An Alternative to “Brain Drain”

So many of us have been turned on to journaling or “Morning Pages”. While I have found much personal success with the Morning Pages, the biggest complaint I hear about these activities is that they devolve into a to-do list or  . . . a list of complaints. We can often end our writing with sense of self-judgment or anxiety about what to do next. Recording our dreams first thing in the morning has several benefits. The first of which is obvious: We have a written record of what we have said to ourselves in our sleep. No one else will say these things that are only meant for us. Second, we also get a valuable by-product: We journal without having to come up with anything. It’s all just remembering. There’s no judgment about what we’re writing or where it is going. Dream logging is also fantastic “brain drain”. What in the past might have been angry thoughts dumped out onto the page, dreams use symbols that are objective. We still get the benefit of cleaning out our bad feelings without “generating” them in our writing.