truefeelings

This is the exciting part, here you are entering the unknown. The technique for self-discovery. Just write or dictate how you are feeling or what is on your mind now. See where your attention goes, what you focus on, what is brought up from within. Do not worry about grammar or spelling. Do not edit as you go along as you produce perhaps a stream of conciousness.

This free writing is ephemeral and will soon be destroyed. Buried feelings may more easily come to the surface. A little like figments appearing in a dream, knowing most are destined to be lost. When you have finished, perhaps reflect on what you have written before destroying.

This is the essence of self-discovery, the route to understanding more about your self, rather than just being what society expects of you.

WARNING If you become upset, it would be better to stop using this self-discovery approach.

Creativity. Use this free-writing technique to stimulate new ideas. Plan how you might move forward in your life. Unleash your creativity for any project you may have in mind. This is a technique that is known to work.

The pent up stress you are under. Your anger, your hate, any desire for revenge you may have. The bottled up resentment against people who treat you badly. Your despair at the state of the world. Time to let it all out.

Feel the passion as you write. Feel the relief when you destroy it. This catharsis is known to be good for you.

Feelings of guilt or shame. Wrongs you believe you may have done. Perhaps there are dark secrets in your life you can never tell to anyone. Things only you know about yourself.

Bear in mind some feelings of guilt may stem from your moral upbringing, over which you had little or no control.

Here you can unburden yourself. As in a confessional and know that it will be in complete confidence. As you actively destroy the writing, a weight may be lifted from your shoulders.

This may be a natural response to a loss or things not going well. Writing about the emotion will be cathartic and help clarify exactly what is behind this response. You might be able to express gratitude for what you have enjoyed before the loss. Be kind and compassionate to yourself in your writing. Treat yourself as you would treat a close friend going through a tough time.

You may be feeling depressed or anxious without anything specific having caused the feeling.

The cathartic act of writing when you are feeling low will absorb your mind and force you to concentrate more clearly on how you are feeling. The act of destruction will clear the writing and also go towards clearing the overwhelming preoccupation of your mind.

A worry shared is a worry halved.

Fine, except you may have no one to share it with. You may not wish to tell anyone of your particular worry.

You may not wish to add to someone else's burdens.

Here you can unload your worries, whatever is preying on your mind. Just the unloading is helpful.

With a clearer, calmer mind you may be able to find a solution. You are not alone. There are many like you, faced with and overcoming difficulties. Write what you might do as a manageable first step, and repeat until you have the confidence to take it.

You may find the message in the serenity prayer helpful, whether you're religious or not.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
[Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, Lutheran theologian (1892–1971).]

There may be things you wish you could do, but cannot at the moment. Something you have never done before. Things others take in their stride that you would not even think of doing.

In quantum wave mechanics there is a process called quantum tunnelling. A particle can also be described as a wave. When it encounters an insurmountable barrier a part of the wave is able to just seep through it, and appear the other side.

So with your problem envision that you have already got through the block and you are on the other side. A sense of accomplishment, perhaps a sense of relief. Look back and saying it was no big deal anyway.

EMPOWER yourself. Write a simple first step to take. Then when you destroy the writing feel the satisfaction of being on the other side. When you are ready just take this step. Repeat as necessary.

WARNING: If you feel suicidal, ignore this and seek support. See our section HELP LINES on the FAQs page

In the past your confidence and spirit may have been crushed by those more powerful than you. Where there may have been incidents that may be the source of present fears.

If you feel safe, revisit an incident that has affected you. This time armed with safety, confidence and a sense of justice. Now you can rage against those who were once more powerful than you. Release the anger now that was not released then.

From your present safe standpoint you will be creating new neural pathways in your brain. Over time the new safe pathways may override the established ones. The threat that the past holds over the present may fade. The present may win.

WARNING. Explore the unknown and any buried feelings with caution. If you feel you are leaving your comfort zone, stop. Only continue at a time when you feel it is safe to do so.

You may live in harmony with the people around you. Or there may be tensions inside your family, with your relationships, with your friends and the people around you. You could explore what you might do on your part to improve things.

Someone may hold a coercive or abusive power over you. You may have a sense of relief when you are away from someone. You could explore what steps you could take to remove yourself from a bad situation. How would it feel if you were free.

You might explore your feelings using the Gestalt Therapy empty chair technique. Here you imagine someone, or a part of yourself, sitting opposite you, and you express how you feel. You can then swap seats to express how the other might feel towards you.

