Journaling

As a pastime, journaling seems it seems to have undergone a surge in popularity in recent years, with people turning to journals as a response to a busy and over-committed life where they need to take time out for themselves to reconnect and organise the many demands. It can be a helpful way to de-clutter your mind, to process your thoughts and feelings, and to work organising your time so that you are more productive in achieving your goals. In addition, journaling is something that is frequently recommended for a submissive and so it may be something that you adopt as part of your dynamic.

Why use a journal?

Keeping a submissive journal is something quite widely recommended, especially for submissives who are in a new relationships or new to the lifestyle. In a D/s relationship communication is key and so a journal can be a good way to express your thoughts, reflect and to learn. It can also be useful for a Dominant in being able to understand what their submissive is thinking and feeling, including some of the things that they might find hard to say otherwise.

A journal as a tool

• A journal can be somewhere to get your ideas together. It can be hard sometimes to express verbally what you feel so a journal can give you the time and space to work through that and make sense if it.
• Writing about how you feel can let you say things that you might not want to face to face, for example because it may feel disrespectful to do so.
• Writing can help you to process difficult emotions, for example anger, fear etc, so that you can speak about them without becoming overly emotional about it.
• It allows you to reflect on what things have meant, what you liked what you didn’t etc.
• It makes a good record so that you can see your growth and progress
• Keeping a journal can aid your relationship in that it can be a way to explore and discover some of your fantasies
• It can help your communication and your mindset.
• It can also be beneficial in long distance relationships where there is less time and opportunity to talk.

Different types

There are lots of different ways that you can approach journaling and there are no hard and fast rules about it. The important thing is that it is your space and that means you can do it in a way which works best for you. It can be made up of pictures, words or bullet points, or be a mixture of all three.

A submissive journal is most often used as a daily record of thoughts and feelings but it can be used for other things, for example the Dominant may wish to make writing a particular entry a task. This could include a piece of reflection as punishment or might be the writing out of a fantasy that you would like to try.

One popular journaling technique is the mind dump. This is where you set a specific period of time and just write down whatever is in your head without really stopping to think about what you are writing or what it means. Often what you end up is a list of random thoughts and ideas which can then be organised and categorised and worked through.

While this is a technique which some people use all the time, it is also a strategy that might help if there was something that you felt confused or overwhelmed about, particularity if you were having a hard time being able to articulate how you felt. It would allow you to empty out your thoughts and then sort them, a bit like you would the clutter from a drawer, into a format that is more organised and you can then share for discussion with your partner.

A Bullet Journal is meant “to help you track the past, organize the present, and plan for the future.” It is about setting goals and working back from them so that you become more focussed on the things that are important and matter to you. It usually has a daily log, as well as sections to plan weekly, monthly and for the whole year. It can include records of feelings as well as ideas and things which you want to do and achieve. Essentially it becomes what you want it to be but will have more of a varied and notey style than the more traditional prose diary.

Morning pages is a specific type record where you write down all thoughts, suggested as being 3 pages of longhand every morning. What you write is up to you and it can be written about the previous day like a diary, or written about something in particular which is on your mind. This process can be helpful to get any negative thoughts out of the way at the beginning of the day, it can be a sort of meditation which released your subconscious thoughts, or it could help with a writing block or to aid the creative process.

Benefits of Journaling

There has been much recorded about the obvious benefits of journaling, like a boost in mindfulness, memory and communication skills. But studies have also found that writing in a journal can lead to better sleep, a stronger immune system, more self-confidence and even a higher I.Q. At the end of the day, if it helps with your submissive or Dominant mindset, helps you to communicate with each other, and allows you to learn as well as to see your own growth, then it sounds like it might be something worth considering.

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