By Nancy-Elizabeth
My Intensive Journal workbook has been a supportive companion ever since I took my first workshop continuing until the present time. I found it especially useful during the last few difficult years of my marriage, during the times around the divorce, and during the aftermath of the divorce.
The Intensive Journal Method has helped me with a wide range of issues, including planning for meetings in the divorce proceedings, processing the wide range of emotions that I was feeling, dealing with issues that are hard to discuss such as discussing divorce with my parents, and planning my future after divorce. I also experienced beneficial aspects from using the method to develop a fulfilling life in the years thereafter.
I was married; I had a son who was 10 years old and daughter who was 12 years old. My husband had taken a job transfer to an office in Chicago, and it was there that I saw a flyer advertising an Intensive Journal workshop and decided to see what it was. In that workshop, I had my first opportunity to write about my life history, important relationships with people, with my work, my physical body, and about some of the beliefs I had along with some questions I had about all of that. Later, I took another workshop that focused more on “deeper” experiences, such as with dreams and internal images as well as a sense of connection to a larger reality: social groups, spiritual experiences and values. After the workshops, I would spend time writing in the various sections that had been presented.
During our first year in Chicago, my children were in school, and I had not yet found meaningful employment, so I had a lot of time to write in my new journal. Writing in my Intensive Journal workbook gave me an outlet for expressing so many types of thoughts and feelings. This was a significant “gift” to me, as my husband was not interested in listening to me talk about most of what I wrote about. Also, I had relatively little contact with the close friends I had left when we moved. It was also a “gift” to me in that I had a place to start realizing much of what had been fairly unconscious before: many different types of feelings about my husband, views of myself, and confusion about what I wanted to do about work outside the home. Writing about all that helped clarify what I wanted to do with this new life and also what I was unhappy about in my relationship with my husband.
Because my husband was in a job with high security, he could not talk about his work, and later, as I worked as a psychotherapist, I also could not talk about my work. My husband was also a man who did not like to talk about his feelings, and I had a strong need for us to share our emotional lives. The differences in our personalities and needs created an underlying sense of conflict and distance in our relationship.
In the next few years, I explored many new ways of thinking and had major personal changes while my husband seemed to remain fairly “stuck” in his ways. My Intensive Journal workbook gave me a place to write about doubts, new ideas, and actions I wondered about taking.
As we were preparing to move back to our original home in Virginia, I had an inner experience and a related dream that I recorded in my journal and worked with in a way that I had learned in one of the Intensive Journal workshops. This writing led me to contact, as soon as we moved, a woman I had known before the move. She told me of a conference that I then attended that changed my life, introducing me to new people and work that matched the interests and skills I had developed during the four years living in Chicago. In retrospect, I believe that if I had not attended the Intensive Journal workshops, and therefore became more attentive to my inner processes, recorded them and worked with them in my journal, I might never have taken the steps that led to such a fulfilling personal and professional life that I experienced in the following 30 years.
I was hopeful that my fulfilling professional life would help ease the emptiness I felt in my marriage and that, in turn, would help avert a divorce. However, my inner turmoil related to the marital situation continued, and I often turned to my Intensive Journal workbook to help me deal with this. One particularly vivid memory relates to a series of nights when I was having difficulty sleeping. One night I finally got up and started writing in my workbook and as my writing became larger and more emphatic, I began to realize how very angry I was: something I had previously been unaware of. After that realization and with some more writing, I was able to return to bed and sleep very well.
From that experience and others that I had while attending further Intensive Journal workshops, it became apparent to me, that one of the roles of the Intensive Journal process is to bring to consciousness thoughts and feelings that had previously been unconscious. With more conscious awareness, I could act with less reactivity and my actions could be more beneficial to all.
I had wanted to avoid a divorce, especially while my children were still living at home, and I used my Intensive Journal workbook to try and sort out various ways to do that. However, the day came when my husband stated that he wanted to end our marriage of 22 years and asked for a divorce. We both agreed that we should try to separate in the best way possible for our children, and decided to use the services of a mediator to accomplish this.
During the mediation, I found my Intensive Journal workbook to be an invaluable help. Each week before the mediation meeting, I would be writing about my thoughts and feelings, clarifying what I was willing to do and not do. Writing about my emotions at that time also helped me stay calmer and more focused in the sessions. Thus, in the sessions, I was able to avoid becoming emotional in a way that would have been counterproductive for both me and my husband.
