How do I use dialogue journaling as a self-reflection technique?

Are you struggling?

Do you feel like your life is a mess? Are you stressed or completely confused about a big decision? Has life left you feeling depressed?

Maybe dialogue journaling can help!

No matter what the roller coaster of your emotions and feelings of indecision hold, dialogue journaling may help you through these emotionally challenging phases.

In recent years, dialogue journaling has transitioned from a classroom activity to a personal written conversation you have with yourself. The purpose of this style of journaling is to:

• Invoke self-reflection

• Guide you through emotions, and

• Help you work through challenges

Dialogue journaling can also involve writing a conversation between yourself and a hypothetical person to help you gain another person's perspective.

Dialogue journaling has been shown to improve:

• Communication skills

• Emotional comprehension

• Critical thinking

With practice, these skills can help you express yourself more clearly and open your thought processes to include various perspectives.

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Breaking Down the Benefits of Dialogue Journaling:

• Personal growth and development — Get to know yourself better through the dialogue journaling technique by discovering areas for improvement and reaching decisions based on those discoveries.

• Improved communication skills — Journaling lets you practice expressing thoughts and ideas clearly and concisely while encouraging empathy.

• Reduced stress and anxiety — Writing out thoughts helps you release your emotions, feel more empowered, and stop ruminating.

• Increased emotional intelligence and self-awareness — You'll better understand your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors through dialogue journaling, leading to your understanding of others.

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Dialogue journaling isn't just for people struggling with their emotions. Others may benefit from this journaling technique, too.

Dialogue journaling can be beneficial for:

• Group leaders and managers — Reflecting on interactions with team members and personnel may help leaders fine-tune their leadership style and decision-making process.

• Creatives — Dialogue journaling can help creative individuals brainstorm ideas for current or future projects.

• Professionals and students — Journaling aids in identifying areas for improvement and setting goals for personal growth.

• Anyone experiencing life changes — New jobs, big moves, relationship changes, and other significant events can be stressful. Dialog journaling may help process the changes and emotions that follow.

• People experiencing depression or anxiety — Working through negative thoughts and emotions through journaling aids in identifying thought patterns and helps to process feelings.

• Alex trains recent hires as part of his promotion at his company. This quarter, he received less-than-stellar reviews from coworkers. He aims to improve his relationship with his teammates and future trainees before the second quarterly review.

• Jessi has challenges with anxiety and doesn't enjoy leaving her home. She misses adventures with friends, but her anxiety prevents her from joining them. She's thought about reaching out to a therapist, but because money is tight, she wants to try some self-help options first.

• Matt is a high school junior who feels pressured by his parents to start researching colleges. He's frustrated because he doesn't know what he wants to major in, making it harder to think about college.

To prepare for dialogue journaling, you'll want to consider three things.

Which medium is best for you? Would you prefer to journal with pen and paper, typing or voice-to-text?

Where and when would you prefer to journal? Consider quiet areas such as home or the library and ask yourself when you'd like to journal. Morning? Mid-day? Evening?

What is the purpose of your dialogue journal? Are you trying to work through strong emotions? Do you want to analyze your thought patterns and discover areas for improvement? Whatever the purpose, go into the journaling with that in mind.

You've decided on a medium and where and when to journal. You've even selected a topic you'd like to reflect on, but what's next? How do you begin a dialogue journal entry?

1. Create a list of all the versions of yourself. Save this list as a reference for future dialogue journal entries.

   Examples: Myself as a...

   • student

   • parent

   • instructor

   • manager

   • child

   • friend

2. Determine if the conversation will be between 2 versions of yourself or between a version of yourself and another person.

   Example conversations between 2 versions of yourself:

   • myself as a student and myself as a teacher

   • myself as an adult and myself as a child

   • myself as an employee and myself as a manager

3. Start the conversation, but make it easy on yourself, and don't worry about quotation marks or perfect sentences. You can even abbreviate the names of your two characters so you can spend more time communicating and less time worried about punctuation and full character names.

   Tips:

   • Allow the dialogue to flow naturally, as speech does.

   • Feel free to let your characters argue, yell, and interrupt.

   • Give your characters time to express themselves if they have a lot to say.

   • If the topic gets too heated, invite in a third character.

4. Reflect on the conversation in two ways:

   • Ask your characters to come to an agreement (first reflection) and write it out. Then, step away from your journal for at least 10 minutes. You may even wait until the following day.

   • When you return to the journal for the second reflection, you'll want to read through the dialogue to gain insight. Then, summarize what you think you need to hear or learn from the scenario in writing.

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Imagine Alex, the trainer from the example above, wants to improve his relationship with his trainees. Here's how he can use dialogue journaling to reflect on his training sessions:

Trainer Alex (TA): Why can't you do your job with a smile, no questions asked?

Employee Alex (EA): Because I feel like you don't respect me and just want to boss me around. This makes me angry. Why would I want to smile?

TA: It's my job to show you what to do.

EA: I would rather you be a mentor and guide me rather than bark orders at me. Pleasant training sessions would go a long way.

1st Reflection

TA: So you're saying you want me to be a mentor and not a "boss"? It's my job to be the "boss" in our training sessions!

EA: I know it's your job, but I think you'd have a better relationship with your trainees if you guided us at first. If you teach us how you'd like us to do things as a mentor and not a "boss", we'd be better equipped to manage ourselves without any effort on your part.

TA: OK, I'll give it a try, but I'm not convinced it will work.

2nd Reflection

I needed to look at things from my trainee's perspective. If I mentor and train them well, they should be better equipped to function independently without as much management on my end. This will give my trainees a sense of pride in their work and may lead to a happier team of employees who smile naturally.