You may be overwhelmed by all you have accumulated. People, responsibilities, stuff.

Stuff may be easiest to deal with. Choose something you no longer really need and write how you could pass it on or get rid of it. As you destroy the writing feel the power of being able to dispose of it. Repeat until you feel confident of being able to do it. Self-esteem and confidence may grow.

There may reponsibilities you would rather not have to deal with. Is there a way you can remove yourself and still maintain your integrity?

And people? You are lucky if you have good friends and relationships. But there may be some who bring you down, lead you where you don't want to go. You could write about the good qualities of those whom you want to be with.

Writing daily on the following would be good for your personal growth.

CONGRATULATE yourself on what you have achieved recently, even if it is very little.

CELEBRATE the things that have gone well, have made you smile. Your positive interactions with others.

SHOW GRATITUDE for what you have, your skills, the people you know, the positive aspects of your life.

COMPASSION may bring you closer to other people. Self-compassion will make you more accepting of your faults.

LEARN from any setbacks. See them as opportunities for reappraisal and growth.

FEEL GOOD about yourself and others.

AFFIRM that you are a worthwile and likeable person.

Having a positive approach to life is known to enhance your wellbeing.

Celebrate what arouses your passions, brings you love and joy, drives you in life. Your feelings of desire.

The joy of being with someone, of achieving an ambition. Of music or art, of playing and maybe winning. Recognise the joy you bring out in others.

The joy you find in fantasy and dreams. The hopes you have for the future.

Writing will reinforce these feelings.

If you are not so cheerful these days recall happiness from past times. Writing about it may shift your present mood, realising joy is possible.

Wellbeing is not just about being free of problems. It is about fulfillment and having a flourishing life. Pursuing some of the following is recommended.

CONNECT - to bond more deeply in relationships and to form a good support network.
BE ACTIVE - when you have the opportunity.
KEEP LEARNING - stimulate yourself by learning something new. Set a challenge you will enjoy achieving. It will help your confidence.
GIVE - of your time, of your self, to those around you. Smile.
BE CURIOUS - be aware of the world around you. Reflect on what you are experiencing. Look into MINDFULNESS.

The following link gives helpful advice on wellbeing - it will open in another tab Greater Good - Berkeley

You can write here what initial steps you might take to make your life more fulfilling.

This site has been created by me, John Griffiths. I studied Natural Sciences at Churchill College, Cambridge, followed by a period working on a PHD at UCLA in California in the late 60s. I was working under W F Libby, who had won a Nobel Prize for developing Carbon-14 dating.

I was given free range to work on what I wanted. I was very free in developing ideas for experiments, but after building preliminary equipment would find some reason to cease working on it. I would then enthusiastically start working on another idea. Similarly in relationships with women I would initially be very infatuated, and then need to escape. I used to live in fantasy a lot of the time, having the glory of being a hero, and escaping from opponents.

after a while I became very introspective, directing my querying mind upon these different aspects of my self, wondering why I was so self-destructive, searching for the real me. In the end I was overcome by my introspection and shut myself down and came back to England.

Back in london I did various jobs and taught whilst I tried to be an inventor. I had a book published to help one solve crosswords – Cassell's Crossword Finisher - which was successful.

I invented a magnetic printing set which allowed you to arrange the pieces in normal spelling order. I formed a company and set up a factory to make it. It was in the Design Centre and in many shops.

But there was a recession on and I ended up bankrupt. In the High Court I appeared in person and claimed the bank had gone back on its word. The Chairman of the bank had become involoved. The judge in the High Court tended to favour the bank with its prestigous QC and bewigged attendants. I kept appealing the decisions. This escalated until the case reached European Commission on Human Rights.

- He also complains that in relation to his appeal the Master of the Rolls presiding over the court was not impartial, inter alia, because his wife [the Lord Mayor of London] was a colleague of the chairman of the bank against which he was alleging fraud and deception. -

But to no avail. The court proceedings had been an exercise in seeking the truth. I became somewhat disenchanted with the establishment.

[I had made one big mistake in earlier proceedings. I had subpoenaed a bank official. He gave evidence of a meeting under oath. I was then not allowed to contradict him with the discovered bank's documents. This because he was appearing as my witness.]

Over this time I was in some kind of therapy, at the Tavistock and then in group therapies. I was fortunate in being able to join some play sessions with R.D Laing.

Later I became infected during a heart procedure and I was dangerously ill with septicaemia. I was terrifyingly psychotic for a month in the hospital. So I have had some experience of psychological problems and traumas.

