Emotional Balance Add-On

Have you ever used your journal for ranting, raving, raging, and other less than socially acceptable emoting?  It’s the perfect place to express those emotions!  But did you know that you can do more than just express—you can move toward better managing your emotions?

Beth Jacobs is a psychologist and author of Writing for Emotional Balance.  She has worked with clients for years integrating journal writing into her practice and her focus has been on working with emotions. Beth says: “After 25 years in the therapeutic writing field, I’m still convinced that emotions drive journals.  Most of us write most of the time because our feelings are overwhelming, unintegrated, unclear, or just painful.  We write from the basic drive of the human brain to express what we feel in language.  But we can take it much further than that.”Read more about journal writing and emotional balance.

Beth’s extensive knowledge translates into her Prompts and Tips and her selection of Quotes.  When you have the Emotional Balance Add-On, it’s like having your own coach helping you understand your emotions and how they work. You can find the right way for you to balance your emotions, and bring greater comfort and joy into your life.

An Add-On consists of dozens of Prompts, hundreds of selected Quotes, 50 Tips, extra Topics in the Topics List, and suggested default Daily Pulse Scales and Journal Types.

Sample Prompts

• For each sense, write down and describe the most soothing  image you can imagine, such as seeing a sunset, smelling fresh lavender, touching velvet.
• How much do you tend to express what you feel? What percent of your anger gets out? Sadness? Joy? Fear? Why the differences in percentages?
• What emotion is most likely to overwhelm you? Write a list of five things  that trigger that emotion in you and use that list for a warning for the future.

Sample Quotes

• “Temper is a weapon that we hold by the blade.” –James Barrie
• “There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.”  Carl Jung
• “You can’t deal with any strong emotions until you have let them spill out.”—Tristine Rainer

Sample Tips

• Remember that all change contributes to emotional stress, even if it’s positive change.
• When remembering positive emotional experiences, think through each of your senses in the good memory, to embed it most fully in your brain.