How Journaling Helped Rafal Reclaim His Identity

“I’m not this kind of person,” Rafal says, a realization that finally spurred him to get help.

It had all started about a year ago. Rafal, a software manager living in Warsaw with his wife, had been working for a company based in Berlin since 2020. Recommended to the company by a friend, Rafal said it had been a great place to work until new executives came into the picture. 

“We had all trusted each other and had each other’s back,” he recalls. But with the shift in company culture, “I started to feel like no one trusted me anymore.” A change in protocol here, adjustments of ‘good practices’ there, it was these changes that started to trickle down into everything. Decisions were now being made behind closed doors. What had been an interactive team making decisions and tackling ideas together became what Rafal described as, “I’m just being informed about what I should do.” He notes how giving feedback felt “pointless.” 

Gradually, he stopped speaking up in meetings and kept to himself. The place where Rafal once felt he could do great work became unrecognizable- along with something or perhaps someone else. Rafal had always seen himself as a positive guy, quick to joke with coworkers and always focused on how he could grow. But now, he noticed that he couldn’t focus on work. His efficiency had dropped dramatically, and his energy was constantly low. Used to a strong sense of agency in himself, he thought he could just get to his old self again in a new job. Surely a new job would fix this problem. But even then, Rafal admits, “I failed a couple of interviews.” His interview feedback mentioned low energy, a lack of enthusiasm. It made him pause. How had he become a man that could be described like that? What happened to the man he knew himself to be? “That was a big wake-up call for me,” he says, recognizing the abandonment of his own identity. He then made the decision, “I’m not this kind of person”. 

It took some nudging from his wife and brother but eventually he found a therapist and started regular therapy. Therapy was new territory for Rafal though, not widely accepted in polish culture, he says he has never been “accustomed to talking so much about me.” Even with friends, he says, it felt “a bit weird” to talk about big problems in his life. But Rafal says it finally came down to the fact that “the pain of not getting help was bigger than the pain of just asking for help.”

A few months into therapy, Rafal began searching for ways to process his session. This is how he came to find Rosebud. What started as tracking his emotions- “I started just describing what I was feeling at the moment, or what I was going through” - quickly evolved into so much more. Through Rosebud’s prompts, Rafal was able to examine not only when he was angry, but why. Taking this information back to his therapist, Rafal says it was that extra step he needed. “We started identifying these patterns and naming these emotions…and I quickly learned that after naming this issue, this problem, I could really start to understand where it starts to happen and when it occurs in my life.” This also made Rafal realize how, “work was just the tip of the iceberg.”

With the help of therapy and Rosebud, Rafal started to tackle all different kinds of emotions, feelings, and patterns in his thinking. As he wrote, more things started to come up. “My childhood memories, my relationship with my parents, I just started quickly discovering all these different parts of my psyche that I was not really aware of or ever thinking about.” The person who was always so proactive, curious, and growth-focused was starting to reemerge, this time not for work, but for his inner self.

Rafal saw this all as a refreshing chance to change himself for the better. Whether it was his daily journaling, weekly therapy, or the constant rotation of books he was reading, Rafal dedicated himself to this self reflection process. “I have proof that I am changing how I feel and how I approach myself on a daily basis” he says excitedly, something that had felt so impossible for so long. Rafal was now transforming before his own eyes. He is now able to identify his emotions as they come up and he even says he learned that “I could stop it, and at least process it,” before his emotions took over him. “I don’t feel anymore like a slave to my emotions and feelings,” he says and notes that, “We cannot change or influence what we feel and how we feel it…but we can control how we react to it.”

While Rafal has made great strides, he says he is still working on himself. Still going to therapy and using Rosebud, Rafal says that reading philosophy also “helps to think about my life and get everything in perspective.” Although Rafal says he was familiar with these concepts for years now, coming back to them and reading them again in a new light has spoken to him in a whole new way. Mentioning “When Nietzsche Wept”, “Sophie’s World”, and the “The Obstacle is the Way,” Rafal notes that it’s not just these books that have affected him, and perhaps most importantly that “you never know what will be the book that changes your life.” 

It has been about five weeks now since Rafal resigned from his job, a decision that he never would have felt comfortable making a year ago, but a decision that he now is confident is right for him. “I got to the point that I realized you know this situation will just keep me miserable…so I figured I need to put myself in a place with no exit and just have one way forward.” Determined and focused, this concept of not allowing yourself another option feels reminiscent of his own transformational journey. When the pain of not getting help is greater than the pain of asking for help, when the pain of staying is greater than the pain of leaving, and when the pain of not believing in oneself is greater than the pain of believing. 

Rafal admits that while he doesn’t know what is next for him, he does finally feel after all this time that “I’m finding myself again.”