Making Journaling AuDHD Friendly
Last year, I did an end of year reflection with a friend group. It was very convergent eg. asking us to select a couple values and a couple priorities in each area of our lives. After that exercise, I lived those values and priorities, to the point of sticking around in one-sided dynamics and even mistaking abuse for growing pains.
Once I woke up and realized what was happening, I couldn’t journal or even give myself space to reflect on my feelings for months. I worried that if I acknowledged my feelings, I might place them along some toxic narrative again, so I suppressed them instead. I compartmentalized my life and avoided anything that seemed likely to surface the kind of deep emotions that had influenced my past values and priority lists. When some would seep through, I would shift my walls to keep them out.
A couple weeks ago, the compartments converged. I saw connections that I couldn’t unsee between several of my professional projects and my personal life. My efforts to make an impact in areas that are personal to me without feeling things on a deep, personal level had failed. As desperately as I looked for new lines to compartmentalize on, I couldn’t find any. Multiple friends and coaches told me that it was a futile endeavor and a denial of our interconnectedness as humans on an individual and collective level. Finally, I accepted that there was nowhere left to run.
As I thought about where to go from here, I gravitated toward my work brainstorming approach of making diagrams. Soon, my personal dreams, fears, and dilemmas were on the page too. I gained so much clarity and I could tell that it was coming from me rather than external narratives because the journaling approach came from me!
Since then, I’ve been journaling daily and making sense of so much about both myself and the outside world. It’s empowering to realize that I’m not too traumatized to journal. I just need to journal in a way that doesn’t lead me to more trauma.
