The Diary Cure

According to the Psychologies magazine ' keeping a journal not only enables you to chart behaviour patterns, but also to move on from past traumas, and heal mentally and physically'.
Apparently psychologists are convinced that 'spilling your emotions into a journal is one of the keys to living a healthier more fulfilled life'. Well I'm not sure it would have quite such a profound effect on your health and life but I'm sure it must do some good.
According to the experts writing about emotive subjects or about disagreements or arguments you have just had with other people is supposed to create a sort of cleansing effect. I believe there could be something in that.
My girlfriend and I had an enormous row yesterday which all blew up over something so trivial as to be laughable but in this process it did unearth some deep inadequacies from my viewpoint about our relationship.
In essence what happened was she went with her friend to an art gallery in London and was chatted up by a man named Ken. Her friend gave both of their telephone numbers to him and he called her yesterday and said that it would be good to hear from her. She stated to me that she had no interest in seeing him but thought it was nothing more than a funny story. I began to question why she had told me this. Was she boasting about being chatted up by another man? Was it her way of saying to me 'look don't think about getting too close to me'.
These feelings gnawed away at me and before we knew it it had escalated into a full blown row.
I am constantly frustrated by her inability to show any verbal or outward signs of verbal love towards me. She is not one for saying 'I love you' so perhaps I should just forget about it as she says it doesn't mean anything but then it still gnaws away at me.
Perhaps I just need to accept this and get on with our relationship without causing a fuss about these things.
Apparently the reason why keeping a journal is good for your health, is that whilst writing about events that traumatise and cause psychological stress, we are not bottling up this stress so it acts as a sort of therapy.
Another idea advocated by Oprah Winfrey is to write down five things you love every day. She says that this will 'change your entire outlook on life' and psychologists agree. I'm therefore going to have a bash at this. Here goes five things I loved about yesterday (Sunday).
1/ Angie and I stayed in bed and talked. (ok so yesterday was an argument - but we did have a 'productive' conversation I think).
2/ I managed to get an essay plan done for my Open University essay. (I'm 120 points into a psychology degree and currently doing my second social science course).
3/ In drum rehearsal I have finally got to play the repinique in a piece called ' Afashay' and its such a complicated piece it feels great when I get it right.
4/ I get to spend the whole day with Angie.
5/ I'm still pleased with myself for achieving a Certificate in Social Science thanks to my OU study.