"With their in-depth focus and ability to awaken sleeping personal meanings through image and memory, Intensive Journal activities made available for me, as a recovering person, a layered exploration that further opened my understanding, boundaries and heart as I continued the life-saving work 12 Step Programs offer. The Intensive Journal method gave me tools for any step I was working on, to guide me to seeing 'the many aspects" or overarching theme with ever increasing (and surprising!) dimension.
"For instance, Step One: 'We admitted we were powerless of alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable.' The Intensive Journal exercise that is called Steppingstones helps me trace the story of my powerlessness, as well as the story of my coming to admission of unmanageability. Another Intensive Journal exercise encourages me to dialogue right now in the present moment with that powerlessness--speak to it and let it speak to me--and see what had not yet come clear for me. Another Intensive Journal activity gives me time with dream images that can open other doors of understanding, and shows me contours and dimensions of my relationship to all in Step One, including my life becoming unmanageable.
"Using Intensive Journal activities to assist with the steps has introduced me at amazing depth to the personal richness sobriety offers me, and with fuller meaning and reward than I had ever thought possible. I have found Intensive Journal work in support of the 12 Steps of Recovery enduring in helping to build my recovered self--and memorable to this day. In addition, the Progoff™ approach has given me for the first time full-blown language with which to talk about my inner life."
Z.K.
Sacramento, CA
"Most of us in recovery come to discover that a mysterious coincidence has been at work in our lives. For me, it wasn’t until I came to my 4th Step that I realized I had already been doing a 4th Step for some time. The Intensive Journal method that I began working with two years prior to getting sober had become "a fearless and thorough moral inventory" of my life. As I looked back on my life, I came to understand that the Intensive Journal method had been instrumental in my 2nd Step, as well: the work I was doing in the Journal led me ‘to believe in a power greater than myself.’
"I have continued working with the Intensive Journal process throughout my many years of sobriety. Various exercises have enabled me to take stock of my growth as a sober person, and to continue working many of the Steps. The Journal has become a direct method for improving contact with the God of my understanding, for identifying my character defects, and for taking a daily inventory. As a sponsor to other recovering persons, I have sometimes referred them to Intensive Journal exercises for their 4th step work."
D.A.
Leesburg, VA