Prompts for Daily Trauma Recovery Journaling

One of the first things most trauma survivors purchase as soon as they begin their healing journey, is a Journal. I have numerous journals packed full of memories, and struggles from my teenage years through today. 

These priceless books of history are so important to healing. Not just for the capture of emotions, experiences, and memories themselves, but for the ability to go back in time and sit with ourselves in those moments.

There are numerous ways that people journal, all specific to how their brain best processes or based on what they want to record. 

• Dream journaling 
• Food journaling 
• Exercise journaling  
• Bullet journaling 
• Guided journaling. 

For me, when I do my private journaling, I like the tried and true personal method as a tool with my trauma recovery. In other words, I just write.

However, when I first began journaling my recovery, I soon found out I was overwhelmed daily by my mind as I learned to live with CPTSD. It was very hard to capture in my journal what I was hoping because I struggled to stay focused and on one path of thinking.

In response, I created daily prompts to use in order to capture everything for reference through the years, and to help focus myself on those challenging days.

Below is a list of prompts I use daily for Trauma Journaling to capture memories and healing: 

1. Give a brief summary of the day
2. What were some of the challenges?
   1. how did I handle them?
3. What is something I absolutely don’t want to forget about today
4. Words of wisdom, quotes for the day
5. Self-reflection: 1 thing I am grateful for today

Mental Health Check: 

1. Rate my mood for the day 1-10 (1 being horrible, 10 being amazing)
2. What mental health symptoms presented?
   1. Do I know the trigger?
   2. How did I manage them?
3. What Self-Care did I do today?
4. Therapy dump (on days I have a session)
   1. What did I discuss?
   2. What observations/awareness did I make?

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Since giving myself a more consistent guideline to follow as I journal about my trauma healing, I have found it easier to capture everything as it is happening. I hope these prompts help you too.

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