As I experienced a variety of losses during this time, I became depressed and at times felt suicidal, as I despaired of having a better life in the future. At one of the Intensive Journal workshops I took during that time period, there was a process to become aware of any imagery that would be related to the present period of life. I saw in my mind’s eye a harbor that I had lived near in my teens and it appeared at low tide. The water was very shallow and the ground muddy. Later, I became aware there were hourly change in the tides so that after low tide, gradually the harbor would fill and this seemed life giving. There were many times later on that I would remember the images of the tides and remind myself when things felt “very low” that change could happen, and something better would follow.
During this very low period after the divorce, one of the other challenges for me was how to tell my parents about this change in my life. They both came from backgrounds that viewed divorce as unacceptable. I was especially concerned about talking with my father as he was very introverted and wanted to avoid any discussion that could be emotional.
The Intensive Journal workbook has a section and process for writing dialogues and so I followed that process and wrote a dialogue with my father. When we later met and I spoke with him about the divorce and my plans for the future, I was able to remain calm and actually use some of the statements I had previously written in my workbook.
That meeting went so well, and I later thought it only happened that way due to the preparation from writing that dialogue in my Intensive Journal workbook. So, I began to use my workbook to write dialogues with many other people, including my ex-husband. I found that writing dialogues would often give me insights into another person’s needs and motivations in a way that I could be more understanding of them. This understanding had a beneficial effect on my emotions and our later interactions. At the same time, I would discover effective ways that I could also express my own needs in clearer, calmer ways. This helped me avoid some of the pitfalls of my first marriage and improved the quality of future relationships.
I also used these sections in the Intensive Journal workbook to help me deal with the relationship with my children. One of the challenges for me was conversations they would have with me about their father and the times they spent with him. After these conversations, I would feel very upset, and so finally, I wrote in my workbook about that and came to a decision to ask them not to talk to me for a while about their times with their father. This was very beneficial to me, and after a while, I could listen when they really felt the need to talk with me about him.
I was in my mid 40’s at the time the divorce took place and I had never been self-supporting. The prospect of supporting myself raised much anxiety that would feed my indecision and procrastination, along with the same thoughts going round and round in my head. It was only after I would sit down and write it all out in my Intensive Journal workbook that I would become calmer and be able to make focused plans that I would then have more energy to carry out.
A few years before the divorce occurred, I had gone into private practice as a psychotherapist. After the divorce when I needed to support myself, I had to make the decision whether to try to continue in private practice or go back to working as an employee in a community mental health center.
Again, I used the Intensive Journal process to write about these choices, and once I decided to try to support myself in private practice, I used my workbook to outline various work projects: workshops I could offer and consulting work, then outline a plan of action. I wrote lists of various contacts I could make, along with plans to bring them to fruition.
Working in the sections of the Intensive Journal workbook that address the deeper/broader aspects of life, often called “spiritual”, I reconnected with beliefs that gave meaning to these changes in my life so ultimately, I viewed them as “gains” rather than losses. My view of life took on a much more positive aspect, which in turn increased my self-confidence. A sense of joy gradually began to infuse my life.
In the years that followed, I used the Intensive Journal process to help clarify as well as record events and relationships. Two of these, prominent in my memory, relate to my professional as well as personal life. At one point, I was holding two part time jobs: one as a hospice social worker and the other as a psychotherapist in a health department. I felt the need to leave one and make the other a full-time job but was unclear which to make full time. I attended an Intensive Journal retreat and over the course of four days of writing about many aspects of my life, I had the certain realization that it was the hospice social worker position which should be my full-time job. It was using the integrative techniques of the Intensive Journal process during those four days that gave me the assurance that this decision was coming from the creative wisdom within me, and thus gave me the confidence to carry out the decision.
The personal impact of using the Intensive Journal method happened when I had a very upsetting dream after my mother died and I could not get it out of my mind, nor have any clarity about the meaning of the dream. As a result, I went to an Intensive Journal workshop and again, the process of writing in various sections of the workbook made the meaning very clear, and following the guidance of this process, I went on to become a facilitator of these powerful and, often, life changing Intensive Journal workshops.
In conclusion, I want to express my gratitude to Ira Progoff, PhD, the originator of the Intensive Journal method, and all the staff and workshop leaders of Dialogue House that continue his work. From my first workshop that helped me deal with my painful marriage, through the divorce process, and up to the present day of a fulfilling life, this journal companion has been truly life-giving for me.
"Intensive Journal" is a registered trademark of Jon Progoff and licensed to Dialogue House. © Copyright 2019. Reprinted with permission of the author.