Journaling has so many amazing benefits on your mental health and wellbeing including improved mental clarity, focus, and memory. It’s a brilliant way to track and achieve your goals as it will keep you accountable. Journaling is helpful in managing anxiety and can assist you to connect with yourself and others better. It is the simplest tool that you can do anywhere, anytime that has big results on how you are thinking and what you are feeling.
Generalised Anxiety is characterised as constant worry and fear about past, present or future situations. It can feel like a panic and symptoms such as increased heart rate, difficulty breathing, excess sweating and fatigue. Anxiety can leave you feeling unmotivated, unproductive, flat and defeated. Everyone experiences anxiety in a different way and some more extreme than others but regardless of your level of anxiety, it is difficult either way.
Good Day Wellness was created to really support your mental and physical health. A tool for you to better manage your anxiety and track your progress. Journaling is an incredibly helpful tool for your mental health and has many benefits on anxiety.
A recent study that was conducted on 70 people who experienced elevated levels of anxiety were told to journal for a period of 12 weeks. This resulted in these participants reporting that they experienced decreased mental distress and increased well-being relative to baseline. Positive journaling was also associated with less depressive symptoms and anxiety after 1 month and greater resilience after the first and second month, relative to usual care.
Another study has actually suggested that writing about a past negative situation that may be causing you stress and anxiety (for example let’s say a failure) actually resulted in positive emotions and performance improvements. They found that writing about a past negative situation may be related to altered neural processing in the mid-cingulate cortex. An area of the brain that is crucial to processing negative emotions.
In the Good Day Journal there are dedicated areas to help you understand what may be triggering you, what sparks joy and daily anxiety check-ins to help you really understand your emotions. As the saying goes "the more you feel your feelings, the easier it gets to understand them".
Anxiety can cause your mind to race and feel absolutely scattered. How journaling can help this is that it is a simple yet effective way to take those thoughts and put them to paper. It’s a way for you to get out of your head for a little while and release those emotions to the paper. The reason why it is so effective when it comes to anxious thoughts is that when these thoughts and emotions are on paper and out of your head they are really not as bad, stressful or scary as you may be making them out to be. Sometimes seeing things in black and white is a way for you to see things clearly. It is a great way for you to help manage your anxiety better by being able to recognise, understand and break down your triggers, thoughts and fears and then actually priorities what may or may not be worth your concern at the time. Once you are able to understand WHY you may be feeling a certain way and what set you off, you are then more likely to actually do something about them and manage those emotions better.
Next time you are feeling anxious, grab a pen and your Good Day Journal and use the following prompts:
- What needs are not being met right now?
- What am I holding onto that I need to release right now?
- If I could confront this person/situation right now what would I say to them?
- What is one thing I can see, taste, feel and hear right now?
The Write it, Burn it & Let it go Journal is a great tool for anxiety. Sometimes we just need to release things and let them go. The note book helps you do that. If your anxiety is heavy, angry and you want to let it go then grab your note book and freely write about whatever you are feeling anxious about. When you are done rip it up, fold it in half and burn it in a safe place. As the paper burns to ash use the mantra "I let this go, I am healing". Now take 3 deep breaths. Having a way to release and let things go is a crucial step in your healing and adding a little more joy and a lot less worry to your day.
