Member Article

Journal for Success, Resilience, and Renewed Purpose

Joanna Poppink, LMFT

Enhancing Self-Awareness and Clarifying Goals: Journaling allows for the unfiltered expression of thoughts and emotions, helping individuals identify recurring themes and authentic goals that might be obscured by daily responsibilities and societal expectations.

• Identifying and Overcoming Mental Blocks: Journaling uncovers negative thought patterns and limiting beliefs that hinder personal growth. Individuals can develop a more resilient and positive mindset by recognizing and reframing these thoughts.
• Building Resilience and Facilitating Recovery: Journaling provides a reflective space to process difficult emotions, gain perspective on challenges, and create a roadmap for a fulfilling life. This practice enhances coping with adversity and supports personal and professional growth.

In our fast-paced world, where we often find ourselves juggling numerous responsibilities and battling various stressors, it’s easy to lose sight of our true goals and desires. We can become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks and expectations, leading to burnout and disconnection from our inner selves.

When you journal for success, you unleash a powerful solution to these challenges, providing a private and unfiltered space to explore your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Journaling allows you to build resilience and discover a renewed sense of purpose.

Success and the Power of Pouring It All Out

One of the most profound benefits of journaling is the opportunity to pour out all your thoughts and emotions without holding back. In the private space between you and your journal, you are free to express everything that comes to mind, no matter how trivial or overwhelming it may seem. This unfiltered expression allows you to confront your thoughts head-on, providing clarity and insight that might be difficult to achieve through mere contemplation.

By writing down your thoughts, you externalize them, making examining and understanding them easier. This process can reveal patterns in your thinking and behavior that you might not have noticed before. For instance, you might discover recurring themes of self-doubt or identify specific triggers that consistently cause you stress. You might also discover neglected strengths. Recognizing these blocks to success is the first step towards addressing and overcoming them.

Finding Authentic Goals

When you journal for success, you identify and refine your authentic goals. In the hustle and bustle of daily life, it’s easy to lose sight of what truly matters to you. Your goals can become obscured by the demands of work, family, and societal expectations. However, when you take the time to journal for success regularly, you create a space to reconnect with your inner desires and aspirations.

You may find that certain ideas and dream themes repeatedly surface as you write. These recurring themes can provide valuable clues about what you genuinely want. For example, you might notice that you often write about a desire to start your own business, travel the world, or pursue a creative passion. By paying attention to these recurring themes, you can set more authentic and meaningful goals for yourself.

Identifying Weaknesses and Flawed Thinking

In addition to uncovering your authentic goals, keeping a journal for success helps you identify weaknesses and flawed thinking that hold you back. As you write freely, you may notice negative thought patterns or limiting beliefs that undermine your confidence and motivation. For instance, you might realize that you frequently write about feeling unworthy of success or fearing failure.

Identifying these negative patterns is a crucial step towards changing them. Once you know the specific thoughts and beliefs that hinder you, you can work on reframing them. For example, if you often write about fearing failure, you can challenge this belief by writing about past successes and the lessons you’ve learned from previous setbacks. Over time, this practice can help you develop a more positive and resilient mindset.

Creating a Roadmap for a Satisfying Path

Through consistent journaling, you see traces of a roadmap for a more successful path through work and life. As you explore your thoughts and feelings, you understand what brings you joy, fulfillment, and a sense of purpose. This understanding guides you in making more intentional and aligned choices in your personal and professional life.

For example, suppose you discover through journaling that you feel most fulfilled when inspiring and leading others. In that case, you might seek opportunities to be more assertive and build your leadership skills. Alternatively, if you find that creative expression brings you joy, you might dedicate more time to artistic pursuits or explore ways to incorporate creativity into your current job.

Building Resilience and Facilitating Recovery

Journaling for success is not just a tool for self-discovery; it also plays a vital role in building resilience and facilitating recovery from life’s challenges. Writing about your experiences can help you process difficult emotions and gain perspective on stressful situations. This process of reflection and meaning-making can strengthen your ability to cope with adversity and bounce back from setbacks.

For instance, a journal for success can help you articulate your frustrations and identify potential solutions if you are going through a challenging time at work. By writing about your experiences, you can clarify what aspects of the situation are within your control and develop strategies to address them.

