When your mind is racing over and over and over, and you can’t seem to get the thoughts out of your mind, try dumping them on a piece of paper. Dump pages are can be written in an organized line-by-line fashion, or in chaotic scribbles going every which way all over the page. The point of the exercise is to put everything you are thinking, hearing, or feeling on the page. It may look like a long chaotic mess, but it then becomes a visual statement about all the things you are feeling. Dumping it out can help you to relax as the thoughts become more externalized and less internalized.

Many people get overwhelmed by mental racing and thought bombardment about self destructive, name calling, and negative insults all directed at the self. Changing these thought patterns is complex as it is often due to historical trauma issues. The dumping page can be used as one method to change these negative thoughts.

After one gets the negative thoughts externalized on a piece of paper, try working on replacing each of these thoughts with something less destructive. Start by crossing out each negative phrase, one by one, and replacing it with something positive. This part of the exercise may have to be done once your mind is not racing with the negative overload. You may even find that you need assistance in changing the negative words to something positive.

Explore with your system where all the old words and phrases came from. They may very well be related to the things perpetrators have said to you, and if that is the case, the very validity of those phrases needs to be challenged.

Work with your internal system to not repeat the self-destructive words of perpetrators. Explore your system to see how much of this negativity is coming from perpetrator introjects. This will lead to important issues to take to your therapy sessions.

To process the information that has surfaced during this journaling exercise, click here for a clinical consultation.