Why journaling feels so hard to start (there's nothing wrong with you)

You may have been told by others that journaling is a really effective way of processing your feelings and gaining clarity so you can move forwards. And maybe that sounds good, so you decide to indulge in a beautiful journal…only to find yourself putting it away in a drawer and never actually getting started. Perhaps you’re thinking this is a sign of you being “wrong” in some way.

Actually, this avoidance is a very normal and natural thing: Far from being “wrong”, it’s a clever protective mechanism. I would love to use this article to explore why journaling might feel so hard to start and how to support yourself if you genuinely want to gain understanding and move forwards.

The ideas we'll be exploring:

• why journaling feels scary
• fear of journaling
• journaling anxiety
• nervous system
• emotional safety

The first myth

As I’ve just suggested, many people, when they notice themselves avoiding their journal, then add another layer of criticism, judgment, blame and shame. Our immediate instinct is to assume that we’re somehow being “naughty” or “bad” or “wrong” by not committing to this practice. We don't see it as fear or anxiety and we almost certainly have no idea about how this is being driven by the nervous system, not our logical mind.

So, here we are with the myth that we're just misbehaving or weak-willed. And we then try and address that belief in a very sensible way: By forcing, pushing, or otherwise trying to exert willpower to “make” ourselves sit and write.

Perhaps you’ve tried using the “carrot”…Something like, “I’ll give myself a little treat when I’ve sat with my journal”. Or perhaps you prefer the “stick”…Something like, “I won’t allow myself to go to bed until I’ve written something in my journal.”

Those would be great strategies if we had understood the problem correctly. But most often, your reluctance to open your journal and begin writing something isn’t due to lack of willpower or even a lack of desire to support yourself or change. It’s actually a subconscious protection mechanism designed to maintain emotional safety for you.

Should I stop trying to create a journaling practice?

Now, this doesn’t mean you should avoid journaling: It genuinely is a very supportive practice, as I shared in the article called, why journaling actually works. (That article is inside my private membership, The Energy Library. It's free to join at this link.)

There might just be some preparatory steps for you take first.

And the first of those steps is to release the self-judgment. These habits of avoidance or procrastination, or inconsistency (committing for a day or two, then losing interest, then forcing yourself back to it later) are NOT failures. They are simply information about where your nervous system is right now. And once you understand that information, you can support yourself through it very easily. So, we will return to how to do that in a moment.

First, let’s start to explore what is really going on. Because when you can see things correctly, then you can do something about them – something that is actually effective!

Suddenly it became real…

When I first sat down with a notebook and pen and began writing, and allowed myself to write how I actually felt, I saw the thoughts and emotions staring back at me in the form of words, and they became real.

While they were just floating around in my head, yes, they were distracting me, but they were also slightly ephemeral. Like wisps of cloud – albeit rather large, black clouds! When I put them down on paper, I found myself looking at a reflection of my inner reality. And that felt hard.

I hadn’t expected to have that experience. And my nervous system wasn’t really prepared for it. Given that I had been brought up in an environment where anger was not an emotion that it was safe to express, just writing the words “I’m really, really angry right now!” created an immediate trigger within me. “Oh no! I’m a bad person. Saying this is going to get me in trouble!” Even though, in reality, nobody else was going to read my words, that didn’t lessen the sensation of danger within my body.

So, what’s the best response? Shut that down. Put the journal away. Never open it again. Distract myself with (in my case) doing some work…your coping mechanisms or distraction techniques could be different (food, alcohol, exercise, etc.) And then that spiral of shame…”Oh, but journaling is supposed to be good for me and I do want to do things that will help me resolve this inner conflict and heal and manage life better.”

Are you now seeing why I said that the avoidance is a protective mechanism? It’s your beautiful, faithful Autonomic Nervous System jumping in and running an automatic program to keep you safe from connecting with the “forbidden” emotion that you just revealed by writing it down in black and white.

I don’t know where to begin

This is another common block for many people. I have also experienced this and I realised that this feeling has its roots in perfectionism: In the idea that there is a “proper” structure for journaling and that if you don’t follow the rules it won’t work.

So, you end up sitting there staring at a blank page. Perhaps you then turn to a journaling prompt. If you’re working with some kind of program, or with a therapist, they may even offer you prompts. And just to be clear, a "prompt" is usually a question.

And yes, it is much simpler to answer a question – that provides you with an immediate focus to just begin. More often than not, when you manage to get started, you find yourself just keeping on going.

This too can lead to the old pattern of “getting it right”. If you fall into flow, it’s fine. But if the beginning is a bit patchy, you can easily give up because you’re not sure if you’re supposed to be answering the question this way.

And again, this is another beautiful protective mechanism. If you learned in early life that you were punished or shamed when you didn’t do things the way someone else was expecting (this is so common from our education system), then you will have many subconscious programs installed to help you understand the rules and how to follow them so you avoid getting in trouble.

Now, I’m not sharing these potential pitfalls to tell you that you’re just not cut out for journaling. I’m sharing them to help you see how natural and helpful they are. If this is your experience, it isn’t because you are deeply flawed in some way. And yes, we really will get on to supporting you. But first I want to mention one more thing that explains why journaling might feel hard to begin.

Journaling might feel hard to start because you’re scared it won’t stop…

We’ve just seen two facets of common patterns that arise around trapped or blocked emotions. First, the danger of looking at them. Second, the difficulty in even accessing them. Now, let’s look at the other extreme – the fear that when you see them and allow them to flow, the flow will never actually stop.

This was something I experienced when my body first allowed me to release some tears. It took a long time before I could release many at a time because my nervous system went straight into the danger response of “this is too much”.

