Journaling | Intuition Development | Emotional Healing
Access Your Inner Guidance
Access the healing powers of your inner guidance through journaling, intuition development, and resources for emotional healing & emotional wellness.
What Does A Water Dream Mean?
What does your dream about water mean?
Your dream symbols are unique to you, but sometimes it helps to have a little guidance about what a particular symbol in a dream might mean to get you on the right path for interpreting your dream. Use the information here about water dreams as a guide, but don’t let it override your intuitive sense of the water dream’s meaning for you.
Before you read about what your water dream might mean, try answering these questions to tap into your intuitive sense of the meaning of your water dream before you’re too influenced by the information in the rest of this article. It can help to write out the answers to these questions in a dream journal.
What did the dream water look like? Was it a river, pond, lake, ocean, sea, puddle, pool, drinking water, etc.? What color was the dream water? Was there a current? Was the dream water calm? Was the dream water frozen?
Where was the dream water located? Was the dream water in a natural location for water?
Does the dream water remind you of any particular water you’ve seen before (perhaps in a movie, television show, art, real life, or a previous dream)?
Journal Prompts For Positive Self Talk
We can be so used to the way that we talk to ourselves that we don’t notice when our self talk is impacting us negatively. When I really started paying attention to the way I talked to myself and questioning my self talk, I was surprised to see how unkind I was being towards myself. Working on changing my self talk was one of the first steps in my healing journey (read a little more about that here, if you’d like). Working on my self talk was part of how I learned to create safety for myself, and this felt sense of safety unlocked the door to a bigger emotional healing journey.
Paying attention to the way I talked to myself and journaling and reflecting on my self talk was very helpful to me, and I hope it will be helpful to you as well. To that end, these journal prompts for positive self talk are designed to help you take an inventory of your self talk, evaluate your self talk and explore the roots of your self talk, and make a plan for creating positive self talk.
Journal prompts for positive self talk
As you work through these journal prompts, keep in mind that some of your self talk may be full phrases or sentences that you consciously say to yourself in your mind. However, some of your self talk might be fleeting thoughts that cross your mind without being fully put into words, and your self talk may even be a pattern of behavior or pattern of emotional response without accompanying words (I like to think of this as the internal equivalent of all the non-verbal cues that get exchanged when you’re communicating with someone else).
A Dream Journal Example Entry
How to start a dream journal
Starting a dream journal might seem a little daunting, but once you get into the hang of it, dream journaling can be a really interesting and rewarding journaling practice. When you’re starting a dream journal it can help to see a dream journal example to get some ideas. I enjoy dream journaling because I like working with symbolism and it’s a great way to learn new things about myself. Dream journaling is also a wonderful way to get insight into the emotions and experiences that your mind, body, and soul are focused on working through. When you’ve been dream journaling for a while, you might be surprised to find out what’s going on with you at the deepest levels! Dream journaling also helps you tap into your intuition and learn the language of your subconscious mind which yields great benefits in waking life, too.
What Is Shadow Work?
Your shadow contains everything you don’t know about yourself, so how can you meet your shadow self?
What does “shadow self” mean?
Psychologist Carl Jung described the shadow as unconscious aspects of personality. These shadow parts of our personalities are not necessarily good or bad, they are simply parts of who we are that we aren’t aware of. The shadow self is composed of aspects of our personalities that it feels too scary to see. Our shadows are made up of parts of ourselves that we don’t think should be there for whatever reason. Our shadow selves could contain desires we don’t think we should have, emotions we don’t think we should have, and needs we don’t think we should have. The idea that these aspects of our personalities are undesirable might come from childhood, our culture, or significant experiences or relationships in our lives.
Journal Prompts for Shadow Work: Do You Judge Yourself?
What does it mean to judge yourself?
Here are some common examples of self-judgement: Going over a conversation or interaction in your head afterwards and chiding yourself for something you said or did. Berating yourself after you express an emotion or show vulnerability. Holding yourself to a standard of perfection and picking apart everything you could have done better. Being hard on yourself when you forget to do something or when you don’t know how to do something.
Shadow Work Prompts for Childhood Trauma
What were you not allowed to talk about when you were growing up?
Families, like other social groups, have rules. Many of these rules are unwritten. Some of these unwritten rules tell us what we’re allowed to talk about and what we’re not allowed to talk about. If the family you grew up in was dysfunctional in some ways, there may have been many topics that couldn’t be discussed. Without self-reflection, we can unknowingly carry these same rules into our future friendships, romantic relationships, and our new families. Perhaps most detrimentally, we can also carry these rules into our relationship with ourselves.
Shadow Work Journal Prompts For Taking A Memory Inventory
What do you remember, and what don’t you remember?
While we commonly recall past experiences, it’s less common to consciously reflect on what we do and don’t remember from earlier times in our life. These journal prompts encourage you to take a step back and look at your memories with a big picture view.
I invite you to grab your journal and write about times in your life you remember clearly and moments and eras you have few or no memories from. If it feels helpful, use the journal questions below to start.
Journal Prompts for Shadow Work: What Do Your Pet Peeves Say About You?
What can your pet peeves tell you about your shadow self?
Everyone feels annoyed sometimes. Maybe it’s loud chewing, slow walking, or showing up late, whatever your pet peeves are, they have a story to tell about your past and how you experience life. They even have a story to tell you about your shadow self.
Shadow work is all about making aspects of ourselves that are unconscious, conscious, or in other words, bringing these aspects of ourselves out of the shadows and into the light. This is how we meet our shadow self and integrate our shadow self. When something is unconscious, however, that inherently means that it’s difficult for us to see. Exploring how we interact with others, or in other words, understanding that others are our mirror, can help us to bring our shadow selves into the light.
How To Keep A Dream Journal
Life can be difficult. Life can be busy. Feeling disconnected from yourself – from your intuition, your voice, your desires – is a common result. Dream journaling is probably not the first antidote that comes to mind. But, dream journaling has incredible power to help you reconnect with yourself.
Encoded in dream symbolism, our dreams have messages for us, from us.