Sensitivity Journaling
Updated: Oct 7
What is it?
Sensitivity journaling is a journaling practice for naming complex feelings and states, exploring your relationship to them, identifying triggers, and setting boundaries with your feelings. It is designed with those challenging feelings in mind that seem to have a recurring pattern.
Sometimes, a feeling overwhelms us because of the setting it arises in. It's difficult to process and then respond to something you're in the middle of.
Sensitivity journaling gives you a low-stakes place to "sit with" a feeling so when it comes, you can respond confidently. It's putting on a belt so you're not caught with your pants down.
How to do it?
(Guiding prompts):
Name the feeling.
Choose a feeling to journal about. It can be something simple or even a set of mixed feelings.
If you aren't sure what to call the feeling, 🔗give it a name.
Describe what it feels like in your body.
Do you feel tense, relaxed, hot, energized, lethargic, sweaty?
What do you normally do when the feeling arises? Consider both voluntary and involuntary.
Do you bite nails, sing, listen to music, talk it out, journal about it, ignore it, negotiate with it, intellectualize it away?
Try imagining the feeling.
In what sorts of scenarios do you tend to see this feeling arise?
Like any other set of guiding prompts, these are simply to get your mind going. Feel free to discard, modify, or add to them as you see necessary. 😉
How does it work?
Sensitivity journaling is designed with challenging feelings in mind, particularly those that stand out to you as a recurring pattern.
It first asks you to identify the feeling you find challenging. If you realize the feeling or state doesn't have a name, you give it one.
Doing this makes the feeling go from an abstract concept to something concrete you can work with.
Be open to changing the name of the feeling in the future. New found clarity may lead you to reclassify.
Next, you describe the sensations of the feeling in your body. This is the sensitivity part. You are describing the sensations.
This is so the feeling can become recognizable.
This way, when the feeling returns, you'll remember your entry and see it as what you've uncovered it to be rather than as the recurring, mysterious threat.
Sensitivity journaling asks you to ponder over your relationship to the feeling.
Some feelings are also accompanied by shame and guilt. A person may feel guilty for being angry or feeling neutral in situations where they're "supposed to" feel sad.
What is your relationship to the feeling? How do you react to having it?
This is significant because sometimes the feelings themselves aren't the thing that distresses us but instead it is the judgement and reprimand we give ourselves for having the feeling.
Our relationship to our feelings may be hinting at some other underlying belief worth exploring.
Sensitivity journaling has you come up with a customized plan.
It asks you to consider what sorts of actions are realistic for you. Take notice to how the question centers what's realistic rather than what's "right".
The ideal thing to do can sound good on paper and still be inaccessible or just may not resonate with you.
When were upset, we might respond in ways that are less than ideal. We cannot be perfect, but we can decide what our boundaries are, where we can meet in the middle between the ideal response and impulsive ones, and we can decide to own the outcomes of our choices.
Emotional literacy and internal exploration can spark more than what can be listed in this blog post. The next thing to do is to see what you experience for yourself when you try this practice.
Why do it?
You may know, on an intellectual level, how various feelings affect you, what you tend to do with them, and how you can respond. However, knowing something intellectually is quite different than doing it in practice.
Knowing what internal exercises to do and actually doing them is easy to conflate because both the knowing and the doing are things that happen in the mind.
Essentially, it's thinking "if my mind knows what to do, it does it".
That carries the same logic as intellectualizing away a fear of house spiders. You can tell yourself they are non-venomous all day long and still find yourself frightened by Daddy Longlegs.
In that same way, you can decide to "not let something bother you" and still feel, look, and act bothered.
Sensitivity journaling (and journaling in general) is a physical act.
Rather than simply knowing and saying what you're supposed to do, you have a low stakes place to address feelings head on.
You're also being asked to contract yourself to a plan of action regarding them. It is your contact, and your plan. You're welcome to breach it, as long as you can accept the consequences of doing so.
This plan of action is particularly powerful because it is created following deep understanding.
Using preset techniques (such as taking 10 deep breaths or scanning the room) are helpful for some people and for others, preset techniques feel a lot like platitudes.
They're almost universally known to be helpful, but to you, they feel like a placebo that you know is a placebo.
You are creating a customized plan rooted in deep introspection, compassion, and with respect for your capacity.
Connected Concepts:
Why give names to feelings? What does that lead to?
A journaling practice where you compare two or more concepts. That could be comparing similar feelings.
