Finding creative and productive ways to journal through your anxiety can lead to many short and long term benefits.
Journaling through your thoughts and emotions is a healthy and productive way of getting out of your head. Many times when we are struggling with anxiety, we keep those thoughts trapped inside of our heads, instead of giving them space to roam free.
In this video, Dr. Russ Harris talks about what he calls “the struggle switch.”
Dr. Harris describes the struggle switch as investing in anxiety, which leads to other painful emotions such as anger, guilt, and sadness.
His solution to turning off the struggle switch is to invest time into more meaningful life-enhancing activities such as spending time with family and friends. Dr. Harris explains that with the struggle switch turned off, it’s not that you’re ignoring or pretending the anxiety isn’t there. So, you still acknowledge and accept the anxiety, but you’re not going to waste any precious time diving headfirst into it.
HOW JOURNALING HAS HELPED ME WITH MY ANXIETY
When I was a teenager, I didn’t think about long term benefits when it came to my mental health. At the time, I was too concerned with friends, girls, partying, and all that comes with being a teen. I didn’t stick with my therapy and I didn’t care about my sleeping patterns, diet, or exercise. It was junk food, late at night, and lots of unhealthy behaviors.
Mental health? Meh, that can wait, I thought.
But journaling was different for me. Even in those days, I kept a journal. It was a way for me to get my thoughts out onto paper so I could see what they looked like staring back at me. You’ll notice that most of what is frightening inside of your head takes on a different form on paper or a computer screen; those thoughts become less frightening. You begin to see patterns of thought, recurring emotions, and lots and lots of half-truths and exaggerations. Yet many of these revelations didn’t come to me until I was much older.
In time, I began to look back at my old high school and college journals that I had kept. Then, I would compare them to my current journals to see if I noticed any repeating trends. What I found was eye-opening; not only did I find repeating trends, but I also found that most of my worries and anxieties never came true.
Most of my anxiety was just a fantasy in my mind.
This gave me a brave new perspective because I now had evidence that my overthinking was mostly nonsense and hindered my ability to live fully in the present moment.
So I began tracking my mental health in different ways that benefited me and gave me alternative perspectives on my mental health and life.
Below are seven types of journals I have kept that were both creative, fun, and productive.
7 DIFFERENT TYPES OF JOURNALING TO HELP WITH ANXIETY
1. Snapshot
Snapshot journaling is an overview of whatever is occurring in your life at a given time. Essentially, you are taking a “snapshot” of your current life – everything from your current mood, what you did that day, relationships, careers, classes, etc. This is the most rudimentary form of journaling, yet can yield beautiful results over a long period. You’ll begin to notice certain people or situations that trigger you emotionally, and you’ll also be able to go back and laugh at experiences that seemed awful at the time. That turned out to be not as bad as initially thought or even positive.
2. Tracker
This one goes great with deconstructing old habits and building new ones. Pick one area, such as sleep, and start tracking how many hours you get a night, and what times you typically fall asleep and wake up. I recommend doing this for ninety days because you’ll get a broader range of data. You can apply this tracker to any area in your life; sleep, diet, exercise, moods, athletics, etc.
3. Goal Setting
Setting goals seems relatively straight forward. But without breaking those goals down into smaller achievable goals, you’ll struggle to get where you want to go. Goal setting starts with the main goal – the mission if you will. Then, after you understand your main goal, you need to figure out a path to get there. What will you have to do? Who will you need to become? What will you need to sacrifice? Break down that big goal into smaller ones, and then break those smaller goals into daily goals. For example, let’s say your goal is to have a completely different career within a year – you’ll need to dissect that larger year goal into quarterly goals, and then into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
4. Fear Setting
Entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss invented what he calls fear setting to help him face some of his biggest fears. After giving a TED TALKS about it, fear setting has become something of a fad amongst the personal development community. You can also use this same technique of defining your fears to journal about them. Start with writing down your biggest fears, then take some time to consider the odds of them occurring, and what would happen if they did. How would you handle them? What could you do now to change the potential of the fear occurring? Digging in and exploring your fears is an excellent way to challenge and conquer them.
5. Affirmations
Affirmations can be short and simple yet have powerful effects on our psyche’s. You can write anything that you feel enhances your well-being or fills you with joy. Sometimes it’s the simplest thoughts or phrases that springs new hope within us.
6. Gratitude
I was having a conversation with a manager once, and we started talking about his son, who is in the military and stationed overseas. I asked him how his son keeps his sanity and mental health intact while braving combat in a faraway place, and he said: “He keeps a gratitude journal.” Gratitude journaling, or keeping track of everything you are grateful for in your life, can be a game-changer on days that you’re struggling. Gratitude can have many positive effects, including improving the quality of sleep, reducing stress, and enhancing empathy.
7. Lists
Making lists may not seem like journaling, but they can be largely beneficial and fill many pages in a hurry. You can create lists regarding anything from places you’d like to vacation, foods you want to try, friends you want to reconnect with, passions you’d like to pursue, etc. Lists are a way to organize your thoughts so you can see on paper what’s important and what areas of your life need attention. I once listed out every single person I knew that might be interested in reading this blog, and over time, I began jotting down ideas these same people shared with me of their struggles, which lead me to create more helpful content.
IN REVIEW
Journaling is one of the easiest ways to get out of your head. The impact journaling can have on your life can be felt for years, even decades after your first sentence is written. So, making the process fun and creative is critical because, like any habit, you want to make it appealing on some level. Think about what type of journaling best suits your personality, goals, and creative tastes, and start with that. Then branch out and try other forms of journaling – you’ll be surprised at how much you learn about yourself in the process.
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