These are presented to promote trust in this site, as they were done for the commom good and not to rip people off.

Around 2000 I became volunteer Chair of a group promoting safe cycling in West London, and through that organised an environmental festival over 6 years, the Greenfest West London. The purpose was to introduce environmental groups to the public with no cost to either, and in a enjoyable way.

[link to youtube video of greenfest 2008 it will open in another tab]

John appears briefly at 24s in a yellow vest.

In 2015 John led a project with the cycling group to investigate levels of pollution at different heights. The Council measured pollution at a height of 3m and announced that. People breathe at a lower height and take in more pollution.

[link to youtube ITN item on the NO2 project - it will open in another tab]

EVOLUTION OF THE PROJECT

I took out the domain name truefeelings.com over 20 years ago. I had intended to develop it but was worried about the libel problems that could arise if people published how they truly felt about others. Especially after libel cases with Friends Reunited. Originally the idea was that users could connect with each other.

About 5 years ago I conceived of using the domain so that people can explore and express their feelings without anyone seeing what they have written, but with some sense of acknowledgement. Slowly the possible therapeutic and wellbeing benefits came to the fore. Users would not be able to connect with others through the site, but might be able to through associated social media.

The basic site is now very simple and fast to use. By joining the Community a user can monitor their wellbeing and contibute as a citizen scientist to the survey. This may reveal whether the approach used in this site has any practical therapeutic value.

To build the site I could already use HTML and CSS, but slowly learnt the JS, PHP and MYSQL necessary to put the site together and connect to a database on the server. The site is simple in that it is not dependent on many outside resources and only digits are sent to and processed on the server which makes the server less vulnerable to attack with any hidden code.

I am grateful to the following organisations as sources for providing coding information: W3Schools, CodePen, GitHub, Stack Overflow and to Google development tools for pointing out where there is a problem in the code.

Thanks also to the H&F Enterprise Club, particularly for the advice and help given by Mark Elliott and Theo Ruby.

HAMBURGER DESIGN
Thanks to: mranenko for the hamburger design - MIT license.
https://www.cssscript.com/basic-hamburger-toggle-menu-css-vanilla-javascript/

PHQ-4 Public Health Questionnaire-4
[link to OUP Journal - it will open in another tab]
The PHQ-4 is available from www.phqscreeners.com free of charge, and permission for use is not required.

FLOURISHING SCALE (FS)
Permissions: The scale is copyrighted but you are free to use it without permission or charge by all professionals (researchers and practitioners) as long as you give credit to the authors of the scale:
Diener, E., Wirtz, D., Tov, W., Kim-Prieto, C., Choi, D., Oishi, S., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2009). New measures of well-being: Flourishing and positive and negative feelings. Social Indicators Research, 39, 247-266.
https://eddiener.com/scales/9

Why should you trust this site? How do you know something you write will not be used against you?

First of all the creator of ths site is a well respected member of the local community. John Griffiths is seen here being awarded a Hammersmith and Fulham Civic Honour for Improving Our Environment by Cllr Wesley Harcourt in 2018.

On the about page there is further evidence of his voluntary efforts to improve the environment.

Secondly, as this is a website rather than an app, it is possible to see the code controlling the site. On a desktop, in Chrome one can type Ctrl + U to reveal the page source, the HTML and javascript code behind the site.

On the page source one can use Ctrl + F to search for TRUSTED. At the second instance there are comments marked by "//" . This is the section of the code where the number of words written is counted, and then where they are made to disappear.

A computing expert would quickly tweet to #truefeelings if it was not secure.

EXPRESSIVE WRITING

Psychologist James W. Pennebaker studied the therapeutic effects of Expressive Writing. The following paper gives the background.

Expressive Writing in Psychological Science / James W Pennebaker /First published October 9 2017
[link to Journal - it will open in another tab]

Psychologist James W Pennebaker answers a question in the magazine Scientific American - March 2016

Does Confessing Secrets Improve Our Mental Health?

The answer includes

Any type of open and truthful disclosure reduces stress and helps individuals come to terms with their behavior. It is not coincidental that some of the most powerful people or institutions in many cultures encourage people to confess their transgressions. And there is very strong evidence that writing about upsetting experiences or dark secrets can benefit your mental and physical well-being.

