Friends and Colleagues, allow me to share with you an upcoming workshop close to my heart.
About 20 years ago, I found myself in new terrain. Swearing I would never work for “Big Law” again, I gave up returning to a public service position I loved, to join a preeminent global firm. The first week, I recognized I had made a mistake, and that the relationship with my new supervising partner was not going to work. To the outside world, I had everything and more, but living inside me were thoughts of having made a “mistake,” and of “selling out.” I experienced tension, gloom, dread and that nagging sense of dissatisfaction that can taint thoughts and interfere with performance. My work product suffered, I suffered, and that began to show up around family and friends. But admit (so soon) I had made a mistake? Scandalous. How could I? Something needed to give …
I had been to therapy once before after my parents divorced, but my therapist was almost an hour from the office and the demands of work (and fear what the culture might think if they knew) halted my return. So I did the only thing I knew to do – I went to the bookstore. There, I found The Artist’s Way at Work by Julia Cameron, and began what has been a long and rewarding relationship with journaling.
Journaling has been demonstrated to provide numerous physiological and cognitive benefits, including lowered blood pressure and cortisol levels, clearing the mind, rewriting one’s narrative, and integrating parts of life which have been difficult to engage or understand. The benefits after just four 30-minute writing sessions have been found to last for weeks to months (Pennebaker & Smyth, 2016). I used weekly journaling to crawl out of my hole, and my journal has been a steady friend ever since. I call journaling “meditation with a pen,” and as I like to say, “My journal never tells me I’m too much.”
If you want to explore new perspectives for the tasks at hand in 2020, and witness and direct positive change in your life, please join me for a three-hour Workshop:
The Magic of Journaling
December 14, 2019
9 am to 12 pm
$75
2419 E. Commercial Boulevard, Suite 203
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33308
To RSVP or for any questions, contact me: 786/708-1724 or CarlaBarrow@TheIntegralTherapist.com
Together, we’ll experience the benefits of contemplative writing and mindful exercises from Ira Progoff, Kate Adams, Julia Cameron and Tristine Rainier – pioneers in the field. It will be one of those gifts that keeps giving. A customized journal and light, healthy snacks will be provided.
We do not analyze or diagnose the mini-processes…, but we record them, and we evoke them. We draw them forward so that they can express the purpose and goal that lies behind them. By means of them we build the inner momentum of our lives and reach new levels of capacity and awareness.
Ira Progoff
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