Mental Health Awareness Month: Expert tips on journaling for mental health

Mental health is tricky to navigate for most of us. Be it burnout from work, mood swings because of hormonal challenges, triggers at home or anxiety because of relationships - there is a need of healthy coping mechanisms to avoid being overwhelmed. "No matter what you are going through in your everyday life, journaling has proven to be very effective to cope with everyday challenges and stressors and also has a positive effect on mental health," says Meghna Karia, senior psychologist and outreach associate at Mpower.

She elaborates, "Journaling is an act of recording your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and insights. You can choose the medium of recording your thoughts which could be either handwritten, or you could also choose to type and make a digital journal." Even though handwriting has proven to be more helpful in processing your thoughts, journaling whenever you can and when you feel the need to - regardless of the medium - has far-reaching benefits.

Benefits of journaling

"Journaling has been scientifically proven to benefit one's mental well-being. Researchers have found from the studies that people with mental health who wrote for 15 to 30 min a day for a period of 12 weeks have experienced fewer depressive symptoms and have shown positive results in overall well-being," Karia says.

For those struggling with their mental health, journaling can help create awareness not only about mental health concerns but also about physical concerns and behaviours. It is also effective in tapering anxiety, and provides an emotional outlet as writing about an event - emotional or traumatic - helps release all the negative emotions out of the mind, immediately.

Journaling can also be practiced as a habit or a daily ritual. You can choose any time of the day which is convenient and a place that makes you feel safe and comfortable. Make journaling a safe space, with a filter-free zone where you can just be yourself.

Different styles

Karia tells mid-dayonline.com that there are different styles of journaling which can aid in managing our mental health in distinctive situations.

Stream of consciousness

It can be done for simple and complex situations. It can help identify emotions and feelings when you feel it is difficult to understand what's on your mind. Since we all deal with emotional conflicts, anger, and setbacks, it is hard to process the negative emotions and the triggers because of the volatile situations. However, writing in a stream of consciousness at that moment is significant. Here, you can simply write whatever comes to your mind without any judgment. You can write about anything and everything that comes to your mind without judging whether what you have written is good or bad, right or wrong appropriate or inappropriate. You can release all your positive or negative emotions in your journal. Once you are done writing, do not read it as it's a brain dump. You can tear it immediately and discard it.

Emotional regulation tool

Journaling can also help in emotional regulation. It helps you track your mood through a mood tracker. We need to have a mood tracker which allows us to identify our mood and the emotion we are going through at that moment. It also helps to articulate our feelings to ourselves and others. It's very effective in making you understand your triggers and pen them down to gain more clarity. Once identified, ask yourself whether you feel good or bad about experiencing that emotion. If it makes you feel bad then ask yourself what would serve you at that moment to feel better. It could be any activity that would help you to soothe your nerves and senses. For example, it could be talking to your friend by asking for his or her consent if you would like to share intense emotions. Make sure you explain your emotions and do not end up just emotionally dumping. Additionally, you could also savour your favourite meal, go for a massage, paint, listen to music, or simply just step down for a stroll.

Tracker for all

Journaling can also be used to track your habits, goals, and healthy behaviours. It's not just about recording negative thinking patterns but you can also feel grateful about your small wins of the day, milestones achieved and pleasant experiences.

Penning down and keeping track of your symptoms for mental health concerns in terms of frequency, intensity and duration, would help you determine your progress and compare it with previous patterns. This way, it serves well for you to understand how far you have come.

How to cultivate the habit of journaling

Now that we have understood the benefits of, and different styles of journaling, Karia shares expert tips on how to develop a habit to journal for having good mental health.

1. Gratitude
The first step is to start with a gratitude journal. Cultivating gratitude in our lives helps us see the silver lining.

2. Practice savouring
One can talk about how beautiful the day was or the week which had some positive scenes to remember, the people involved in those positive scenes, and the way it made you feel good about the overall event.

3. Appreciate your loved ones
Write handwritten notes when you feel like appreciating your close ones. This habit will not only enrich your relationships but also improve communication.

4. Be intentional
Set intentions every day and journal them down. Intent how you would like to feel in the day. Intent how you would like to look forward to the day. Intent how you would like to behave in the day and also write the intent of how you would like to think by choosing the state of mind for the day.

5. Know your nourishment
Maintain a food journal which would also help you to understand your eating patterns. What you eat also affects how you think and feel. Hence food also has a vital role to play in your mental health.

6. Set your goals
Journaling can also help with writing down your goals and vision creation. A vision board also gives you a detailed understanding of a road map that would serve you better in terms of an action plan and the steps you would like to take to work toward your vision.

7. Navigate decision making
Journaling also has been encouraging when it comes to making decisions. Penning down the choices you would like to choose, the pros and cons of the choices, and the healthy and harmful consequences of those choices would also help to be better with your decision-making and problem-solving.

8. Track your triggers
Journaling also has proven to manage mental health conditions like eating disorders. Writing down the triggers of emotional binging and also expressing how one feels before the trigger has helped a lot of them to have control over unhealthy eating patterns.

9. Travel Journal
It's scientifically proven that traveling to nature also helps in healing. Writing about your emotion's pre-travel, while you travel, and post-travel also helps you to understand how there is a shift in your mood and the way travel helps you reach insights about what next steps you would like to take in your professional life and in your personal life which would serve your mental health better.

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