Relapse Prevention:
Journaling & Writing

Dual Recovery Anonymous™ is an independent, nonprofessional, Twelve Step, self-help membership organization for people with a dual diagnosis.

Share This On:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Share This On:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Journaling & Writing Tips

Writing our thoughts and feelings down on paper, or describing a troubling feeling or incident with pen in hand, helps us to better understand our actions and reactions in a way that is sometimes not revealed clearly by simply thinking or talking about them.

When we put our difficulties down on paper, it becomes easier to see situations from a new perspective and perhaps better discern any necessary action.

Writing can help us identify the assets and liabilities that help or hurt our recovery. Journaling and writing can prove to be a valuable means to identify and express our feelings in a safe and healthy way. It can be a first step to sharing these feelings with a therapist, sponsor, or friend, for the first time. 

Writing things down can help us untangle our thinking and counter self-defeating thoughts with realistic counter thoughts.

One writing tool that many recovering people find helpful it to write a gratitude list. When they are experiencing mild depression or anxiety, feeling bored, irritable, or frustrated, they purposefully sit and write out a list of things they are grateful for.

It can be difficult to do when they are not feeling happy so sometimes they use the alphabet. Thinking of something that starts with the letter A, and so on. We can be grateful for really simple things like apples, air, or animals at first. Some letters, like Z, and X, are more difficult and can be skipped. 

Eventually they find their attention has been shifted from an uncomfortable or negative space to a more positive and self-loving one. Some people get in the habit of listing a few things they are grateful for every day in their journal. Developing this “Attitude of Gratitude” has long been a staple of Twelve Step recovery.

Please Note:

All of the content in the DRA section of the site, is copyright protected by DRA World Network Inc., and is not in the public domain. The DRA Crest logo is Trademark protected by DRA World Network Inc., and is not in the public domain. Any reprinting or distribution is subject to our Terms of Use and all applicable U.S. and International Copyright and Trademark law.
Twelve-step program - Twelve Traditions

Newsletter Sign-Up:

Close Popup

We use cookies to give you the best online experience. By agreeing you accept the use of cookies in accordance with our cookie policy.

Close Popup
Privacy Settings saved!
Privacy Settings

When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Control your personal Cookie Services here.

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems.

Technical Cookies
In order to use this website we use the following technically required cookies
  • wordpress_test_cookie
  • wordpress_logged_in_
  • wordpress_sec

Cloudflare
For perfomance reasons we use Cloudflare as a CDN network. This saves a cookie "__cfduid" to apply security settings on a per-client basis. This cookie is strictly necessary for Cloudflare's security features and cannot be turned off.
  • __cfduid

Decline all Services
Save
Accept all Services
Open Privacy settings
Skip to content