SEP and vacation

Well now, @Francesca, I'm going to make a radical suggestion, because I'm thinking about your Day 10 post where you said

My radical suggestion is that you take a complete break from the SEP while you are on vacation! See if you can give yourself permission to step back from your need to be perfect. Start your vacation by embracing imperfection!

Practicing your emotional writing is something you can easily do. Translate and print out Nichole Sachs' guide for JournalSpeak at https://www.yourbreakawake.com/journalspeak (JournalSpeak | BreakAwake by Nicole Sachs). (You have to scroll down past the "more support" button and start with Step 1 Make your three lists.) Then you can practice this on vacation, although I strongly urge you to not do a full JournalSpeak session every day, because it can be intense, and you're supposed to be on vacation.

That being said, a great way to end every day is to just quickly list things about the day that come to your mind, without editing the list or managing it or organizing it in any way. Let your thoughts flow in whatever random manner they show up (imperfection is your goal on this trip). This quick list is for anything you found challenging or that caused anxiety that day. But also, find at least one thing that you really enjoyed, and at least one thing that you appreciated about yourself that day. Hopefully, those things will be plentiful on vacation!

You should not keep these lists, because the purpose is to just let the negative stuff out on to the paper and then let it go, because once you acknowledge it, it can't hurt you. You can write down your positive memories in a separate travel journal if you want to!

 

PS - do you have a book by Dr Sarno in Italian? That would be a good thing to have with you. Many people find strength and renewed energy by rereading sections of his books.