Sometimes at the Endpaper Blog we get the unique opportunity to offer a platform to creative journallers from around the world. Our partnership with Natalie Carranceja – a confidence expert, mental health advocate and avid journaller here in our home province of British Columbia, Canada – continues to grow. Today, we are excited to welcome Natalie back to the Endpaper Blog to share her unique perspective on the therapeutic benefits of journalling, particularly when it comes to understanding your own emotions.
You can learn about Natalie and her work on her website (nataliecarranceja.com), Facebook and Instagram. Be sure to check her social channels this week for a special Paperblanks giveaway!
Journalling for Emotional Mastery
For so long we have been taught that being over-emotional is “bad” or that it’s an undesirable behaviour.
Growing up I was told that “you only cry when someone has hurt you or if someone has died.”
Others have told me that they were told to “suck it up” or “get over it.”
Have you heard this before too?
The stories about emotions, that we have programmed deep in our subconscious, have caused us to numb, run away and turn our back on the very things that make us who we are. Human.
I believe our emotions tell us a story. A beautiful one.
They give us an opportunity to know things that we DON’T already know about ourselves.
We get to go inwards, guided by our emotions, and finally see the opportunity to grow. It’s so powerful.
What if you could translate your own emotions? What if you could decode the story they are here to tell you?
No more running.
No more hiding.
No more armour.
How does that sound?
It’s time to embrace our emotions with elegance, grace and poise.
It’s time to learn about the depths of ourselves to create that self-connection we have all been longing for.
You’re ready, aren’t you?
For me, emotional mastery is all about getting behind our emotions. It’s about peeling back those layers that reveal the REAL reason they are there.
Journalling has been such a pivotal tool in this process. Allowing my words to tumble onto the page, seeing what I am feeling instead of keeping it locked up has been incredibly eye-opening.
Learning how to do this has changed my life. It transformed my relationship, it guided me in making the decision to go full time in my business and it has dramatically improved my relationship with my family.
So this is exactly why I want to share this process with you.
You can regain your own personal power by mastering your own emotions, through journalling.
- By acknowledging the emotions as they come up.
- By being responsible for how you choose to behave with the emotions.
- By understanding what your emotions are here to show you.
So how do you do this?
1) Acknowledgment
Acknowledging your emotions involves labelling them, and knowing they are there. Improving your emotional vocabulary is really crucial here because not every emotion is the same when you get under the hood. For example, you can be “angry,” yet is it a “frustrated angry” or a “disappointed angry”? You see, there is a real difference here, and once you know the specific label of the emotion, you will be able to dive deeper and know why it’s here. (Visit feelingswheel.com/ to learn more about emotional vocabulary.)
2) Taking Ownership and Responsibility
Taking responsibility for your emotions is the ultimate key to regaining personal power. They are yours and yours only, and they are also yours by choice. This has always been a tough one to swallow. I will often hear my clients saying, “Well, he MADE me feel frustrated so it’s not my fault,” and navigating through this to recognize responsibility can feel challenging. I truly believe that journalling gives us this chance to slow down and create space to make this recognition. It’s important to remember that no one can actually make you feel anything. Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, you made a choice to feel that way.
What seems to work really well is giving yourself space before responding to anyone or any situation and asking yourself, “How do I CHOOSE to feel in this moment?” This is a question I always ask myself inside my journalling practice. By taking this time, you’re providing yourself with the opportunity to choose how you want to respond, rather than letting your emotions drive you.
3) Practice Understanding
Understanding your emotions is the final piece of the puzzle. It really allows for self-compassion and self-acceptance.
All emotions are the result of a thought, which ultimately comes from a belief. The key is to reverse engineer the emotion to get to the source, the opportunity for growth. For example, jealousy was a big emotion I personally worked on within myself.
In order to get to the source, I had to trace the emotion by going backwards. It started with the question, “What was my thought that resulted in jealousy?” More often than not the thought would be “That person has something better than me,” a pretty triggering thought. As a result, jealousy would show through and influence my behaviours in an undesirable way.
However, we still have to keep going backwards to get to the source, that deep belief. In order to do so, I had to ask myself the question, “What belief could this thought have come from?” I soon learned that it was the belief of “I am not good enough.” THIS was the source, this was my opportunity for growth. When I worked with this belief, the thought of someone being better than me dissolved, and therefore jealousy did not appear.
By really embodying and integrating these three areas of Acknowledging, Taking Ownership and Understanding, you are truly giving yourself the chance to become the master of your own emotions.
Journalling is the key to igniting that self-compassion, so you can go deeper and gain a better perspective on your emotions.
At the same time, you are regaining that personal power and creating a deeper connection with yourself and others.
To really get you started, I have included some journalling prompts below to guide you on this journey. You deserve to have these tools so you can get to know yourself better.
JOURNALLING PROMPTS FOR EMOTIONAL MASTERY:
- What is the reason I am choosing to feel __________?
- What is the thought that led to feeling ________?
- What is the belief that led to that thought?
- What is my inner work opportunity here?
- Who do I choose to be in this moment?
Dive in and really allow yourself to discover why your emotions have revealed themselves, and what story they are here to tell you.
I promise, this skill is life changing in many ways.
Here’s to your power, your elegance and your grace!
Please share with me how these journalling prompts have helped you navigate those challenging emotions!
If you would love to get deeper with this topic, and you would love to harness the power of your emotions, I would love to invite you to come and hang out with me on Instagram. So many exciting things to come, including a very beautiful and in-depth workshop!!
About Natalie:
Natalie is a Confidence Coach with a fierce love for understanding the subconscious mind and cultivating more human-to-human connection. Inside her successful global coaching practice, Natalie helps women create unimaginable confidence so they can powerfully evolve and align with new opportunities in their relationships and life. She is passionate about helping women grow their emotional awareness, develop their intentional communication skills and truly learn how to cultivate the courage to make impactful decisions, so they can rise up and regain their personal power.
For more about Natalie, click here.
