change therapy

if you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. thanks for visiting!

do you sometimes feel like you really don’t get where you’re at? like you’re stuck in some confusing, chaotic morass of dreams, demands, moments of joy, feelings of depression?

if you have a journal, here’s a fun tool you can use that might just open a new door for you.

take an old entry that is meaningful to you (i like to use dream journals for this) and copy it – either electronically, or make a photocopy of it.

then disassemble the sentences into words. you can do this online by having each word on a new line, or, on paper, by cutting the words out.

now scramble the words. an easy way of doing this electronically is to sort them according to an arbitrary system – alphabetically, or by length of word, etc. scramble them as much as possible – the more convoluted, the better.

and now – write another journal entry, with these words as the base. try to use as many of the words as possible without forcing yourself. make it short – one, at the most three paragraphs. let that entry be as crazy as it comes. here is an example:

the acrophobia is abusing me again, and i’m afraid. such terribly scary fears feel forced on me. i know i am on dry land even when the choice is to live a lot more. the addiction long time ago i try to avoid. you, too? it’s dysfunction or otherwise perfect. twice she pointed at her behaviour from her fallen image and then she caused quite the connection.

now look at it. do you have a sense of something arising for you? remember, the words that make up this “stew” were your words to begin with, they had important meaning for you back when you wrote the original entry.

re-write it again, one, two, maybe three times. every time you re-write it, let more meaning emerge – gently, though, don’t try to force it. look at it, savour it, get a real feel for it.

just like you scrambled and de-scrambled this little piece of writing, you might find that you’re descrambling a little bit of your life with this.

(image by windy angels)

(this post was included in the creative carnival and the carnival of healing, hosted by coaching for lesbians)