worker can help you find someone to work with.
While journaling might feel difficult at first, you will be so grateful to be able to read back on your experiences and to see your growth as you overcome your toughest days, minutes and hours ahead. Document for you. Journal for your family. Keep a record for your posterity.