I stay sane living with severe chronic illness using these journaling techniques

Having a good relationship to yourself and being honest about your true feelings is immensely helpful when dealing with chronic illness. These journaling techniques have helped me through it all.

My debut album will drop on August 29! You can presave it here • My new single is out! It’s called Where Cold Hearts Go To Pray and is a song about escaping the emotional and physical pain of chronic illness. Listen and read more here, or listen while you read:

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Photo by Prophsee Journals on Unsplash

I must admit, I’m not a big journaler. I can’t always hold a pencil/pen and often my brain is too exhausted for it. But I do use different journaling techniques when I’m beginning to feel that my mental health is slipping — which happens often, as living with chronic illness in an ableist society comes with its challenges.

I rarely do stream of consciousness writing as I find it turns into rumination with lots of ‘this sucks’, ‘I wish I had a bit more brain power’ and so forth, so I need to go a bit deeper, which can be exhausting, but necessary. Sometimes, I won’t use a journal or even write anything down — I’ll do one of these techniques mentally. I find it works just as fine.

Soothing my Inner child

I speak a lot to my inner child — either mentally or through a journal. She is incredibly frustrated that she can’t do all the things she loves. So I ask her about it. I get her to tell me what she would do if she were in a body that could do all those things. It can be hard, but good things come from it too.

Sometimes — only sometimes — I discover that there are versions of what she wants that I can do. I discovered that it was actually possible to record my album by letting go of the ‘right way’ to do it. My inner child dreamed of being in a studio, working with awesome musicians and doing the whole ‘one more time with feelings’ thing. I can’t do that, but with my brothers help I set up basic recording gear next to my bed and when my body allowed it I recorded a verse at a time. You can listen to my most recent singles here.

I also deal with a lot of shame and other difficult emotions by talking to and nurturing my inner child. I will often soothe her by stroking her arm and saying things she needs to hear.

When I was dealing with social services for my care hours, my inner child went bonkers. She was scared, felt shamed for not being listened to, and was angry at the loss of control over my own life. I had to do a lot of soothing parenting to calm her down.

Talking to other sub-personalities

We are complex beings, with complex psyches. Sub-personalities, with each of their archetypal energies, play a big part in that complex psyche. Sometimes they take over and get too loud.

I, for instance, have a big warrior sub-personality. It protects me and fights for me, which is great, but it can get too loud or waste a lot of energy. I often need to talk to my inner warrior, either mentally or through my journal, and remind her that I’m safe.

At some point, she got so loud that she prevented me from writing and sharing my work, because what if I got negative comments and that would hurt me and my body (which is true). My warrior is there for a reason and she does her best to protect me, but we had to talk about how to loosen the protective energies.

Chopping everything up

The only way I can get anything done is by chopping the act up into as tiny pieces as possible. I use my journal for this process.

When I became mostly bedbound and couldn’t sit at a piano anymore, I had to change the way I wrote songs, I used my journal to brainstorm every single component that goes into songwriting from finding a chord progression (even this can be chopped up into tiny acts) to writing the lyrics (this can be chopped up too) to finding and fine tuning the melody (this too can be chopped up).

I use this for writing my book too. I might journal how to break up a chapter, or how to break up the research into tiny chunks (it is unfortunately rare that I can do research even when chopped up).

Emotional mind maps

This is my favourite way to journal when I’m in emotional upheaval and need to get to the bottom of things.

Let’s say the biggest feeling I may be feeling is anger and so I write that in a circle in the middle of the page. I then add more circles with lines coming from the big circle.

In these circles I’ll write down all the reasons I’m angry. This could be: “I didn’t get the right number of care hours” and “the social worker was patronising” and so forth. Then I focus on one circle and draw more from that one.

So I might focus on “the social worker was patronising” and write more circles with “I felt shamed” or “I had to share intimate details”.

I continue this until I feel a sense of release. I might continue by focusing on “I had to share intimate details” and write a few other circles about how that made me feel, like “I felt violated” and then I might finish off that path writing “this is NOT OK, and you have every right to feel violated, she did not need those details.”

Permission slips

I’m a hard worker and very dedicated to my work, but my body and mind can’t always handle it. I therefore need to give myself permission slips to allow myself certain things like taking a rest, or not doing something perfectly. You can read more about how to give yourself permission slips here.

I have found that having a good relationship to yourself, being your own best friend, and being honest about your true feelings is immensely helpful when dealing with chronic illness. These journaling techniques help me through it all.

Tell me…

What are your favourite journaling techniques whether mentally or on paper?

Do you feel your different sub-personalities? Who are they?

How is your relationship like to your inner child? Do you stroke your arm too to soothe?

I’d love to know your thoughts!

Thank you so much for reading this post. If you know someone who could benefit from this, then please share this page with them. You are also more than welcome to share it in your Facebook or other patient support groups.

Did you miss?

I wasn’t suicial, I just wanted peace

The power of self-witnessing in chronic illness

Anger can be vital in chronic illness life

Meditation: Instant relief reset

Are you looking for all the meditations? Click here

Are you looking for all music? Click here

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My new single is out! It’s called Where Cold Hearts Go To Pray and is about wanting to escape the emotional and physical pain of chronic illness

I wrote this song for all my chronically ill and neurodivergent peers, all of us with bodies and minds that don’t fit in, who’ve had to figure out how to live in a world which is too loud, too aggressive, too broken and not suited to our needs. This is our resting place.

All proceeds will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. Please consider purchasing on Bandcamp to support the cause.