Just Call Me Jess

Mood Disorders and Mindfulness

Why You Should Journal To Lower Your Anxiety

Simply searching for why you should journal to lower your anxiety, sets you up for success. I know it seems like such a cliche at this point but the benefits of journaling to your mental health is outstanding. 

By now, many of you may know that journaling helps to reduce stress, improve mood and increase positivity.  It also helps by improving your IQ, sleep hygiene and self confidence.

However, do you know why? Do you find that when you try journaling you have nothing to say? This is not rare.

Plenty of individuals struggle with journaling and, as an unfortunate result, are not able to benefit from the activity. Let’s start from the beginning shall we!?

Why You Should Be Journaling 

It helps to decrease stress and negative moods by allowing you to be mindful. If you’ve read my previous post you have a good understanding of mindfulness. 

A summary for those of you who haven’t (go read it!). Mindfulness is simply being aware of your needs, acknowledging your thoughts and feelings without a right/wrong judgement. 

With the new wave of self care popularity, journaling piggybacked on it and made an easy comeback. While most of us remember having a journal when we were younger somewhere along the way you stopped. 

Life became too busy, too stressed, and you were too tired to worry with journaling. It is interesting that no one notices how large of an impact this activity had on their mental health when in their younger years. We just have good memories and chuck it up to the fact that we weren’t paying bills at that time. 

This mindfulness activity allows you to label your emotions and relate them to behaviors you notice within yourself. Journaling something positive you noticed about yourself or morning experiences, improves your mood when continuing throughout your day. 

Though you need not journal each day, it is recommended you do so for 15 minutes 1-3 times a week (depending on your life experiences). Write about anything! What may be bothering you or what ever seems to be stressing you out. You could also check out the prompts I have laid out to get you started. 

Why you should journal to lower your anxiety text and girl writing in a note book

What Happens When You Don’t Journal

If you do not journal-or participate in any other mindfulness activity- your symptoms will continue to persist. Journaling helps you “work through anxious feelings” by identifying triggers to the symptoms, plan ways to combat or avoid triggers and implement.

Avoiding to resolve your anxiety can result in stress, continued rumination and-at times- depression. Read here for tips to get stuff done when depressed. Research has shown that individuals who implement use of expression, reported lower levels of anxiety than their counterparts who did not implement use. 

How To Make Journaling A Habit

Now, that you know a few reasons why it is important to journal to reduce anxiety symptoms, it is important to begin forming a mindful habit. It takes 21 days to form a habit and even longer if you do not acknowledge its importance. 

Step One: Get A Journal 

To be successful in creating this habit you must begin by purchasing a journal that fits your needs. There are many different types of journals such as bullet, goal oriented and even prompts with blank sheets for journals. Choose the one that satisfies!

I recommend the Journaling For Anxiety that will help you “have a deeper understanding of yourself, your journey, and who you are at the foundation of your being.” By purchasing you are demonstrating your commitment to clarity and peace within. 

Step Two: Pick A Place, Time And Set Boundaries

Now that you have made your commitment it is important to pick a quiet, calming place for your activity. Choose a space where your creativity can flow and your mind can be clear. 

Set a time during the day where you are limited in distractions and are able to complete your entry. Personally, I choose the very beginning of the day when I know I am in for a stressful moment. However, most times I chose close to the end of my day to ensure I fully reflect on my entire day. 

So you pick a place and time but someone comes barging in with needs or wants! How do you respond? I suggest notifying individuals from the moment you will begin to journal that you need x amount of time. 

In the beginning it may be difficult to set this boundary however you must be consistent. Setting clear boundaries when practicing mindfulness will allow you to identify other areas you may need to set  them for your mental health. Learn what can happen when you don’t set healthy boundaries. 

Step Three: Write, Read, Reflect

Write out your thoughts, emotions and behaviors you have noticed throughout the day. Follow the prompts laid out unto you. What comes next is important!

Read what you wrote. 

After reading what you wrote down, reflect on your words. If it helps, read your entry as though someone else wrote them. What does it seem like the needs are? What is being overlooked that is causing such intense anxiety? 

Step Four: Act

When we know better, we do better. Acknowledging your needs and doing nothing about it, will not wield you any changes. You will continue to stress, have excessive worry, have fatigue, depressive symptoms and…well… the list goes on. 

Do not feel pressured to change EVERYTHING overnight however acknowledge that some things will need to be changed quickly. If you identify there is an individual that triggers negative emotions within you, you must begin to set boundaries with this person. If you identify a lack of sleep for your anxious moods, you must set a proper sleep hygiene to begin to reduce your symptoms. 

Step Five: Affirm

Occasionally, throughout your journaling journey, read back from the beginning. Read your words and be impressed by what you have accomplished. Affirmations are sure to increase the likelihood of you continuing this mindfulness practice and continuing this positive habit. 

Not only will noticing the change within yourself encourage further journaling it will also encourage continued changes. I began by setting boundaries with people to completely avoiding individuals because of the way I felt when I left their presence. I stopped accepting less from myself and began to acknowledge that I could do better so I did!