[link to SA article - it will open in another tab]

WRITE AND DESTROY

In his book “Back in Control” 2012
ISBN 978-0-9882729-0-3 David Hanscom MD, a spine surgeon states at p159

Free Writing
The first thing I have my patients with chronic pain do is to simply start writing down the negative thoughts and then immediately destroy this piece of paper. I call this technique “free writing.” Discarding the paper allows you to write with complete freedom.
…
It's not about psychology; it's about reprogramming your nervous system.

What is sent from your device to truefeelings.com

IF YOU HAVE NOT JOINED THE COMMUNITY

When you write and click destroy, the following information is submitted anonymously to the server to establish how the site is being used. If you are not connected to the internet, nothing is sent.

a] number of words/ time taken to write
b] your time zone – to tell what part of the world you are in.
c] your screen width -are you using a phone or a larger device. -
we also log the time the information was received by the server in the UK

WHEN YOU JOIN THE COMMUNITY

When you join the community a notification is sent to the server that someone has joined, along with your time zone and your screen width.

AFTER JOINING THE COMMUNITY.

When you write and click destroy, and if you connected to the internet, the information shown above for those who have not joined PLUS

the total number of sessions
the total number of words written
the total time spent writing
the number of days since you joined the Community.

This additional information is updated to your Local Storage as part of your history, whether or not you are connected to the internet.

WHEN YOU LEAVE THE COMMUNITY

When you leave the community, ie delete local storage, if you are connected to the internet, a notification is sent to the server that someone has left, along with your time zone and your screen width.

Help is available in many countries for those in distress or feeling suicidal.

UK:
Samaritans: call 116 123
Shout: text SHOUT to 85258

USA:
Suicide and crisis lifeline: call or text to 988
Crisis text line: text to 741741

MORE UK/USA and OTHER COUNTRIES:
FIND A HELPLINE
Free, confidential support from a helpline or hotline near you. Online chat, text or phone.
[link to findahelpline.com - it will open in another tab]

This site is written in HTML [Hypertext Markup Language] and JS [Javascript]. HTML is the framework of the page layout. Javascript controls how the site functions, and which parts of the site are visible.

There is only one page on the site, and when you click to go to a new area that section becomes visable and the previous section disappears. This makes it easy and safe to move stored vaiables from one section to another. However, when you click on the back arrow it takes you back to the last page, which in this case is usually the previous website.

before you join the community

The site shows up in the address bar as truefeelings.com with a padlock in front of it. If you click on the name it shows as https://www.truefeelings.com

https [Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure] means data is sent from your device to the server covered by SSL, secure socket level, which means all data is encrypted when sent over the internet.

If you click on the padlock it should indicate that no cookies are in use.

AFTER YOU JOIN THE COMMUNITY

If you click on the padlock it should now indicate that 1 cookies are in use.

If you click on Cookies it should say
www.truefeelings.com

Double click on that and it should say
Local Storage

Double click on that and it should say
https://www.truefeelings.com

LOCAL STORAGE is a part of your browser and a space is reserved for this website. Local storage will save some information in pairs, a key and a value separated by an equals sign. Pairs are separated by a comma.

The keys we use are fname, startDate, tWords, tTime, joined, surveyNo and sessionNo, and all these values are numbers apart from fName which is the name you chose.

After your first survey further KEYS are added to LS

WHAT'S IN YOUR LS. To find out what is being stored in your Local Storage for this site simply click on the button below. This will copy the contents of your Local Storage to the RESULTS page. This will not affect the contents of your Local storage.

TO LEAVE THE COMMUNITY. Click on the button below. This will delete the Local Storage. All trace of you using the site will disappear, including your name.

TRANSFERRING LS TO ANOTHER DEVICE. If you are changing your computer or mobile you can move the Local Storage to your new device. Copy the LS as above to the results page. Then copy the text to an email or file that you will have access to on the new device.

On the new device open truefeelings.com. It should greet you as "Hi guest". DO NOT JOIN the community.

Then into an empty WRITE page copy the text from the saved file. If an email added some footer to the text remove that. Then click on RESTORE LS from WRITE. When you refresh you should be greeted by your name.

LEAVING THE COMMUNITY

To LEAVE go to the end of the home page. The LEAVE button will remove your user name and all your history of use from this site.

PURPOSE

The purpose of the survey is to find out if the site has any therapeutic value. We will look to see how your answers change over time. Ideally we would like you to take the survey again every two weeks.

QUESTIONS

The questions are in 5 sections. Not all sections are presented to you on a given occasion. this is to keep each survey as short as possible.

