5 Journaling Techniques to Improve Mental Health & Decrease Anxiety and Depression
Journaling is something that I have personally utilized the most in my unofficial self care routine since I started dealing with generalized anxiety disorder at age 9 — although my original journaling style was the OG “Dear Diary.”
An entire 18 years later, and journaling is still my go-to for managing thoughts, fears, and triggers in my everyday life. All five of these techniques I personally utilize and recommend. While I utilize a various style of journaling; many people have just one or two preferred style of journaling, so if one style doesn’t necessarily work for you, try another!
How Does Journaling Benefit Your Mental Health?
WedMD states that there are studies showing that just 15 minutes of journaling up to 3 times per week can not only improve mental health struggles (including overthinking, obsessive thoughts, and emotion regulation) after a month, but it may also speed up physical healing.
I found this incredibly powerful and it makes sense; when our minds are ill, we can create physical illness in the body, so why not vice versa? Our minds are incredibly powerful when they are healed.
One way we can work on healing our minds is through the simple art of pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard in your notes app, whatever suits you).
Brain dumps
A brain dump is just what it sounds like; dumping everything in your brain onto a piece of paper. Whatever comes to mind, write it down. It usually looks like simple lists of stressors or thoughts, ie, “dishes, project deadline, no sleep, errands, grocery list, apply to jobs, respond to text.” The goal is to allow your mind to explore every bit of stressors that may be lingering.
There are no rules to what you write down. Let your mind flow. You can write sentences or just simple key words and phrases that make sense to you. You can let your mind go where it wants to, or you can focus on specific situations that are stressing you out.
For example, if you’re planning a killer surprise birthday party for a friend, you may have a brain dump in relation to that. If I were to write a brain dump about this, it would probably look something like this:
Invite “XYV” by ____ date
Make sure Airbnb allows parties
Chocolate cake
Birthday theme???
Come up with distraction plan for friend the day of
Being able to write these thoughts down as lists in this way helps to rationalize how to deal with these stressors or thoughts and recognize that while these whirlwind of stressors feel like a lot all at once, they can be more easily tackled and dealt with once we’ve stopped all the debris from flying around in our heads.
Of course the example was something much less stressful (planning a birthday), but it can be used to help manage more stressful thoughts/events as well. Brain dumping helps us to realize that while these thoughts, tasks, fears may be overwhelming, they can be dealt with and managed one at a time.
Using Prompts
Prompts are a simple journal exercise to help discover why we’re feeling what we’re feeling. They can also provide a point to write about if you’re not sure what exactly you should be journaling about.
Prompt exercises have been helpful in providing some insight into deep-rooted fears and limitations from my subconscious that I had never realized. They’re also great for more simply, happy things to write about as well.
Journal prompts are a great place to start if you’re new to journaling and don’t know what to write yet.
Bullet Journals
Bullet journals are likely to be a favorite for those who value both productivity, art creation, and mental health. If you are someone who enjoys decoration, color-coding, and writing, you may definitely be a bullet-journal person.
This is one of my personal favorite journaling techniques that I have been doing on and off since my early 20s to organize my business and project goals on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Simultaneously, it also allows space for the other styles of journaling to be incorporated into it (such as journal prompts and brain dump lists)!
I also personally prefer my bullet journals to include mood trackers, daily thoughts, and reflection on how I can do better to be a happier or better version of me each day. For me, its the all-in-one journal.
It can be a great way to hold yourself accountable in both productivity and self care goals; a win-win for a business-driven person!
Manifestation Journaling
If you’re interested in the spiritual world, manifestation journals are a great way to get you focused on what your life can be (or in the world of manifestation: “what your life already is”).
It is my all time favorite way to get my mind unstuck and re-inspired, especially after struggling quite a bit from my bouts of depression and all the reasons my mind has convinced me that I can never “be great.” Thanks to manifestation journaling, I was able to take major leaps in my life and start believing in myself again.
I personally have two separate journals as of right now; a manifestation journal for when I’m depressed & struggling to leave bed and a bullet journal for when I’m anxious & feel like I need to be accomplishing 5 million tasks at once.
With manifestation journals, it’s recommended that you write everything that you want — all of your hopes and dreams — as if it already happening for you. If you want to make 1 million dollars next year in your business, that’s not what you write. You write: “I just hit my first 1 million dollar year! I’m celebrating with a bottle of champagne with my closest friends at dinner. I’m so happy that I am finally in a position to be able to treat my friends and family to dinner and cover the entire bill. My life feels incredible and I am surrounded by the most supportive friends and family that I could ever have.”
This visualization allows you to dig deep, to feel the feelings of what it would be to have those things. When you write, you should be tasting that champagne. You should hear your friends cheering. You should feel them giving you the biggest hugs. Get yourself to be fully in the experience of it all.
And if you’re cringe-y like, you’ll probably start crying real tears about it too.
Visualization is a technique that highly successful people use everyday, including celebrities and athletes. It is also backed by studies that show people who “practice” sports by simply visualizing the technique tend to do just as well as those who are actually physically practicing, without visualization. It is POWERFUL.
After utilizing this technique almost everyday for a year, I saw my life and habits completely change… and pretty quickly for a depressed girl. If you’re struggling with depression and confidence, I would start the day with this new habit and see how things start to change for you.
Streams of Consciousness
This type of journaling can be really helpful for the perfectionist, anxious type. The point of this journaling technique is to not be perfect at all and welcome errors.
It’s a good start for a perfectionist who never feels fulfilled because they hold their work back from lack of “perfection.” I’ve noticed its helped me release some of that “perfectionist” mindset from other aspects of my life as well after incorporating this style.
On the other hand, if you’re someone with racing thoughts (thoughts that go 5 million miles a minute in all different directions— also me), this may be a bit harder for you to keep up with. Starting with another journaling method may be better when experiencing this, but you don’t know until you try and it takes experimentation to find what you enjoy and what works for you!
With streams of consciousness, you allow your thoughts take you where you want to go and dive deeper into these thoughts.
You can start off with writing whatever is on your mind first. Your next sentence may go with that thought or you may already be onto the next, there is no judgement and don’t question or get frustrated with yourself if that happens.
You can also allow yourself to explore the thoughts that come up, to dig deeper and ask yourself questions about those thoughts, or move onto the next one.
The key here is that you’ll do so without the need of controlling sentence structure, grammar, or whether the sentences really make sense at all.
At the end of it, if there are thoughts that you want to reflect on, you can do so and write out more structured notes after the fact!
These are my favorite styles of journaling that I incorporate into my routine most frequently. I highly encourage you to try all five methods and see what works best for you! At the end of the day, just remember there is no “right” or “wrong” way to journal. The entire purpose of these methods is to help you manage your thoughts and emotions in ways that help improve your mental health. If its doing that for you, keep doing it.
Let us know what journaling methods have worked well for you, if I didn’t mention your favorite method here!