Now you know why it is important to journal, how to reduce anxiety by journaling, and how to make journaling a habit. Now…time to execute!

[jetpack-related-posts]

Comments

  1. I’ve been really struggling with anxiety lately and I know I should really try journaling! It’s definitely one of those things I want to do but then struggle to find time for…

    Reply

  2. I need to journal. I read so many great articles about it! I’m a list maker you’d think it’d come easily enough! I’ll have to check this one out.

    Reply

  3. Journaling has helped to relieve my anxiety a lot, and it’s true that when you haven’t journaled for a long time, the anxious thoughts become overwhelming. Great post. ☀️

    Reply

  4. Journaling is an amazing way to lower anxiety! I’m planning to start bullet journaling soon, and a few things I want my bullet journal to include are my mood for the day, the things I did, and thoughts that came up throughout the day. I feel that this would be a great way to identify triggers and other factors that may make me feel anxious, as well as what makes me feel happy. This way I can try to at least set boundaries on the things that make me anxious or depressed and do more of what makes me feel good.

    Reply

  7. I haven’t journaled in such a long time, but I remember when I was journaling everyday, it was when my anxiety was really bad and my therapist suggested I try it. It was crazy to journal for a few months and then go back and reflect on what I’d written and see how far I’d come with handling my anxiety, just by writing out all my worries! It really did help with my stress, plus I was able to make out patterns with where I was struggling and then I could see how I could work on it. You’re spot on with your blog post and it’s made me want to get back to journaling! Thank you for the inspiration! <3 And I thought it was helpful to pick a super cute journal to make it more fun and to inspire myself to actually get writing! 🙂

    Emily | http://www.thatweirdgirllife.com

    Reply

  9. I remember them forcing us to journal in high school but it wasn’t until college that it became a part of my routine. I use my journaling time as an intentional space for prayer. It always helps reduce any anxiety.

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  13. Writing has always been a love hate relationship with me, because I can barely read my own handwriting, and my dyslexia makes that even worse due to my terrible spelling.

    However, when my childhood trauma would keep me up all night, giving me insomnia, and when other emotionally harsh events happened (this was when I had little emotional control over my BPD), I’d just write and write to get everything out of my head so I could better process it all. Which was really helpful.

    I use to just keep a note pad and pen next to my bed to write about whatever was stopping me from sleeping. Sometimes it was my trauma, other times it would be random thoughts, or fragments of poems my mind created.

    It’s been more than a decade since I last did that, and that was all pre-smartphones. Since then, I’ve not really needed to write or journal, as I’ve been able to process and think of how to overcome issues in my head instead, largely due to having great control over my emotions.

    But since taking up blogging, I now keep notes of stuff that could be useful to turn into a post, similar to journalling, in way, but on a note app on my phone, rather than handwriting something. That way I can read what I wrote, edit it easier, make additional notes, and I always have it with me.

    Basically, it doesn’t really matter if you use an app or a physical journal, if writing about events, situations, triggers, your emotions, etc might help you, do it, and find a way to do it that works best for you.

    Reply

  14. I’ve tried journaling it works better when I don’t have to fill in every day because I can’t get into that habit of journaling or I feel pressured in having something interesting to say but I can see the point from a personal growth angle.

    Reply

  16. I do journal, but I’m not constant in my journaling activity. On some days I just don’t want to look inside and “be with me” (happens when anxiety is too much or I feel depressed or drained). But maybe doing it more often will only turn out to be beneficial. I’ll bookmark your post in my browser as a reminder. Thank you so much! ^_^

    .Lia.

    Reply

    • I can see how it could be difficult to reflect on things from your day. Being able to identify those triggers and avoid them or combat could aid in managing anxiety as well.

      Reply

  17. I definitely consider this confirmation. I used to journal all the time and it helped me so much. I stopped journaling consistently quite some time ago and need to pick it up again, for anxiety, spiritual, and mental needs. Thanks for sharing your pointers in getting started again. I hope I’m able to make it stick!

    Reply

  20. I used to journal or write in my diary almost every day, and now I love having those memories of details that I would otherwise forget. Your post was a good reminder that I would like to get back into doing that, and as an introvert, something I think that will help me work through my emotions.

    Reply

  23. Journaling is an excellent thing to do. I do it almost every day and usually, it’s just a mind dump but sometimes that leads to me suddenly talking about my mental start and it’s quite relieving to get those things out of my system and onto paper. Sometimes it also gives me a sudden realization that my mental health isn’t as good as I thought it was. It’s really helpful.

    Reply

  24. Great post! This is an excellent guide and resource for someone like me, who has always wanted to journal but never knows exactly how to start. Thank you so much for sharing!

    Reply

  26. I love this post. I have GAD and I write in my journal to somewhat calm myself down. It really helps a lot. Especially when I’m at work. (high stress level environment)

    I created a mental health & lifestyle blog and it would be really cool if we could work together some time!

    xoxo

    Reply

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