The Journaling Technique that Helped Save My Life

How I discovered a deep healing therapy you can DIY, by making an apology.

Have you ever had an experience — or a set of experiences — that left you confused, frozen, hurt, or isolated? Have you ever been stuck with that tension, unable to move forward?

I was like that for a couple years. After witnessing or responding to several violent crimes in my personal life, and being subject to a variety of human rights abuses and violence by colleagues between 2018–2020, I was stunned. Mentally paralyzed. I was so blocked up, I couldn’t even talk about work without going numb: both emotionally and physically, in parts of my face and hands. I literally couldn’t recall work that I’d done, or access my skills in ordinary contexts. I couldn’t form words. When I tried, I froze instead. In the past, this kind of response has been called “hysterical mutism”. Today, it’s recognized as part of the suite of emotional and somatic responses to trauma that we refer to collectively as “dissociation.”

It got better.

Writing was a crucial part of that process.

The first phase was prompted when investigators asked me to describe what had happened. I had extensive notes about those events, and wrote up a first draft chronological narrative based on my memories and those notes.

I noticed that first draft was extremely vivid: many of the expository sentences used the present…