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How do you start mental health journaling for beginners?
[1] To start journaling, pick a convenient time to write every day and challenge yourself to write whatever comes to your mind for 20 minutes. Use your journal to process your feelings or work on your self-improvement goals. Journaling also helps people hone their focus so that they think about only one thing at a time. When you write your thoughts by hand, you can only write one word at a time. Your thoughts slow down to match your writing speed and you’ll find that it’s easier to slip out of your overthinking mindset. Recap: 6 Journaling Ideas Journal three things you’re grateful for every day. Journal your problems. Journal your stresses. Journal your answer to “What’s the best thing that happened today?” every night before bed. Journaling helps keep your brain in tip-top shape. Not only does it boost memory and comprehension, it also increases working memory capacity, which may reflect improved cognitive processing. There are no rules in journal writing. The pages are for your eyes only. Be your weirdest self. Be your most curious self. While a journal cannot replace a therapist, it can be therapeutic. What a journal can do is help you to notice patterns in your behaviour and emotional responses. It’s an opportunity to reflect on your experiences, feelings, thoughts and behaviour.
How do I start journaling?
Here are some tips to help make daily journaling a habit that sticks: Write a little every day. Perhaps each morning, you write down something you hope to achieve that day, or at night you write down one thing you’re grateful for. Start small, and soon you’ll find yourself writing more. Writing, like anything, improves with practice. When you journal every day, you’re practicing the art of writing. And if you use a journal to express your thoughts and ideas, it can help improve your communication skills. But journaling isn’t for everyone. Some people find that it doesn’t feel calming or fulfilling and the stress of finding the “perfect” words to put on paper can be overwhelming. As a child, I would get super excited every time I got a new diary or notebook—and then stress out if I missed writing for a few days. Once kids can pick up a pencil or crayon, they can start writing a journal. It doesn’t have to actually be words, it can be pictures, letters, stickers, or cut-and-pasted memorabilia. The goal of writing a journal is to express yourself on paper. This goal doesn’t change whether a child is four or ten. Studies show it’s better to journal at night because it gives you an outlet for emotions and thoughts that might otherwise keep you awake. Even though there is sound scientific research to support the idea that journaling at night is better, many people prefer to journal in the morning.