Guest post by: Paige A. Mitchell

Struggling with mental health can be a tough mountain to climb. Living with anxiety, depression, bipolar, or even struggling with anger management can leave you feeling isolated and drowning in your feelings. It doesn’t need to be that way, however. With the right tools and support system, you can manage your mental health to live a happy and healthy life. 

Journaling is a great way to start or end your day or even use as a mental release in the middle of the day. The key is to find a journaling routine that works well for you and your lifestyle. To get started, here are a few tips on how to find the best journal routine for your mental health. 

Routines are Great for Mental Health

Creating a daily routine offers a wide variety of benefits. It helps boost productivity, helps keep you organized, and it great for maintaining mental health. Consider tying in a daily journaling session each day to help document your feelings, create affirmations for yourself, and help set future goals.

For example, if you’re a morning person, consider starting your day with daily affirmations or a daily devotional to have yourself placed on the right foot for the rest of the day. If you’re an evening person, you may want to document how your day went, the feelings you had paired with certain situations you were placed in, or even create a gratitude journalto help keep your life in perspective and allow you to rest easy each night.

Find a Quiet Place - Void of Any Distractions

Ensuring you are distracted when journaling each day is essential. No matter your location, be it the park, home, a quiet corner at work, or a peaceful coffee shop, make sure you don’t find yourself distracted by the movement around you.

If you are home, make sure you aren’t in a noisy place that could make you lose focus. Make sure the kids aren’t able to interrupt you and all your appliances have been fixed with your home warrantyso that the noise of a faulty washer or dryer doesn’t distract you. If you decide to journal during a break at work, make sure you don’t take any technology with you that would allow a coworker to ask you any work-related questions.

Create A Daily Tracker

For those struggling with depression, having a daily tracker could prove to be a very successful journaling style. While this is something that should be tracked throughout the day, be sure to still spend three minutes in a quiet place contemplating your feelings and why you’re feeling them. Then, at the end of the day, spend a little extra time reflecting on your daily tracker. 

Why did you feel a certain way at a certain time? What caused these feelings? Were they unwarranted? Is there a pattern? This strategy could help put your feelings into perspective and also help pinpoint patterns and relationships between different circumstances and your feelings. Maybe there is a meeting each day that makes you anxious. Maybe there is a drink or food item that causes you to feel certain emotions. Evaluate your tracker and if you see an unhealthy pattern, consider adjusting accordingly.

Don’t Spend Too Much Time Each Day On It

Be sure to not spend too much time journaling each day. Carve out no more than an hour each day for journaling and reflection. Spending more than that could cause you to over-analyze your emotions and put too much focus on how you’re feeling, instead of living your life.

Consider this hour each day as a time to relax and focus on mental healing, instead of a chore. That way, your time will be spent purposefully and you will finish your journaling session feeling refreshed, instead of bogged down.

Explore What Journaling Style Works Best

There are a wide variety of journaling techniques that can be practiced. Daily devotionals are typically used in conjunction with scripture. Daily tracking is a journaling style that allows you to document your feelings throughout the day. You can create a gratitude journal that documents a number of items you are grateful for each day. You can also try a stream of consciousness journaling style that unleashing what you are feeling in that given moment.

Try exploring a number of journaling style to determine what works best for you.

Discover the Best Time to Journal

Not all of us are morning people, just like not all of us are night owls. Try and figure out a good time to dedicate to journaling each day, and make sure you journal at that time. Routine is keyhere. The most typical times to journal are right when you wake up or right before you go to sleep, to help avoid any distractions such as the kids being awake, having to take on daily tasks, or work.

Discover the best time to incorporate a journaling routine. Whether it is in the morning or at night, or even if you know you have an hour each day in the afternoon to dedicate to journaling. Carve out that time for a journaling routine to better your mental health.