Moreover, journaling can provide relief and catharsis, helping you release pent-up emotions with no relationship consequences and reduce stress. In addition, including your dreams in your journal can reveal your unconscious and neglected strengths as well as unknown self-sabotage beliefs that hold you back.

Making these issues conscious can give you new insight and situations. This process of reflection and meaning-making can strengthen your ability to cope with adversity and bounce back from setbacks.

Embrace the Journey

In conclusion, journaling offers a powerful and transformative practice for building resilience, facilitating recovery, and discovering a renewed sense of purpose. By pouring out your thoughts and feelings without holding back, you uncover your authentic goals, identify and challenge negative thought patterns, and create a roadmap for a more satisfying and fulfilling life.

Whether facing significant challenges or seeking greater clarity and direction, a journal for success experience is a valuable tool on your journey toward resilience and self-discovery. So, grab a pen and journal, and start writing your way to a more empowered and successful life.

Joanna Poppink, LMFT, psychotherapist, speaker, and author of Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder, is in private practice and specializes in Eating Disorder Recovery for adult women and with an emphasis on building a fulfilling life beyond recovery. She is licensed in California, Florida, Oregon, and Utah. All appointments are virtual. Website: EatingDisorderRecovery.net

Guest Article

Trans and in Therapy?

Van Ethan Levy, LMFT, LPCC

What should trans folx expect? What should therapists know?

Just like most people entering therapy, trans, non-binary and many more non-cis folx are not only entering therapy to address and/or explore gender/identity. We are often looking to build coping skills, learn to regulate, unlearn internalized harmful messages, stop self gaslighting, find the power we possess within, differentiate between systematic oppression versus self-blame, and so much more.

And like most other people, as trans, non-binary and many more non-cis identities folx enter into therapy, we are often seeking someone to help us understand ourselves. However, we often lack the awareness that the person providing us care may not have the ability to provide this type of support, due to the lack of competent training that mental health providers have access to in unlearning our internalized transphobia. And we ALL – including trans, non-binary people – have internalized transphobia, since we absorb the messaging of the society in which we live.

Oftentimes therapists have the mentality that they are safe for all people despite race, color, abilities, class, and so much more. This can be harmful when our privilege prevents us from creating a safer space for others. We all constantly engage in micro/macroaggressions, and the majority of the time we are not aware of the harm that it is causing. In fact, when we exist in a mentality that we are a safe person, that is the moment that we are certainly a person who is causing harm because our privilege and ego prevent us from being aware that we are causing harm.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article addressing the ways in which navigating the mental health field as a trans, non-binary and many more non-cis identities person can be incredibly difficult. Rather than rehashing information that is there, I will provide a link to that article: Navigating Mental Health as a Trans Non-Binary Person. Once you have read the article, if you are a therapist, please circle back to continue to read the rest of this one.

Here are some things you can do as a therapist: 

1. Trust the person trusting you enough to share or not share. 

2. Believe our realities as people and do not question them. 

3. Remember that often times there is no solution, and trying to find or help us find a solution is not always viable. Instead, holding that space of pain, fear, anger and so much more is what is healing.

An example is that I will always be misgendered (on the phone, in the store, at a restaurant), no matter where I go. Holding that pain, suffering, anger, and much more is what is going to be affirming and create a safer space for me, versus attempting to find a solution and/or challenge that a mental health provider may label as a “cognitive distortion.” My cognitions are not “distortions,” my realities are real, and I have every right to feel any and all emotions every time it happens, even with the knowledge that it will always happen. 

4. Do your own internal work to address the anxiety, discomfort and much more that comes up when engaging with someone that you may feel “has no solutions,” or “is unwilling to accept,” or “change thought patterns,” or “is someone who has another crisis of the week,” or so many other harmful labels that are given. 

5. Know that you really know nothing, even within what you know. It is our clients who will always know what is best for them. Even if we are not able to be aware of how the person’s understandings and/or engagements are what is best for the person, know that that person is the one who knows.

6. Know that trans, non-binary and many more non-cis folx experience suicidal ideations, sometimes even on a daily basis. This does not mean that a therapist needs to jump to institutionalization, which can add more trauma and harm especially for folx who have been historically marginalized.

