With the recent election stress and the COVID-19 numbers going up, my anxiety was at an all time high this past week. I felt like I was helpless and didn’t know what to do about it. It was then that I decided to try journaling. I had heard a lot about it from my friends and social media, but had doubt that it would actually help me. After ordering a journal off of Amazon, I got to work.
At first I wasn’t sure what to write about. I felt a pressure to write about something meaningful, but also felt the need to be cautious in case somebody else ever read what I was writing. It wasn’t until I got rid of both of these thoughts that my journaling started being beneficial. I realized that my fears were irrational; Nobody was going to read my journal, which meant that I could write whatever I was feeling. Instead of viewing journaling as writing a story, with proper syntax and language, I started writing what I was thinking. I was translating my inner monologue to paper. I forced myself to think about difficult things in my life and evaluate what was causing my stress. Once I explored the causes and effects of my stress, I was able to externalize my problems and gain back control of my life.
Journaling is a way to work through difficult aspects in your life by yourself. There’s no pressure to write anything a certain way or journal for a specific amount of time, everything is up to you. I have benefited a lot from my one week of journaling and have realized that it is an important part of self-care. Journaling helped me evaluate things in my life that were difficult to think about, things that I normally would just put off thinking about. I highly recommend trying out journaling. Even if there’s nothing specifically causing you stress, writing down your thoughts gives you perspective on your life.