My (Evolving) Journal Practice
I’ll be honest, I have a love/hate relationship with journalling. Perhaps “hate” is too strong of a word, let’s call it “like/dislike”. As someone with a messy, tangled, anxious mind that jumps from (negative) thought to (negative) thought at lightning speed, I find putting pen to paper to be one of the more helpful tools in my self-care toolkit. It allows me to pause, get up close and personal with my thoughts and really look at them in an intentional and (sometimes) non-judgemental way. Now, I’ll be honest again, I’ve only recently found a journal practice that is working for me. In the past I’ve found the practice to be hit-or-miss, sometimes leaving me feeling more frustrated and confused than before I sat down. I would open my journal, stare at the blank page, anxious thoughts swirling and no idea where to start, as I yell at myself “just start!” I began implementing what I called a “brain dump”, something I still do sometimes when the thoughts are literally just flying left, right and center and I just gotta get them down. But after I would write them all down, then what? Sometimes I didn’t even know what the thoughts were but I knew I felt “off”, anxious” or “frustrated” (my top 3 commonly used words). I had no way of actually working through the thoughts, seeing how they were influencing my actions and behaviours, and most importantly, how they were making me feel (our true internal compass). Through a combination of personal therapy and listening to podcasts, I’ve finally found a process that actually works for me. I like to journal in the morning and I find this is a good way to set up the day. I will sometimes journal before I go to bed, but it’s more of a reflection on what the day was and I keep it much simpler. Now I first want to mention, there is no “right” way to journal, something I still have to remind myself. Like anything, it’s a practice and only through trying different methods will you start to learn what works for you. I’m still trying to figure that out. I actually find that I spend too long journaling, making sure I go through every single thought and feeling before I feel complete. And spoiler alert, I never feel complete (hello perfectionism). And so currently, while I have a good basis down, I’m learning to be a bit more flexible with it and find some shortened versions so I’m not always spending an hour each morning on it and being content with “that’s good enough for today”.
Ok, so let’s get into the journal practice:
My Daily Journal Practice
This is basically the culmination of the tools I’ve learned working with a CBT therapist. It takes those tools and puts them into an exercise that I use as the basis of my journal practice. It’s very much focused on thought management, and I realize may not be useful or relevant to everyone. But as an anxious perfectionist, I find it extremely useful. I have the below prompts printed and taped to the front page of my journal so I can reference and follow it each day (a scattered mind has a hard time remembering things):
How am I feeling right now? Identify 2-4 emotions (I also have a “feelings wheel” taped just below these prompts. Am I in kindergarten or what? But seriously, it helps me identify feelings beyond just “anxious” and “frustrated”.)
What are the circumstances leading to these emotions? (these are the factual life situations, not your thoughts or interpretations of the situation. Try to be unbiased)
What are the unhelpful thoughts and behaviours I’m experiencing right now because of these circumstances? (this is where I really start to list out and untangle all of the negative thoughts swirling in my head)
What helpful skills can I utilise right now to reframe these thoughts? (under here I have a list of all my therapy tools but since this is a journal blog post and not specific to CBT therapy let’s stick with “thought reframing” - it’s my most used one and lends itself the best to journaling.)
Reframe the thoughts from above (thought reframes don’t have to be the “opposite” of the unhelpful thought. I actually find it more helpful and believable to find one that’s more neautral and even growth-minded. So instead of turning “I’m terrible at ______” to “I’m really good at _____”, I’ll say “I’m learning to improve at _____ and will get better through practice”)
What behaviours or actions can I take right now that are in line with these new thoughts? (these give me an action I can take right now to change direction.)
How do I feel now? (have the feelings I had at the beginning lessened? Increased? Been replaced with new ones? This serves as a marker if the work you did above made any changes.)
Like I mentioned, sometimes I spend too long doing this, going through every thought and reframing each one. I’m trying to find a shortened version, something that can take me 10-20 minutes, and that’s probably just listing out 2-3 thoughts only (sometimes mine go up to 10 - oops.)
For times when I don’t have the energy to go through the whole process above, I look to single question journal prompts. These are my favourites:
Beginning of the day:
What 3 things would make today a win?
What am I looking forward to today?
What are 3 things I’m grateful for?
What do I need to hear today?
How can I show myself compassion today?
End of the day:
What are 3 wins from today?
What did I learn today?
What am I looking forward to tomorrow?
What served me today?
What didn’t serve me today?
Anytime (or whenever I’m feeling stuck):
What questions do I need answers to right now?
If failure wasn’t an option, what would be my next step?
What’s getting in the way of what I want to do?
While I still get frustrated by journaling sometimes, it really does help me work through sticky thoughts and allow me to see how they make me feel and influence my actions. This is an ever evolving practice and I’m trying to embrace that, accepting that there is no one perfect way to journal.
