Getting to Know Expressive Writing in Journaling Activities

Yogyakarta, April 24th 2022─Career Development Center (CDC) of FISIPOL UGM held a workshop entitled “Process Feeling with Journaling” on Sunday (24/4). The event, which took place through the Zoom platform, invited two speakers in the field of clinical psychologists, namely Ranisa Kautsar Tristi from the Bureau of Dynamic Psychology and Zahwa Islami from the Faculty of Psychology of UGM.

This opportunity discusses one form of writing in journaling activities, namely expressive writing. Expressive writing, also known as free writing, is writing whatever comes to mind without any restrictions and no need to edit. By pouring our feelings, ideas, or thoughts into writing, we can help recover from things we have experienced, either traumatic or unpleasant.

“Writing provides an opportunity to feel calm and give proper attention to ourselves, and most importantly we can explore beliefs, judgments, and feelings,” Ranisa said.

Ranisa said that writing is the safest place to share something because it is free from worries about other people’s expectations and judgments. In addition, writing is also a form of mirror for ourselves that can see the reflection of thoughts and feelings so that we are more objective with the conditions we experience.

“By journaling we can reflect on what we experience, feel, learn and what has changed in life. Because journaling is our healing process, our process is recording our life journey,” she said.

Meanwhile, Zahwa stated that journaling has a different meaning from a diary, namely when journaling itself has a definite purpose when we write it down. The goals of journaling, especially in expressive writing, include: improving interpersonal communication skills, expressing excess emotion (catharsis), reducing tension, increasing problem solving skills, connecting feelings and accompanying situations.

“The point is that putting thoughts into writing makes us more objective in seeing a problem, because when we are immersed in a feeling, it feels like we don’t even know what causes the feeling/thought to arise. So expressive writing can help us to describe one by one what we feel and think,” Zahwa said.