In the qorst situations of my life.when I felt alone, devastated, forgotten, hurt I always started to write a letter to someone, either my partner, the person who hurt me, a good friend, whatever. Where I nwed ro explain the whole mess I am in, why I feel the way I feel, what got me to that point how I imagine it will go from here, what I actually want — this kind of stuff.

I never sent one of those letters. The writing alone made me feel so much better or gave me a resolve to act that the letter would have been outdated by the point I sent it.

Many different ways to go about it. I preferred the short-form, almost structured tweeting to myself (how do I feel and what's happening) that I built in an app called iFeelio[0] (now defunct).

However, some prefer longform, written or typed, different apps and such.

What I found helped me was trying to focus more on how I was feeling and less on what was happening, as I think it's easy for me to rationalize and become more and more distant from how I'm feeling. Darn, now I want to revamp the app.

[0]: www.ifeelio.com

not op but, I consider the journaling I do to be complementary to the mediation i do. mediation trains the regulation and journaling gives the vocabulary and memory for the present experience

I've taken a course in Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) so part of my writing is to practice it