Making Sense of Myself
A preferred tool for making ongoing sense of my reality.
A few weeks ago, I got a text from someone I care about:
“Hey, something’s wrong. I have this tricky problem I can’t quite figure out. I could use your advice.”
I responded in the same way I imagine most of us would:
“Oh man, I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s talk about it.”
We got together for coffee a few days later. After some catching up, I began to ask questions about the problem my friend was facing. We went back and forth a bit, and once I felt like I truly understood the situation, I offered some advice, which we discussed. This interaction felt straightforward enough. My friend appreciated the advice; I was happy to provide it and glad they asked.
I’m confident in my ability to meet this kind of request when it comes from others. So why do I struggle so hard when the person saying, “Hey, something’s wrong.” is me?
To start with, I don’t do anything nearly as direct as sending myself a text message asking for help. I tend not to involve words at all. Instead, I’m notified via a spike in anxiety, a craving for junk food, an unsettled feeling, an inability to focus, or an endless Netflix binge. All ways my body lets me know that something’s amiss.
When a friend comes to me with something, I try to learn more, lean in, ask for details, and work to truly understand the root of the problem. But with myself, I might completely ignore it, try to just push through it, tell myself I need to get over it, or just let the warning message play over and over until I become numb to it.
If the first step with a struggling close friend or loved one who comes to us for help is to dive in and understand what’s going on, how can we do that with ourselves?
My preferred starting point is to journal about it. Through writing, I bring sustained curiosity and focus to my experience, and as a result I can often gain much more insight about what’s going on in my head and my body than I ever can by purely thinking about it. The process of writing allows me to have a back and forth, to explore ideas, to come to conclusions – just as I would when in dialogue with a friend.
I would absolutely love it if I just knew, in great detail, what was going on in my head at any given point.
“Oh that heavy pit of anxiety you’re feeling right now? That’s because you’re a little burnt out from that conference last week, nervous about that phone call tomorrow morning, and feeling a little shame about not returning your friend’s phone call, and wondering if you should quit your job.”
With that level of detail, I could take specific actions instead of just wallowing in the anxiety. Unfortunately, I almost never have that degree of immediate insight, but I have figured out how to get myself there. By sitting down with my laptop, and diving into that sense of wrongness I’m feeling, I almost always arrive at a detailed picture of what’s actually going on.
How I do it
I open a google doc, add the date, and ask myself, “What’s going on for me right now?” Sometimes the words come easy, sometimes I encounter substantial resistance to getting out even a couple sentences. I might ask questions, ponder ideas, remind myself of the current details of my life, or make plans. There’s no consistent format, no minimum entry length. I’ve found that the simpler my approach is, the more likely I am to consistently do it.
Here’s an example:
January 4th, 2025
It’s morning, I just finished breakfast. Feeling a little off. Untethered, maybe? Jittery, stomach is a little funny. Not sure why. Feeling like my year is starting off pretty well, but wondering if by having spent time focusing on what I’m looking for out of 2025, I’ve brought extra attention to just how uncertain my life is at the moment. Could be that? I’m not sure, that doesn’t ring completely true. Also noticing I’ve been hermiting pretty hard since I got home from visiting family. Maybe time to get some hangouts on the calendar. Speaking of which, I have nothing planned for the rest of the day. I know at this point if I just stay at home, I’m probably gonna go into a Netflix spiral. Maybe a (cold) hike would help? Or at least get into town? Need to grab some groceries at least.
More mundane than profound, certainly. But going from “feeling a little off”, which I can do nothing about, to having a couple ideas as to what may be going on and some actions I might take can be a valuable shift. It may even mean the difference between a day lost to avoidance and depression and a day in which I felt pretty good.
What I get out of it
Primarily, increased self-awareness. By taking my amorphous feelings and spending time with them, I’ve gradually learned to better understand myself, my motivations, and my fears. Instead of feeling out of control, like a pinball bouncing through life, I’m able to bring some understanding and compassion to where I struggle, while gaining some agency over my existence.
Journaling often feels to me like a more deliberate form of mindfulness. Through bringing sustained attention to my current inner state, I’m able to perceive some structure in my chaos. Crucially, it helps me to discern when I’m having a reaction that I need to take action on (I’m feeling anxious because I’ve been avoiding my friend who I need to have a hard conversation with) from one that I don’t (I’m feeling anxious because I somehow scheduled appointments with both the dentist and doctor this week.)
Just as going to the gym slowly builds my strength, journaling slowly builds my ability to recognize what is going on in me at any given moment, and why that might be happening.
Journaling Tips
Use whatever medium works best for you. I tend to always have my laptop with me and I prefer typing to writing by hand, but plenty of people prefer pen and paper.
Not sure how to start? Answer the question “What’s going on for me right now?” or “What’s here?” or “What’s it like to be me right now?”
A few sentences is fine. A few pages is too.
Throw your rules for writing out the window. If writing digitally, turn off any sort of grammar checking, even spell checking. The point is not to create something carefully edited. Long run-on sentences, super long paragraphs, and stream of consciousness are all welcome. Try not to write as if anyone else will ever read it.
While at times recounting your day or week may have benefits, this is by no means required. What’s here for you now, and making sense of that, tends to be far more valuable than just writing out the events of the past day or week.
Try to write even if you think there’s nothing going on with you that requires it. Getting in the habit makes it much easier to journal when something challenging does inevitably come up, and helps you to start noticing more subtle parts of your current experience.
Still struggling? Grab your pen and paper (or laptop), set a 10 minute timer on your phone, and just write about what’s coming up for you, even if it starts with, “I’m not so sure about this whole journaling thing.”
To your point of directing our attention to what matters - this is a recent Atlantic Magazine article’s concluding paragraph by Chris Hayes about taking back our attention from distractions back to things that do matter:
“We must use every tool and strategy imaginable to wrest back our will, to create a world in which we point our attention where we—the willful, conscious “we”—want it to go. A world where we can function and flourish as full human beings, as liberated souls, unlashed from the mast, our ears unplugged and open, listening to the lapping of the waves, making our way back home to the people we love, the sound of sirens safely in the distance.”
This essay has been adapted from Chris Hayes’ new book, The Sirens’ Call.
As a dedicated journaler myself, I can only agree wholeheartedly. I no longer write daily, but I use my journal to work out things that are bothering me or just record 'aha' moments. And yes, as you say in the comments, it keeps me focusing on the heart of the matter instead of letting my mind leapfrog around (as most ADD minds do).
I got into the habit when doing Julia Cameron's Morning Pages (from The Artist's Way). She's a proponent of handwritten 'pages' which I still do (even though my handwriting is terrible). It stimulates the body-mind connection, I think. And training awareness of that connection is very healing, I've found.