Instead, safety plan. Safety plans are more than just who to call. They are about what creates safety for the person, which can look like finding beverages that are comforting to the person, safer people, safer clothes, safer spaces, comforting temperatures, supportive textures, or regulating noises. Lean into the sense that tends to be soothing for the person and expand on that to have a working list that the person can take to utilize.

Base the safety plan on what the person has shared, not on what you perceive is best for the person. That includes things with which you may not agree, like smoking pot, masturbating, engaging in an orgy and/or other forms in which the person consistently finds comfort and safety, does not worsen their experience, and does not create non-consensual harm for others.

Therapy is not about inserting ourselves and beliefs into the experiences of others. Therapy is about meeting clients where they are at and providing a safer and consistent landing space. The more we take ourselves, our assumptions, and our “knowledge” out of the equation, the more we can truly be that space.

Van Ethan Levy, MA, LMFT, LPCC, (they) (elle), a trans and non binary therapist, is a queer, non binary, trans, socialized as female, nBPOC (not Black Person of Color), who is autistic, and has dynamic disabilities amongst many more historically excluded identities. Van provides consultations and trainings on trans and non binary identities, is the organizer of the 2022 Virtual International Do Something: Identity(ies) Conference, authored the interactive book, Exploring My Identity(ies), and produced the Documentary, Do Something: Trans & Non Binary Identities, Website: VanEthanLevy.com

LA-CAMFT’s Declaration
of Inclusion, Diversity, and Anti-Racism

Psychotherapy can be transformative in a democratic society, and can open intellectual inquiry that, at its best, influences and results in lasting positive change. In recognition of our shared humanity and concern for our community and world, LA-CAMFT loudly and overtly disavows all racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, classism, ableism, ageism, and hate speech or actions that attempt to silence, threaten, and degrade others. We in LA-CAMFT leadership hereby affirm our solidarity with those individuals and groups most at risk and further declare that embracing diversity and fostering inclusivity are central to the mission of our organization.

As mental health professionals, we value critical reasoning, evidence-based arguments, self-reflection, and the imagination. We hope to inspire empathy, advocate for social and environmental justice, and provide an ethical framework for our clients, our community, and ourselves.

We in LA-CAMFT leadership are committed to:

(1) the recognition, respect, and affirmation of differences among peoples

(2) challenging oppression and structural and procedural inequities that exist in society, generally, and in local therapeutic, agency, and academic settings

(3) offering diverse programming content and presenters throughout our networking event calendar, as well as in our workshops, trainings, and special events

While we traverse the turbulent seas of the important and necessary changes taking place in our country, in order to form a “more perfect union.” we wish to convey our belief that within our community exists an immense capacity for hope. We believe in and have seen how psychotherapy, therapeutic relationships, and mental health professions can be agents of positive change, without ignoring or denying that the practice and business of psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy have historically been the cause of great harm, trauma, and emotional toll, particularly for people of color and other marginalized groups. We are committed to doing our part to help remedy that which we have the position, privilege, and/or resources to do so.

At LA-CAMFT events, all members are welcome regardless of race/ethnicity, gender identities, gender expressions, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, disabilities, religion, regional background, Veteran status, citizenship, status, nationality and other diverse identities that we each bring to our professions. We expect that leadership and members will promote an atmosphere of respect for all members of our community.

In a diverse community, the goal of inclusiveness encourages and appreciates expressions of different ideas, opinions, and beliefs, so that potentially divisive conversations and interactions become opportunities for intellectual and personal growth. LA-CAMFT leadership wants to embrace this opportunity to create and maintain inclusive and safe spaces for all of our members, free of bias, discrimination, and harassment, where people will be treated with respect and dignity and where all individuals are provided equitable opportunity to participate, contribute, and succeed.

We value your voice in this process. If you feel that our leadership or programming falls short of this commitment, we encourage you to get involved, and to begin a dialogue with those in leadership. It is undeniable that the success of LA-CAMFT relies on the participation, support, and understanding of all its members.

Wishing good health to you and yours, may you find yourself centered in feelings of abundance, safety, belonging, and peace.

Standing together,
The LA-CAMFT Board of Directors and Diversity Committee