Intensive Journal Program for Self-Development
Progoff Series of Workshops

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What the Intensive Journal Method has Done for Me

By Nicky Britten, UK

I have been using the Intensive Journal method on and off for many years, but I still struggle to explain what it is to other people. It gives quite the wrong impression to say, ‘Well, it’s a three-ring binder with 21 sections,’ and it’s unhelpful to say, “It’s much more than the kind of diary writing many people are used to.” So I usually talk about my own experience with the Journal method and what it has done for me. In this piece I aim to convey something of that experience.

When I first attended Intensive Journal workshops many years ago, I was going through a period of intense crisis that threatened my whole identity. I felt that I was in real danger of going under and never coming up again. Everything I ever believed had been undermined or destroyed, and I had nothing to replace it all with. There were a few things that kept me going through this period and which I think of as my ‘life savers’: Rilke’s Duino Elegies translated and recorded by Robert Hunter; the music of Chopin; Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet; meditation; my therapist; but above all, the Intensive Journal method.

Using the Journal process helped me to keep faith, to believe that all the pain and suffering could be turned to creative account. It was only by staying with the painful process, instead of running away from it, that I was able to overcome it. For me, working with the Journal method is about facing the darkness, not being afraid of all those terrifying demons which inhabit my psyche, but realising that they are more terrifying in prospect than they are in reality, and that each one has its treasure to yield up. In the Journal process, I am able to admit to the fear and look the demon in the face. Implicitly I believe that there is a creative purpose to all this pain, that there is a destination it leads me towards, if I choose to go that way. And if there is a creative process, I would rather go along with it than fight it.

The Intensive Journal workshops are a brilliant mixture of privacy and companionship. Because each person works on their own in their own workbook and never reads anything out loud unless they want to, there is total privacy. Most of the time I want that privacy and that space to explore things in my own way. But having other people in the room (in person or online) all engaged in the same task, feels tremendously encouraging and supportive. There is a wonderful companionship from knowing that we are all working on our own issues together, even when it is all silent. I do gain a lot from hearing other people’s journal entries because it deepens the atmosphere of the workshop to know what other people are struggling with. Listening to others reading out loud and how the workshop leader helps them to work with their own process, often gives me some insight into mine.

On the occasions that I have read something aloud in a workshop, I have usually been surprised by how much emotion was aroused, that I hadn’t realised was there. I have found it upsetting to read things aloud, but this tells me something important about what really matters to me. Each time, the workshop leader has responded in a compassionate and non-judgemental way, guiding me to go deeper into my own process and find out where else in my life and the Journal workbook I need to go. I have been astonished at the insights that have emerged, and the new understandings I have gained. I feel that the leader could deal with anything that anybody reads aloud, however painful or terrifying or joyful or ecstatic it was! There is never any judgement and there is always support and encouragement to deal with the issue, as well as guidance about which sections of the Journal might help me find my way.

Through the Intensive Journal process I have gained a greater appreciation of the value of symbolism and imagery, and I have learnt a method of working with my own imagery. This has shown me the way to my own creativity, something that had troubled me for years because I was not paying attention to it. The Journal method has enriched my inner life beyond anything I had previously imagined. Dr. Progoff’s insistence on looking forward rather than backward has encouraged me to look optimistically at the future, instead of regretfully at the past.

Through the Dialogue techniques, which are an important part of the Journal method, I have gained a new dimension to many relationships I previously had, with my work, other people, my body, and events in my life. Working with the Journal method has allowed me to deepen my experience of other processes in my life that I have been pursuing at the same time, such as going to my therapist once a week, and attending meditation classes.

I have explored issues and imagery that arose from both of these processes with the help of the Journal method, and this has helped me to take them deeper. I had kept a dream diary for some years before I started working with the Journal method, but having the Dream Log as an integral part of the Journal workbook has meant that I am able to relate the dream images to other parts of my life more readily.

A friend to whom I described the Intensive Journal work said that it sounded like the ideal mother: someone who is always there for you, who always listens to everything you say, who accepts what you say without censure, and who encourages you in whatever choices you make.

Even though the Intensive Journal method has given me all these rich experiences, I still have the feeling that I am only scratching the surface of its latent possibilities and that there are other, richer, more fulfilling experiences lying ahead.


"Intensive Journal" is a registered trademark of Jon Progoff and licensed to Dialogue House. © Copyright 2021. Reprinted with permission of the author.