How to journal for better mental health
In my last blog post, I discussed how journaling can be a useful way to manage anxiety.
If you’re new to journaling however, you may wonder what you should write about. In this blog, I’ll outline some different approaches to journaling and give some prompts that you can use to help get you started.
Styles of journaling
Morning Pages. This approach to journaling comes from the bestselling creativity bible ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron. In the book, Julia suggests the process of taking a bit of time every morning (ideally shortly after waking) to fill 3 pages with stream-of-consciousness writing. This is basically writing down whatever thoughts come into your mind as they do. For example,
‘What on earth am I going to write? I’m not a writer. This is going to be so dull. I really should have hoovered last night. Oh, I need to buy cat food. I’m dreading the meeting with my boss today. She seemed in such a bad mood yesterday.’
Just let your mind wander and write down whatever comes out. By getting all this stuff out of our head first thing in the morning, you free your mind up to focus on the important things in your day. You also start to become more aware of the incessant, random, often self-critical, thoughts that fill your mind, and over time will realise how meaningless and transitory many of these thoughts are. Writing 3 pages can take a bit of time, so you may want to start off by just writing half a page, or setting a time limit, say 5 minutes to start with. If you start to gain benefit from the practice, you will want to increase the time you spend writing.
You may prefer to pick a specific event or experience to write about. If there is something troubling you, you may find it helpful to write about the event or experience. Allow yourself to express your thoughts and feelings honestly. Write about what you did, or what you would like to do. Writing about a particularly traumatic experience can be triggering so you may prefer to do this with the support of a qualified therapist.
If you have lots of things worrying you, you may find it helpful to schedule some worry time each day writing down all the things that are currently worrying you. Once you’ve listed them, identify which of these are things that you can actually do something about. For those that you can do something about, use your journal to work out what you could realistically do, make an action plan, and prioritise the actions. For those that you can’t do anything about, you could use your journal to help you accept the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings the worry triggers for you, or to write about what the worst-case scenario would be, how likely that is to happen in reality, and how you would cope with that. Often people find that when they face up to the worst-case scenario in this way, they realise it is not as bad as they thought.
Challenging negative thoughts. Use your journal to capture and challenge your negative and unhelpful thought patterns. You may want to note down any negative and unhelpful thoughts as they arise throughout your day, and then once a day take some time to review and challenge those thoughts. This can be an enlightening exercise to see just how often you are having unhelpful thoughts. Where you have thoughts repeatedly coming up, ask yourself whether they are really true or accurate, 100% of the time? Try to come up with some alternative, more helpful thoughts or positive affirmations.
Bullet Journaling. Bullet journaling is a way of planning, organising, and keeping track of the important things in your life. Importantly, it encourages regular reflection on your life to help you ensure that what you’re doing is aligned with what is most important to YOU. So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed with everything you’ve got on your plate, or want to add more structure to your life to help you achieve your goals, bullet journaling could be really helpful to you. To learn more about the method, check out the original book by Ryder Carroll ‘The Bullet Journal Method’ or simply do an internet search on bullet journaling and you will get thousands of articles, YouTube videos, Instagram pages, Facebook groups all devoted to bullet journaling.
The above list is not exhaustive - there are many different approaches to journaling.
The more that you practice journaling, the more that you will work out what is most beneficial to you. Also, it may vary day by day, depending on your mood and what is going on with your life. Some days your journal may be an opportunity for you to vent your anger about something or someone. Another day it may be an opportunity to write about something that you’d love to do or experience. Sometimes I write several pages in my journal. Some days I simply write ‘I can’t think of much to write today’ and get on with my day.
Journaling prompts
Below are a few journaling prompts to get you started. You can find many more online. You can also find many printed and digital journals that include journaling prompts.
What are you most anxious about right now? How are you coping with the anxiety? Is the situation that your anxious about something that you can control?
What 3 things are you grateful for right now and why?
Write about 3 good things that happened yesterday/this week? What was so good about them?
What did you do today/yesterday that scared you? How did you cope with it?
How would you handle a difficult situation you face if you had all the skills and confidence necessary?
What did you fail at yesterday/today? What can you learn from that?
What did you achieve yesterday/today?
What could you have handled better?
What would you like to achieve today and why?
What concerns are dominating your thoughts that could stop you achieving what you want to do? Can you do anything about those concerns, or can you set them aside for now?
What coping strategies will you use to cope with challenges as they arise during your day?
What would your ideal day look like?
Whatever approach you take to journaling, remember that your journal is just for YOU. It is not for anyone else to read (unless you really want to share something). So don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or neatness – it is the act of writing and expressing your thoughts and emotions that matters. I rarely ever re-read what I’ve written. You don’t even have to keep what you’ve written. You could shred it or delete the document once you’ve finished if you prefer.
Journaling is YOUR own personal tool. There is no right or wrong, just whatever works best for you.
If there’s something that you’re struggling with and would like a chat to see whether it’s something I could help with, click here to arrange a free discovery call.
