Are you looking to heal yourself from a specific past experience to allow yourself to move on from something that might otherwise have been incredibly traumatic? Are you instead looking to heal yourself more generally from a build-up of trauma over a whole lifetime?
Then you are in the right place, for today we will be exploring 12 prompts that you can follow to help you heal yourself!
1. Releasing a Challenge or Experience
It can be all too easy to hold onto something that our conscious and unconscious mind finds challenging or intriguing even when it is in our best interest to let it go.
Using healing journal prompts can be a great way to go about doing this, helping you to start on your own healing journey. Explore thoroughly what exactly you feel is clotting your development through inner healing, using this journal prompt to get really get to the bottom of it so that you can then engage in some emotional healing.
2. Energy
In a similar way, you could easily be holding onto negative energy pertaining to any of these challenges or experiences you have faced. Very often, it will be the preserve of the subconscious to absorb all of the emotional and sub-surface information into the mind tissue.
Mostly, this comes in a form that is difficult to navigate and recognize - the language of the subconscious is, after all, beyond much conscious understanding. Exploring it through prompts, however, can help you to work through the pain caused by the imprint that is ultimately left behind when a negative experience presses itself into the folds of the subconscious.
3. Instead
Now that you have located the negative and ultimately undesirable emotions, challenges, and experiences (as well as the energies that have imprinted themselves upon you as a result), you can begin to think about alternative forms of action.
For example, one of the most important things to do to counter these negative and undesirable experiences is to use journaling prompts to really explore how you would like to feel. There can be no full and deep understanding of the undesirable without first defining what exactly the desirable is by contrast. Self-care begins by knowing what it is that you are not caring about already.
4. Affirmations
If you have now come to realize the kinds of feelings and emotions that you would rather feel, then you can also write out a series of affirmations to begin each phase of your day with. This is a great way to communicate with the subconscious considering just how slippery and elusive it can be when you are otherwise attempting to bridge the gap between it and the conscious mind.
Make sure your own affirmations are as personal as possible so that you have the greatest chance of breaking on through to the other side.
5. Learning
More than anything, it is most important to actually learn something from negative experiences, otherwise what have they actually been for besides pain and disappointment?
In this way, you can turn that negative energy into positive energy, redefining the negative emotions and intent that have occurred as a result, allowing you to process past trauma into something more positive, a learning experience that will ensure you never have to do it again.
Your younger self will no doubt thank you for being so courageous in the face of this pain, for learning from your mistakes, and for trying not to follow the same negative tracks again.
6. Forgive
At this point, it is also useful to think about someone you might need to forgive. This could very easily be someone that you are still close with, someone you have sadly become estranged from, or even yourself.
Whoever this person may be, try writing them a letter detailing your feelings of guilt and shame, apologizing to them in as comprehensive a fashion as possible so as to ensure that no emotion is left unmentioned.
This is one of the most important paths to personal growth, cutting negative ties to the past and enabling you to grapple with the present and future-self journaling.
7. Definition
Sometimes the barrier to our self-love isn't from ourselves but rather from the influence of others on our emotional health. Some people are, put simply, emotionally abusive and more than willing to bring you down even in the face of positive forward progress.
8. Experiences Pt. 2
If you haven't already forgiven yourself for your past experiences, then now is certainly the place to begin the process. One of the greatest problems we all face when trying to move past our inherent guilt and shame is our inability to forgive ourselves for past mistakes and thus move on through them to the next stage of life.
9. Actions
Of course, all of these free journal prompts can seem pretty unattainable if you are someone who hasn't actively engaged with their issues before - in such an instance, it can feel altogether like an unreachable abstract to get in touch with these deep subconscious emotions.
If this is your own experience, then the best thing you can do is try to actualize your own intentions for change by planning out three different actions that you can take to bring about your own aims. In this way, you can easily begin to bring about the change you want to see in yourself.
10. Describing Yourself
Some people often don't have a bad word to say about themselves. Other people don't have a bad word to say about anyone. In the middle, there are certain people for whom there isn't a bad word to go around.
Altogether, it can be difficult to show ourselves the love we deserve, even in the face of mistakes, guilt, and shame. You can change this very easily by taking yourself as the subject of fascination and attempting to describe it in five positive words.
11. Deserving
What do you really think you deserve as a person? The answer to this question is almost always incredibly telling and indicative of the person in question's attitude toward themselves, the world, and their relationship within it.
If your answer to the question is in any way negative, then you can work on this feeling by attempting to flip it. Try writing positively about the things that you deserve in life. These don't have to be huge things - rather, it would be even better to try to tackle the small things that you think you deserve on a day-to-day basis.
12. The Other Side
Even those who are amazing at comforting their friends, relatives, and other close ones can be hard on themselves, failing to direct the kind words they have for others at themselves. In fact, it is often these people who have the hardest time fighting for themselves in their own corner.
If you feel this in any way describes you, then try to imagine what you would say to your own friends if they were experiencing the same kinds of thoughts and/or feelings as you. Direct that kindness toward yourself.
Final Words
So, there you have it! Hopefully, you are now feeling ready and equipped to tackle the task of healing yourself!
FAQs Healing Journal Prompts
WHAT DO YOU WRITE IN A HEALING JOURNAL?
A healing journal is best reserved for private thoughts and feelings that relate to your own individual healing journey, whether that be for general trauma or specific events and experiences that have left a seemingly indelible imprint on your subconscious.
WHAT ARE REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS ABOUT HEALING?
You might primarily like to ask yourself what would be the most important thing you need to heal from, what the best way to go about it would be, and what kinds of more positive emotions you might wish to feel in the future.
IS JOURNALING GOOD FOR INNER HEALING?
If you are the kind of person who is likely to be receptive to healing of this kind, then certainly a journal will be a great method for inner healing. If, though, you are the kind of person who thinks this kind of healing is already old hat and would rather try some other method, then perhaps it won't do you all that much good.
HOW TO BEGIN A JOURNAL FOR HEALING?
The best thing you can do to begin your own healing journal (and any diary for that matter) is to be as honest with yourself as possible, ensuring that you begin by attempting to get the deepest possible understanding of your own needs and desires for healing before proceeding forth.
HOW TO WRITE AN EMOTIONAL HEALING JOURNAL?
Your own emotional healing journal should be above all centric on your own emotional needs. Thus, you can't go wrong with trying to assess what you primarily need from an exercise in emotional healing, getting to know yourself and your wants and needs a little better along the way.
