August's Journal Prompt
(No. 60) On Intrusive vs. Intuitive Thoughts (+ Introducing Ink & Insights)
I believe that writing is an act of listening—especially for those of us writing to process life on the journal page.
Capturing inner thoughts in ink, in real-time, is referred to as stream-of-conscious journaling. Julia Cameron’s famous morning pages are a form of this type of writing as listening. Magic happens when we start to listen…
But what happens when our thoughts go where we don’t want them to go? What happens when our thoughts veer towards harmful and not helpful? What happens when we’re writing to find healing, but our thoughts seem lost in a dark and twisty place?
We don’t want to give those thoughts power by writing them down, right? But we also can’t ignore them. So, how do we write our way to a healing place? How do we find those healing thoughts, anyway? How do we cultivate a wise, healing voice?
"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.'“
—Joan Didion
I am drawn to writers who write from a place of deep wisdom, even amid wounds. I am drawn to their words not only for the healing power they offer me as a reader in need of them but also out of wonder. How do they write like that? Where does that healing voice come from? I perceive something in them that I want to have and that I perceive as lacking in myself. I want to write like that… I want to think like that… I want that kind of voice to inform my life…
I recently finished reading Brianna Wiest's The Mountain is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage into Self-Mastery.1 In it, Wiest discusses intuitive nudges vs. intrusive thoughts. I want to share what I learned because I think it can help you cultivate a healing journaling practice.
This month’s prompt invites you to discover more about intrusive and intuitive thoughts to help you take the intrusive thoughts captive and lean into the intuitive ones.
“When you start listening to yourself, you might find it hard to tell the difference between thoughts that are helpful and intuitive, and thoughts that are damaging and intrusive.”
—Brianna Wiest, The Mountain is You