From Secrecy to Self-Awareness: Why Daily Journaling and Circle Work Matters in Recovery

Early recovery is often associated with stopping a behavior. And for good reason. Creating safety and interrupting destructive patterns are important first steps. But ending the use of pornography or sexual acting out is not the fullness of what recovery means. Recovery is a new way of living life; changing as a person, not just changing a behavior.

Someone can stop acting out and still remain disconnected from their emotions, their body, and their relationships. This disconnect continues to keep people out of vulnerability and letting anyone really know what is going on internally. Sobriety is being established but the person can remain a mystery to themselves and others. This can turn into continual isolation that will sabotage attempts at building long-term sobriety.

That is why some of the simplest practices in recovery can be some of the most important. Journaling and Circle Work create regular opportunities to slow down and pay attention to what is happening in our inner world, which then gives us the opportunity to let other people into that world. This is how you can let yourself be known.

Recovery Begins with Awareness

Years of acting out sexually can numb emotions and encourage a lack of curiosity about one’s internal world. Early childhood messages about the lack of relevance of one’s emotions, or calling them signs of weakness or too overwhelming to feel, can arrest emotional maturity. In other words, if someone has spent years learning to manage difficult emotions through pornography, fantasy, sexual behavior or other forms of escape, there may be very little space between an uncomfortable internal experience and the automatic coping strategy that follows it.

For us at Begin Again Institute, we believe that recovery begins with the ability to see the space between a trigger and the coping mechanism. When we can notice that space, I can get curious about myself.

• What am I feeling?
• What am I really needing? (Not what does my urge tell me I need.)
• What happened today that affected me?

The first practice that allows a new pattern of vulnerability and curiosity is Daily Journaling.

Journaling Encourages a New Pattern

Beginning a Daily Journaling practice may seem like too little too late, or not serious enough to move the needle. But it is a daily investment in your emotional awareness. The entries do not need to be profound. They are not intended for public consumption. They are daily trips into your inner world. Many of us are like tourists in our own inner world; we don’t know our way around. But daily work helps us gain skill, experience and familiarity with our inner thoughts and feelings.

Rather than “Dear Diary,” start with a prompt like:

• What am I feeling right now?
• What happened today that affected me?
• When did I feel most connected?
• When did I want to escape, numb, control, or isolate?
• What is/was happening in my body?
• What story was I telling myself?
• What did I need that I didn’t know how to ask for?
• Did I move toward connection today or away from it?

You don’t need to take 30–45 minutes. Pick one or two prompts and write honestly and earnestly. Be brief if necessary. It’s about practice, not the prose. Use a feelings list or feeling wheel to easily identify emotions. Some find it helpful to just write out the emotions that they are feeling; we call this Emotion Journaling.

Over time, these tools and questions can help someone begin to recognize patterns that were previously almost invisible. Patterns of shame, anger and sadness can tell you a lot about yourself.

Journaling doesn’t necessarily solve any of these things. But it can help us see them. And if we see them, we can share them with others. We can’t bring our emotions into our relationships if we have no practice at noticing what they are. This allows better awareness about the state of our daily sobriety as well.

The Power of Adding Daily Circle Work

An easy addition to a daily journaling practice is listing where you are in the Three Circles.

Patrick Carnes’ Three Circles exercise is a simple recovery tool for identifying and responding to sexual addiction patterns day to day. The three circles can be understood as:

• Inner Circle: The specific behaviors that represent acting out or are clearly incompatible with one’s recovery goals or the explicit safety needs of a partner.
• Middle Circle: Behaviors, situations, emotions, or thought patterns that increase vulnerability to the Inner Circle, such as isolation, resentment, a lack of transparency, fantasy, or emotional dysregulation.
• Outer Circle: Healthy, life-giving behaviors that support recovery and help meet emotional, relational, physical, and spiritual needs in healthier ways.

Some people call these the Red, Yellow and Green Circles.

The basic use of this tool is to, with the assistance of a professional helper, recognize what belongs in each circle, and then identify where you are or were during that day or the previous one.

“I went for a run today; this is a good outer circle behavior for me. Getting some exercise seemed to help my mood.”

“I feel really stressed out about work today. Stress is a middle circle warning zone thing for me, so I am going to make a call to my sponsor or recovery group guys to vent a little or see what they think I should do to stay out of my inner circle.”

Normally we might try to manage these emotions, thoughts or nervous system states on our own. Journaling allows me to bring them into awareness and then into relationships.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s awareness and developing skill. Hindsight awareness builds present and future skills, like watching game tape after playing in a game. Professional athletes use this practice not to change what happened in the game but to help them see new options for how they want to play in the future.

Journaling and Circle Work does the same thing for recovery. By reviewing my day and my present states, I become more aware in real time as well.

There will be days when the journal is three pages long and days when it is three sentences. There will be meetings where you share something deeply vulnerable and those where the most honest thing you can say is:

“I don’t really know what I’m feeling today.”

Both are part of recovery.

The goal isn’t to become perfectly self-aware. It isn’t to have profound insights every morning or to share something deeply vulnerable every time we sit in a circle.

The goal is to keep showing up relationally for ourselves and others. Let’s get to know our way around our inner world and not be afraid to let someone else ride shotgun.

Every time we slow down, notice what is happening inside us, put words to it, and allow someone else to know us a little more honestly, we are practicing a different way of living.