Journal Interpretation

Graphing (Page 1) | Questions to Guide You (Page 2)

Reviewing journal entries with your therapist, physician, or other medical professional may reveal patterns or trends that can help with diagnosis and treatment. Share the content what you feel comfortable revealing, but leave the actual writings at home. If a journal is to be an effective outlet for you, the privacy of your writing must be zealously guarded. You are likely to write less freely if you know someone else will be reading, because the natural tendency is to write to them. If you can't write freely, the purpose of the journal is defeated. I strongly suggest that if you want to share ideas from your journal, summarize what you wrote, rather than allowing anyone to read the actual journal.

Learning to interpret your own writing can lead to insight and new ways of thinking and behaving. You can see patterns and trends by plotting your results on a graph like those below. You may also notice connections between different life areas by attentively reading your entries.

How to Graph Your Entries:

Hours
Slept

Day	Hours Slept
1	8.0
2	7.0
3	9.0
4	8.0
5	7.0
6	7.0
7	8.0
8	8.5
9	8.0
10	7.5

The graph tracks the hours slept each day. The days of the month are on the bottom (horizontal axis) and the hours slept are on the side (vertical axis). You can make similar graphs for any category.

Days of month
(only first 10 days shown to conserve space)

An Example Month (graph above): After you've graphed different life areas, you can study them for patterns or relationships. In this example, anger, anxiety, depression and fatigue seem closely related--perhaps as stress increases, you find your anger rising. As depression increases, the other areas seem to increase, though not always. Fatigue is often greatest at times when depression is greatest. This is just a quick analysis--you'll want to sit down to study your graphs more closely and look at all the components that make up your journal entries. What can we learn from this? For this individual, decreasing anxiety may help with anger management. Treatment for depression may benefit the other areas. Note that depression is generally more stable than the other three indicators. What's your guess? Does depression respond to them, or is it the other way around? Again, this is hypothesis and deduction, not diagnosis. It's a way to look at yourself and your behaviors and perhaps find a new focus for self-exploration.

Here is an empty graph that you can copy and use to make your own graphs. Simply right-click on the graph and choose "Save Picture As..." to save on your own computer. Or you can download a copy here.

Graphing (Page 1) | Questions to Help Interpret What You See (Page 2)

Comments, questions, or suggestions? Please, email me.

Jonathan P. Levine, CSW

2300 West Ridge Rd.

Rochester, NY 14626

(585) 225-0330

jonathan@aquietvoice.com

Updated on 04/11/2002
� 2002, Jonathan P. Levine, CSW