Journaling for resilience is a practice that we can use to increase emotional adaptability and resilience in difficult times.
Our brains are wired for survival. Our nervous systems are designed to perceive and respond to potential threats, but they aren’t very sophisticated in their ability to discern the difference between a real or perceived threat. As a result, we spend a lot of time in our fight or flight zone, feeling amped up, or in our freeze zone, feeling stuck and immobilized.
Mindful journaling for resilience practices can facilitate calming of the nervous system and a return to our resilient zone, where we feel at ease, calm, and happy.
Our brain and nervous systems’ of response to threats help to keep us safe when there’s a real threat, but they are designed to respond to one threat and then rebound and rest. In today’s stressful world, sometimes these systems go into overdrive, and we may get stuck in fight or flight or freeze zones. This can lead to chronic stress, throw us out of balance, and cause concerning symptoms in the body, heart, and mind.
We know that spending more time in our resilient zone, our rest and restore zone, facilitates feelings of safety and connection and supports health, happiness, and wellbeing.
Mindful Journaling for Resilience
I’ve been writing and journaling for years, and I know that when things get difficult, it’s easy for the mind to want to write about fear or worry or the stress of the day. I also know that writing my complaints often makes me feel worse and that there are ways that I can write about difficult times that are more healing and that nurture resilience.
The zones of the nervous system–fight/flight, resilience, and freeze–have different narratives that go along with them, and these narratives have sensations in the body that accompany them. We can learn how to read the narratives as they express in the body and nervous system and use that awareness, along with resiliency skills, to help us get back to our resilient zone. We can use writing to transform our fear based narratives to narratives of peace, safety, hope, and connection.
Journaling for Resilience workshops guide you in this practice and process. This practice supports us to transform our narratives into stories that facilitate healing and resilience.
Click here to learn more about Mindful Journaling for Resilience.