Category: Journal Prompts

Emotional Misuse, 5

Responsibility. Emotional misuse happens when there is a pattern of offloading responsibility. It can't always be something or someone else, sometimes it's you. Avoiding responsibility is avoiding yourself. Choosing to deflect responsibility misuses the space where you form intimacy and trust in your relationships. Journal Prompts: I avoid... I avoid... I avoid... I avoid... I avoid...

Emotional Misuse, 4

Gaslighting. Gaslighting takes advantage of intimate influence. When you intend to leave someone questioning themselves and their experience, it's gaslighting. It's manipulative, there is an agenda, there is low tolerance for someone to express themselves authentically. Gaslighting is not respectfully challenging and having a conversation about diverse perspectives. Gaslighting challenges the root of a person and gnaws at their self-trust. Gaslighting harms by promoting a narrative of self-doubt. Healthy relationships claim territory in respecting the perspectives of people they love. Journal Prompts: I try to influence... It's difficult for me to tolerate...

Emotional Misuse, 3

Relationships bring capacity to misuse the power of influence. Your intolerance of organic existing and craving for control is misuse. Polluting the natural state of the human in front of you, for your agenda, is stealing from them. Rerouting someone's natural emotional output, so you are more comfortable, is misusing your power. You step across the line when you mold and direct emotional traffic. Journal prompt: I have trouble tolerating...

Family Boundaries: Journal Prompt 11

Triangles A triangle happens when you involve a person outside of the original conflict, seeking an external alliance and attempting to maintain a sense of power. In family dynamics, triangulation can function as a way to relieve anxiety and avoid confrontation, ultimately helping the family maintain status quo. A Triangulation Example: Person A + Person B have a conflict. Person A feels anxious about the conflict and talks to Person C to help manage their anxious feelings and avoid working it out with Person B. Person C becomes a thermostat, enabling avoidance and relieving anxiety. Triangulation is understandable, but it ultimately undercuts what a family hopes for, connection and security. Journal Prompt: I triangulate when...

Anxiety, 11

Limits. Manage anxiety by respecting your limits. Anxiety can happen when an entity/a person is asking something that is beyond a natural, human limit. Is our goal really to prove that we do not have limits? Then, instead of feeling a sense of achievement, we feel exhausted, we have yet again raised the bar, and conditioned people to our lack of limits. Limits are good. Limits keep us from resentment. Limits help us manage anxiety. Journal Prompt: If I do not respect my limits...

Anxiety, 10

Fight. Manage anxiety by wrestling with acceptance. You can fight with your anxiety, distracting you from the life you are hoping to be present for. Or you can make room for anxiety, accepting that it might be one part of you. Movement toward acceptance releases the pressure of control and allows you to adjust your attention to what matters to you. Journal Prompt: When I fight with anxiety, I miss...

Anxiety, 9

Tolerance Manage anxiety by increasing your tolerance for what is uncomfortable. When you cannot tolerate disappointing other people, you participate in a lot you are not interested in and blow past your boundaries. Thus stress and anxiety. Manage anxiety by increasing your capacity to tolerate what is uncomfortable without adjusting your boundaries. Build the muscle of: Tolerating the disappointment of others Tolerating the feeling of false guilt Tolerating other people's anxiety Journal Prompt: What do I need to tolerate to better manage my anxiety?