Sunday 22nd December 2024

Hello and happy Sunday!

As we have now passed the winter solstice we can look forward to the evenings getting lighter here in the UK thankfully. The holiday season is now upon us and I hope that you will be looking forward to a break over the next few days. I want to wish you the best for whatever you have planned. 

Be kind to yourself if you do feel stressed though. There can be a lot more of other people's opinions and priorities to take account of at this time of year. 

Step back and breathe if you need to. You do not have to respond straight away.

If you find that there is too much to think about and manage, take a few minutes to yourself and set a timer for 7 minutes to do a free write. 

This can help to get all the thoughts and feelings out onto the page and out of your head. It can also be helpful in distilling and clarifying how you feel and what you think. 

Walking also helps, but my favourite reason for why is because it switches up our physical space and is a bilateral activity that helps us to 'process' how we feel. In trauma therapy we use bilateral stimulation, either with eye movements, light bars, tapping or sound to help with the processing of an emotion. When you are walking the alternating movement of your arms and legs offers similar bilateral stimulation.

Bilateral Music

Here is a research article about bilateral stimulation and its effect on cortisol and stress levels if you would like to read more about this fascinating area.

I am currently working on a bilateral sound accompaniment for my expressive writing sessions and will share more with you when this is ready. In the meantime if you want to try bilateral music, have a look at this playlist by David Grand, the founder of Brainspotting therapy on Spotify. You could try playing this music whilst doing your journaling, to see how it feels for you. I also wrote an article about bilateral music as part of a recent course I took. Music is one of my main hobbies and I find songwriting to be another great method for expressing feelings.

Online course update

I am working on the final set of slides and videos for my online course in managing emotions using CBT-enhanced expressive writing. It should be ready in January 2025 and I will let you know as soon as it goes live. Thank you so much to those of you who have already taken the course and those of you who took the time to add your name to the waiting list for it. I really appreciate this.

Therapeutic journaling/expressive writing groups

Work is progressing on a set of online group sessions where we can focus our writing on specific topics. Thank you so much to those of you who replied with your ideas for which topics you would find helpful. If you haven't responded yet and you would like to know how to write about a specific topic or emotion, do let me know.

Private 1:1 Sessions

In 2025 I also plan to offer some special focused 1:1 sessions on noticing patterns, particularly ones where you might feel stuck. This will be a one-hour session where we will identify any key interfering cognitions, limiting beliefs or unhelpful behaviours. 

In our journaling practices sometimes it can take time to see these patterns. They are normal and I also get stuck in them sometimes, and only notice when I do my weekly journaling session! From my years in practice as a CBT Therapist I can pinpoint these quite quickly and I thought that this might be helpful to pass on to you too. 

We can do this through the analysis of a recent piece of your writing or you could talk through a recent situation. I would then take you through a set of questions to help us navigate towards the patterns and beliefs underneath. Once we know the patterns that are showing up for us we can then start to notice where and when they show up, what triggers them and start to do something about them.

There is much to do, and so I will leave it there for today. I hope that you have a lovely restful Sunday and I will see you next week.

Bye for now,

Donna

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