You have depression. You know you do. Maybe it has been diagnosed. What you may not know is how to deal with it. You may have heard that journaling will help. It will help, but it can’t do much for you if you don’t know how it can help or what it can do.
Here are a few ways to implement journaling in your life and how it can help you with your depression for the long and short term.
What is Journaling?
Journaling is a way to release your pent-up thoughts and feelings and will help you understand your emotions. You can journal with paper and pen, at the computer, using words, art, or drawings. There are no hard and fast rules. You will want to write freely and frankly about whatever is on your mind, whether it be your marriage, parents, children, your sexuality, your job, or even death. Anything that comes to mind.
Find Your Negative Influences
One of the first ways that journaling can help you with depression is by helping you figure out your negative influences. If you have an ongoing and very present negative influence in your life, it will start to take hold and it will start to manifest as negativity and depression. By journaling, you can begin to see a pattern of events, people, or things that are causing negativity.
You can then work through these issues and start to move them out of your life and get to a more positive viewpoint. You can use this in combination with a gratitude journal. This way you are working to get the negative out, and move the positive in, to the point that it finally takes over as the more powerful influence in your life.
Goal Setting
One of the reasons people list for having depression is due to not having anything to work for or live for. This can easily be fixed by doing a goal setting journal. You can start to set goals and work through them towards rewards or just to be able to see that you are working towards something. Journals that are ideal for this endeavor are bullet journals. You can use a bullet scheme that works for you and work through various goals all at once or one at a time.
Patterns in Depression Triggers
A key way to use journaling for your depression is to use it to find your triggers. You want to look for what is causing the depression. This is not necessarily related to negativity. It is more related to the idea of what is causing you to be depressed. This will let you see what the root of your depression is and help you to face it and either remove it or cope with it as a whole.
You can use all of these techniques as a combination or just one or two to get the right journaling technique that works for you. Remember, journaling is about what you need and working through your issues. It is not about getting it right every time or some idea of perfection. I think you’ll find that writing in a journal is an effective tool for use in the healing process.
