How to Use Journaling to Improve Your Mental Health

Journaling is not just for tweenage girls languishing on their beds and dreaming about their middle school drama and pining over their crushes.

It’s actually no secret that journaling can help ease anxiety and encourage healing, and if you’re in a funk, you may want to try it.

Here are some benefits to journaling, according to Positive Psychology:

• Boost your mood/affect;
• Enhance your sense of well-being;
• Reduce symptoms of depression before an important event (like an exam);
• Reduce intrusion and avoidance symptoms post-trauma.

A little something about me: I’ve journaled since I was seven. And I can honestly say that these benefits are real. I’ve noticed that after journaling, I also feel better in my body and I sleep better.

Whether I’m writing about how I’m feeling or detailing how my day went or reflectively writing about the past or dreaming up the future, my mind is meditating through the act of writing.

So, get yourself a journal whose look resonates with you—just to give you that extra encouragement you may need to write in it. Maybe you like a certain colour or design, and if you have a journal with that look and feel, you’ll be more likely to use it.

But don’t spend too long trying to decipher and psychoanalyze yourself to decide which journal will work for you. Just find one you kind of look, if you can’t find one you absolutely love, and just go with it.

Here are my tips for journaling to give yourself a better chance of getting out of that funk:

1. Write about what’s weighing heavily in your mind.  If you write about what’s bothering you or what you’re worried about, you get very specific on the situation. If you don’t know exactly what’s bothering you, investigate. Write about what you’re feeling and try to figure out why you’re feeling that way.
2. Try to describe how your brooding or rumination might be caused or how it’s affecting your day-to-day-activities. Write what you’re thinking and then read your thoughts back to yourself. It’s easier to figure out what you’re thinking after you’ve read them written down. You can follow your thought process and find where you want to re-direct your thought process to a more stable or positive or productive path. And writing about what you’re ruminating about gets it down on paper so you’ve got more mental space to deal with other things in your life.
3. Write about where you are—are you on your bed? Are you sitting at your kitchen table or office desk? Are you in a coffee shop staring at the journal while people bustle around you or chat? Describe the atmosphere. This brings you more self-awareness and helps you stay present. Just take a few paragraphs to describe the scene around you.
4. Then jump into what you want to get off your mind. Is there something really pressing or nagging at you? Or maybe you just feel extremely busy and need to write down your schedule so you know what to do first and second and so on. Journaling can help you focus on what you need to do and bring clarity to your priorities, just like an agenda or to-do list.

I also want to bring attention to something I do that helps me figure out my future through journaling: I truly believe it’s possible to create the future you’d like to live through writing about it in your journal. I think most people don’t think about what they want their future selves to look like and behave and where they think they should be in a year’s time. And of course—it’s a difficult thing to ask yourself: What do you really want?

I’ve figured out how to tell myself the truth about what I want and not wash my future over with things I think my parents or friends or siblings want for me. This is what I do: I write myself a letter from my future self about where I am physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And I read it almost every day.

I’ve often written to my current self through letters I imagine written by my future self. For example, on April 22, 2020, one month into the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote a letter dated April 22, 2021 for me to read up until I reach that date. I wrote about how I’m feeling, what I’m doing, and where I physically am on April 22, 2021. I write about what I’ve accomplished in the past year. I write about what I want to accomplish from April 22, 2021 to April 22, 2022.

What you want can change. But that’s why it’s wonderful to write down what you think you want: so you can see the vision on paper and not just visualize it. So you can see for yourself if what is on that paper is your true desire and not just a fleeting fantasy. It helps to see how close you may be to reaching your goals. Or it can help you to see that it’s not what you really want at all!

Let me know in the comments how journaling has helped you and any journaling tips and tricks you may have to share!