How I Healed my Anxiety by Journaling
I have always had anxiety.
Ok I take that back, I should say I have always been a more anxious person (any other eldest daughters out there feel me?), but a couple years ago I was diagnosed with big A-Anxiety. For me this was a real wake-up moment to how I could change up my lifestyle to combat my natural tendency toward being anxious.
As a creative, my mind is constantly on a million things, and while there are some well-understood, basic lifestyle changes anyone can make to feel less anxious or overwhelmed (diet, exercise and sleep being the most important ones) I’ve found over time that my journal has become somewhat of a lifeline when coping with anxious thoughts.
Now, I know what you might be thinking. Journaling immediately brings up thoughts of writing down your feelings, prayers, emotions and wonderings on paper to process heavy or private things. This is not really what I personally mean when I talk about journaling.
For me, having one consistent space where I can put my thoughts has been a lifesaver. But I am not sitting here saying I am writing out my deepest emotions on paper… when I talk about journaling this is what I mean:
Every night the last thing I do before bed is sit down with my journal and write down everything I can expect for the following day. And that’s it. That is the primary purpose of my journal.
Now, there are a hundred other little things that end up in my journal for the sake of getting them out of my head. Blog ideas, grocery lists, to-do lists, travel plans, packing lists and chore lists. Sometimes gratitude lists, questions or client notes end up in there as well. But the idea behind planning every day the night before is to get allllll of my concerns, to-dos, worries and ideas out of my brain and onto paper so I can set them aside for the following day.
In typical bullet journal style, I do this commonly with my weeks, months and sometimes quarters as well! For my personality this has helped quell my anxiety and given me so much peace of mind over the years, and I have 7 or 8 completely filled journals to prove it!