When we’ve been taught that our emotions aren’t appropriate, and we’ve become very skilled at suppressing them, it’s scary to feel them flow. And journaling is a way of releasing them. Very often the writing leads to tears or anger and we do need to feel safe enough to express those things. Otherwise, we simply repeat the experiences of seeing the emotion, feeling shame, repressing the emotion and then we may retraumatise our bodies.

Notice how I’m talking about the body. We may be using the mind to express, but that is often like the permission slip for our body to then feel. And that is why it is so powerful – we get to release the burdens we’ve been carrying for so long. We might be aware of them in the mind, as thoughts and ideas, but they actually exist in the body, and they are released through crying, shaking, allowing ourselves to move, or to be held and supported. In essence, this is allowing the body to complete actions that it was never able to complete in the moment when the original pain occurred.

A beautiful discovery

And, I discovered something truly beautiful about this. When I learned to trust my body again, it just knew what it needed to do. It only ever released as much as it had capacity to tolerate. So, the tears always stopped. The shaking always passed. The sensations of heat or cold did flow through my body and then it returned to normal temperature.

I also discovered that trust isn’t something the mind announces and the body automatically follows. It is something we build through gifting ourselves new experiences. So, now we come to the real gold…the stuff that opens you up to release and heal safely. Are you ready for it?

How to make journaling safe for your nervous system

Now that I’ve suggested what is really happening underneath some of these common patterns, you may already have some of your own ideas for how to support yourself through them. And that is perfect: You are always going to be your own best guide. Other people can share what worked for them, but that doesn’t mean it will also work for you. So, I simply offer these tips as ideas to explore. Discover what resonates and leave what doesn’t.

Fundamentally, we are seeking to cultivate three things:

Curiosity

This means noticing a pattern as it comes up (e.g., avoidance) and instead of assuming you’re “behaving badly”, ask yourself, “how could this be helping me?” The answer to that question will give you a clue as to how to support yourself.

Compassion

You’ve just seen that in action…rather than assuming you are wrong, assume your body knows exactly what it is doing. It has a good reason and you want to offer compassion as you understand it and invite it to evolve. And yes, I do mean evolve, not change. Change feels scary, evolution is natural.

Safety

Never force or push yourself. If you simply feel like taking out your journal and looking at the front cover, trust that is all that feels safe today. Maybe tomorrow you feel like writing one sentence, “I feel xxx”. And maybe one day a little more flows. If you simply allow what comes naturally, this keeps you in the realm of safety. That builds those new experiences of trust, and when it’s ready, your body will naturally allow you to move forwards and complete the release, gain the clarity, evolve.

Trust that you are your own best guide here. That doesn’t mean seeing yourself as perfect, or retaining ideas and habits that you know aren’t supporting you. It simply means viewing them in a new light, seeing them with compassion and holding space for them to grow, rather like you would hold space for a small child learning to walk. You don’t criticise it for falling over, or force it to move its legs before it’s ready, you simply create an environment where it is safe and feels desire to walk, and watch it find its way through.

Some practical ideas

All of this personal experience has fed into the Kolorlan System and the different journaling experiences it offers. So, if you are ready to give something a try, let me offer a few options.

The colouring journals invite you to express yourself through colour. So, in listening to the colours speak about their meanings, you are naturally drawn to see whichever emotions or patterns you have the capacity to explore and release.

Even in the choice of colours, you are led by your own intuition, so this places the power right back in your own body: its wisdom will always guide you just as far as you are ready to go on any given day. And you get to choose whether you write words about your experiences and revelations, or simply allow the colours to speak for you.

If you like the sound of this, the quickest and easiest way to get started is with the Kolorlan Starter Set. You will find it at this link.

You can also put together your own set by choosing any of the colouring journals and getting the Kolorlan card deck and a set of gel pens. You will find all of those in this section of the Kolorlan store.

A simple language trick

And a top tip for you, whatever style of journaling you end up choosing: You can use simple conscious wording to hugely reduce the trigger of seeing your emotions on paper. Instead of saying, “I feel xxx”, use “a part of me feels xxx”. You see, when we really pause and tune in to all of our inner world, we usually find many voices. Perhaps a lot of them are critical or negative, but we usually have at least one that is a little more positive.

Maybe even many positive voices: They often get drowned out by the fearful or critical voices because of our innate “negativity bias” – another protection mechanism. We are trained to focus on danger so that we don’t miss threats and end up caught off guard. That simply means we may need to develop a more conscious awareness of the inner voices carrying kind and positive messages. They are in there, even though they may be small and quiet.

And when we can locate these voices, they can support us as we access the other fearful or critical parts. It helps with the overwhelm we often experience when connecting with a challenging part - rather than allowing that part to take over, we bring some awareness back to the other parts that still exist alongside it.

Connecting safely with Delight

This idea brings me to the Kolorlan Book of Delight. You will find many journals with a specific theme – gratitude journals are a common example. So, rather than open conversation, these guide you to focus on particular aspects of your day. And they are excellent for training your mind to notice the supportive areas of your life. However, this can feel challenging at first.

So, that is why I created a beautiful journal in which the pages are full of life and colour – delight – as well as leaving you space to write. This invites you to take things slowly, not to overwhelm your system by seeking too much joy or delight when those may be new experiences. It invites you to simply pace yourself and develop awareness of delight, just as you might gently strengthen and develop a muscle in your body.

If that sounds good, you can find the book at this link, and it comes with a couple of free bonus gifts from me too!

I will leave you with those ideas to explore, and wish you happy journaling!