Journaling
Keeping a record of your thoughts and feelings in a form of a journal can significantly benefit your physical and mental health. It can help you to better understand yourself and events, reduce anxiety, regulate your emotions and break away from obsessive thinking. It can help you to accept rather than judge your mental experiences, better understand your needs and have overall positive effect on your wellbeing and life.
Most commonly used ways or journaling are expressive writing, in which you can articulate your feelings and thoughts, and gratitude journaling, where you can intentionally focus on positive aspects of your life and things for which you feel grateful.
Journaling is a very accessible practice. You can start it by:
Setting a goal of writing a journal record several times a week.
Choosing days and moments when it would be most convenient for you to do so.
Choosing what you want to write about, for example, situation or though that bother you most in this period.
Please, do not judge what you write, just do it. Do not judge your feelings and thoughts that you write down, or spelling and grammar.
There are no rules, and there is no wrong way of doing this.
Accept that, at times, you may feel upset as you write. And that’s ok. Take a break if you need to.
While this process will not fix all your problems, it will help you learn more about yourself.
It is interesting and illuminating to return to your previous entries from time to time to reflect on your past and present experiences.