1] FIRST TIME How you heard of us / Country / age / gender – as results may depend on them
2] ABOUT YOU Some relevant information – to see if the site is helpful in such circumstances
3] Themes – To see how you might be using the site
4] PHQ-4 – Public Health Questionnaire-4 on anxiety and depression
5] FS – Flourishing Scale wellbeing survey

QUESTIONS FOR A GIVEN SURVEY:
The sequence repeats after 4 surveys, except for first time which never repeats.

Survey	1	2	3	4
first time	x
about you	x
themes			x
PHQ-4	x	x	x	x
FS	x	x	x	x

and so

Survey	5	6	7	8
about you	x
themes			x
PHQ-4	x	x	x	x
FS	x	x	x	x

and so on ...

DATA SENT WHEN YOU CLICK SUBMIT

The information sent when you SUBMIT the survey:
The coded answers to all the questions, which are 1 or 2 digit numbers.
The total PHQ-4 scores and the total FS score,
from your history, totalWords, totalSessions, totalTime.
The startTime you joined the Community, surveyTime1 when the first survey was submitted, and surveyTime when the latest survey was sent. These times are measured to the nearest milisecond and represented by 13 digit numbers.

PRIVACY

The startTime and surveyTime1 are sent with each of your responses. It is extremely unlikely than anyone else will have the same pair of numbers. They are combined on the server to give a key which links your responses. We, nor anybody else, can identify you from the information we have.

WHEN you submit the survey the data is sent anonymously to our server over the secure SSL link. On the server it is stored securely. As the data cannot be traced back to you it does not count as personal information under data protection rules.

LOCAL STORAGE UPDATE

after your first survey the following keys are added
surveyTime1 - time of you first survey
surveyTime - time of your latest survey

Also the following KEYS are added to allow us to construct columns in your SURVEY HISTORY. These are:

colDate: date of the survey
colFS: score in the Flourishing Survey
colSessions: number of sessions/day since the last survey
colWords: number of words/day since the last survey
colTime: time spent/day since the last survey

IF YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT STORING YOUR FS RESULTS IN LS.

It is extremely unlikely for the values in LS for this simple site to be attacked. However if you are concerned you can delete the values of your present and all your previous FS scores for your SURVEY HISTORY saved in LS and replace them with an “X”. This does not affect the values that have been sent to the server.

WELLBEING and the FLOURISHING SCALE FS

Wellbeing is not merely the absence of illness or distress, but rather a state of optimal functioning and flourishing in various areas of one's life. This includes physical health, emotional wellbeing, social connections, and overall life satisfaction. Using our survey, you will be able to monitor how your wellbeing varies over time.

We use the Flourishing Scale as a measure of a person's wellbeing. It has 8 questions. Each question has 7 possible answers, scoring from 1 to 7. The scores are added to give a total score that could range from 8 to 56.

The original test of the Flourishing Scale was carried out on a population of students from USA and Singapore. Here is a link to that paper.

[link to original document - it will open in another tab]

The Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4) is an ultra-brief screener for anxiety and depression. We use it to see if the use of this site has any effect on a persons anxiety or depresion. It contains just 4 questions, 2 regarding anxiety and 2 regarding depression. We do not tell you the score as we do not want to appear to be giving a medical diagnosis to potentially vulnerable people. However it may give us valuable anonymous information as to whether this site is helpful for people who may have mental health problems.

Here is a link to a document on PHQ-4

[link to a document on PHQ-4 - it will open in another tab]

ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEY

The startTime when you joined the the Community and the surveyTime1 of sending your first survey are stored in your Local Storage. Each is given to the nearest millisecond, and there is very little chance that anyone else will have the same pair of values. These two times are sent with each survey and a surveyKey is constructed from them.

This enables us to link surveys together as coming from the same source, though we have no way of identifying who it is. Over time all the surveys coming from the same source can be linked together as a chain.

The data will be analysed to see if and how the use of the website has an beneficial effect.

It may be quite complex to separate an effect from background changes, and it will need a sophisticated approach. There needs to be some form of control for the survey, as the scores in the FS tests may be varying over time due to factors other than use of this website.

One possibility would be to compare the results of those who wrote more with the results of those who wrote less.

Another approach would be to compare one cohort of results with those starting at later times. It is unlikely that a similar change in each cohort would be down to the same background change.

Initially we expect to monitor the survey in house. Later on we hope that a University Department will analyse the data.

We will announce when any results are available through social media, and where they can be found.

our community:

to join the community

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