In the qorst situations of my life.when I felt alone, devastated, forgotten, hurt I always started to write a letter to someone, either my partner, the person who hurt me, a good friend, whatever. Where I nwed ro explain the whole mess I am in, why I feel the way I feel, what got me to that point how I imagine it will go from here, what I actually want — this kind of stuff.

I never sent one of those letters. The writing alone made me feel so much better or gave me a resolve to act that the letter would have been outdated by the point I sent it.

President Truman did this, as well. Apparently, some of them were absolutely scathing and full of language that he never would utter in public.

Many different ways to go about it. I preferred the short-form, almost structured tweeting to myself (how do I feel and what's happening) that I built in an app called iFeelio[0] (now defunct).

However, some prefer longform, written or typed, different apps and such.

What I found helped me was trying to focus more on how I was feeling and less on what was happening, as I think it's easy for me to rationalize and become more and more distant from how I'm feeling. Darn, now I want to revamp the app.

[0]: www.ifeelio.com

not op but, I consider the journaling I do to be complementary to the mediation i do. mediation trains the regulation and journaling gives the vocabulary and memory for the present experience

I've taken a course in Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) so part of my writing is to practice it