Journaling for Mental Health: Easy Steps to Get Started

Journaling about your feelings is linked to decreased mental distress. Studies have shown that journaling as little as 15 minutes 3 times per week shows improvement in both physical and mental health in as little as a month.

Journaling allows you to engage your emotional and creative side of your brain, and your logical and reasoning side of your brain. Thus allowing you to fully process your emotions and experiences.

Here are some other benefits to journaling that you may not have considered.

Benefits of Journaling:

Improves mental health by helping to control your symptoms and improve your mood by processing your problems, fears and concerns…you have to name it to tame it!
Helps track your symptoms over time so that you can start recognizing your triggers and learn ways to control them. It can often be difficult to see how far you’ve come until you can look back to where you came from.
Encourages self-confidence by helping you to practice positive self-talk and identifying negative thoughts and behaviors. Journaling can be a way that you show compassion for yourself.
Boosts Emotional Intelligence by helping you to make sense out of what you are feeling. By exploring your feelings honestly. Journaling can bring perspective to your feelings or the situation, and extend grace.
Inspires creativity. Many of us have a hard time dreaming of a future of any kind, and journaling is an opportunity to do that in a safe and non judgmental way.
Boosts memory by writing down information by hand and is a good way to memorize information.
Strengthens communication and writing skills (but don’t get hung up on typos). Journaling helps you to organize your thoughts and improve communication both on paper and verbally. Journaling is also a way to find your voice.

Ways to Journal:

There are several different ways to journal. Below is a list of a few of my favorite types. This is not a comprehensive list by any means. These ways of journaling can be done in one journal or you can have multiple journals for different types of writing. My hope is that this will give you a place to start.

Stream of consciousness is writing down whatever comes up in your thoughts and continuing to write as they pass through your mind. It doesn’t have to be organized. This can be a good way to spot patterns in your thinking and behavior when you go back and read what you wrote.
Gratitude journaling is when you make a list of things that you are grateful for. The key here is to not always repeat the same things and to think of things that you might be taking for granted. For example, your warm cup of coffee, a beautiful sunrise or your car starting that morning.
Positive journaling is when you make a list of all the things you have accomplished in a day. This can be helpful if you feel bad about having an unproductive day. Seeing what you’ve accomplished can help to build momentum and can help you have more positive thoughts as you reflect back on the things you did in a day. For example, you brushed your teeth, got dressed, you meditated, you meal planned for a stressful week, you got all the laundry done AND PUT IT AWAY!
Negative journaling is when you write down all of your negative thoughts and feelings about people, places, events, or pretty much anything; regardless of how negative the feelings or thoughts are. Doing this allows you to express feelings and thoughts that you may not want to share with others, but allows you some relief in the moment from ruminating.
Data dump — let’s face it, you can’t remember everything…until you have to go to bed. As soon as you lay down your mind starts racing about all of the things you need to do, or whatever your thoughts are that are keeping you from sleeping. So this one you will want to keep by your bed.

Here are my recommendations on getting started:

Find paper or journal, or notebook and a writing utensil
If you can find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed is ideal, but any place will work
Set a timer for 10 minutes. This can seem like forever in the beginning, but when done daily it does go by much faster than you realize. And there is nothing that says you can’t go longer if you need to. The key is to be honest and consistent and make journaling a part of your daily practice in order to receive the benefits.
Begin writing. If you aren’t sure where to start you could start with what you are feeling or thinking about — even if it’s just writing about writing in a journal. The point is to just get started. The rest will come.
This isn’t a requirement but it can be helpful to go back a few days later to read and reflect on what you wrote.
Consider sharing your insights gained from journaling with your therapist for deep exploration and vice versa. If you don’t already have a therapist and are looking for one, How to choose a therapist that’s best for you.

Grammar and spelling are not an important part of journaling. This shouldn’t keep you from the experience of journaling. Journaling is for you only. You are not being graded. Spending just a few minutes to be still, be quiet, be reflective is a beautiful way to get to know and understand yourself better. If you are wanting to find a therapist you can check out Psychology Today or BetterHelp. If you are in the Oklahoma area and want to work with me directly click here for more information.

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