When I first went into therapy, almost 30 years ago, I started keeping journals. Between my therapist, and those journals, that's what kept me sane. I used them as a place to vent about things I was learning about myself, my FOO, and my husband (this was many, many years pre-affairs). Prior to therapy, I had spent my entire life normalizing my family and thinking I came from the perfect family. That was all shattered.
In those journals, I wrote about things that I'd never want anyone to read - they are things I told my therapist about, and my husband knows about, but no one else is privy to. Several years ago when we downsized from a house to condo, but in the same area, I didn't want the journals in my possession any longer, lest they fall into some wrong hands in the case something happened to me, or H. Granted, I stopped writing journals (until I found out about H's cheating) probably fifteen years ago... so they sat in our basement. When I contemplated destroying them, my therapist and I discussed it, and he offered to store them for me in his locked filing cabinet, so we could revisit it at a later time. We talked about possibly going through some of them together, and if I decided, we could shred them in his office in a sort of ritual - we're probably talking about 5-6 spiral bound notebooks.
Fast forward to now - we have since moved cross country, and the last time I saw my previous therapist was a year ago when we were back for a visit in the area. We talked about the journals again and decided I'd talk with my new therapist about what I might want to do with them. Then next time I was back in the area, I'd either take them with me, or we'd do the shredding thing. Of course, COVID happened - we never made it back for another visit (canceled the one we had scheduled) and have no plans to travel by plane anytime in the foreseeable future. I knew last winter that my old therapist was winding down his practice in the suburbs where I saw him, and where my journals were being stored. When I saw him a year ago, we thought, hey, we've got a year before I need to get them out of his office, one way or another.
Last I talked to him late spring, we didn't talk about the journals, but last week, I realized he must be getting close to closing down the other office, and is going to want to know what to do with them. So I emailed him, and suggested we schedule an appt. just for the purpose of discussing my options. We 'met' last week, and these are my options: 1) he can ship them directly to me (this makes me a bit nervous, knowing they are 'out there' for anyone to find; and again, I don't want them in my home in case anything happens to me); 2) he can destroy them; in fact, he has already moved them to his office downtown, which he will keep open, but won't have the permanent storage space to keep them - he's having to purge 35+ years worth of stuff from his suburban office and a storage facility. The office building he is in downtown has a twice yearly shredding company come, and their next date is Oct 4th... so we are both under the gun to make a decision. I'd feel safe with his overseeing their shredding. 3) he offered to ship them to my current therapist, who I've only been with for a year and a half. She and I have discussed my journals, and she knows my previous therapist has them in his possession. I haven't asked her if she'd be willing to keep them, but I'm not as comfortable with her storing them as I was him.
My gut feeling all along has been to have them shredded. My previous therapist offered last week to take a cursory glance through them to see if there was anything he thinks would be beneficial for me to reread again. If so, he would scan and email it to me; I don't even know if I need that. As I remember it, these entries/journals were from an extremely painful time of my life, reflecting on an extremely painful time in my life, my childhood - why would I want to reread those? It's as if I want to destroy them because I don't ever want to be reminded in such a visceral way what I was like when life was hell (I was doing therapy twice a week, I was in such bad shape). My old therapist has wondered if it might be cathartic to read stuff to see how much I've grown. I think at my age, I can observe that, without reading about it.
I am looking for those of you who journal, and might have been faced with a decision about what to do with old journals. FWIW... the journaling I picked up again after multiple DDays, is done on my laptop, and is password protected. I do occasionally go back and read those entries to see how far I've/we've come. But I haven't journaled in almost a couple of years now.
I have an 'appointment' with my current therapist tomorrow, and will discuss this with her again.