Making Journaling a Key Part of My Self-Care Routine Changed My Life.

Growing up, I always found it hard to write about myself, especially when it came to the emotions and the thoughts that went through my mind. I loved making up fake worlds and fake characters with extensive personalities, goals, and even fears. But when it came to writing about me, I could never quite bring myself to put pen to paper. Writing fiction was, even long before I realized it, my form of escapism.

Like movies, or music, or sex, or alcohol, I would turn to making up stories so that I could avoid facing my own story. And because of that I ended up lacking in the emotional self-awareness department.

I barely understood myself, and, in a way, barely knew who I was. I didn’t know why I did the things I did or why I reacted to certain situations the way I did. And I didn’t want to know. Or at least that was what I thought for a huge chunk of my life. That only began to change during my third year of college. And I only became more self-aware after I started journaling.

How Stress Led Me to Self-Care

With university life came very noticeable bouts of depression, anxiety attacks that I never knew I was capable of having, and plenty of emotional roller coasters. At some points it felt as if I would burst at the seams because I would just feel so very heavy.

I was often faced with situations where I was forced to confront the person that I was and why I was like that. Why did I suffer from such drastic mood-swings? Why did I have such a hard time focusing some days? Why didn’t I allow the people around me to see the real me?

Rather than actually confronting those questions head on, I ignored them and went on living my life.

Other times, I would go through traumatic experiences, like the death of my grandma, by not going through them at all. I would internalize everything, suffer in silence. But as I grew older, I suppose I realized that it was doing me much more harm than good.

My mental health gradually deteriorated — as if every single thing that I had bottled up or internalized or ignored was eating away at me from the inside out. I didn’t understand fully why it was happening, but I knew that I wanted to feel at least a bit better — a bit more in control of myself emotionally.

Thus began my self-care journey.

I started to look out for myself more, listening to what my body and my mind needed. I began to work on my health in hopes of lessening my PCOS symptoms. I even began to treat my fiction writing more seriously and started to write with the intent of one day achieving my dream of publishing.

In January of 2019, I finally decided to open the journal I’d gotten as a birthday gift. I did so with the intention of writing something, anything, that even remotely resembled a journal entry. I started off with just a motivational quote and a short list: “things that make me happy”.

It wasn’t much, and it didn’t give me some deep understanding of who I was, but it was a start. And, in a way, even those two small entries were helpful to me. The quote, by Hal Elrod, was something to turn back to when I needed an extra dose of motivation. And the list of things that make me happy forced me to sit down and actually look for the little joys in my life — something that can be really helpful on sad days.

Baby Steps

After that, I began to look for prompts and journal questions on Pinterest. I found myself writing down prompts like “describe how you want your life to look in 20 years” and “write about the place you call home.”

It was hard at first; I won’t lie. Those prompts that come off as so seemingly simple at first glance were prompts that I struggled to answer. It was as if there was some kind of wall in my mind blocking me from reaching my deepest desires and thoughts. That wall was my lack of emotional awareness. I would look and those prompts and think, “I don’t know how to answer that.”

But I forced myself to answer them. I reflected, as best as I knew how to, and I gave a couple answers. My answers were half-assed, of course, but again, at least it was something.

Over time I learnt how to sit and calm my thoughts. I began to make an effort to listen to my mind — to truly make an effort to understand and reflect on myself: on the traumas and experiences that I’ve had growing up, on the things that have shaped me into who I am today and on the emotions that I felt on a day to day basis. I even made an effort to sit and ask myself what were things that I really wanted out of life. I had never asked myself something so deep before.

I faced my depression, my fears, even my aspirations, and more importantly I documented it in my journal.

Today, journaling helps me sort and filter my thoughts and emotions and has helped me to gain a lot more clarity. I even create monthly trackers for my habits and moods so that I can better understand myself and even improve my life. I’m more aware of my day to day mental state, and have a much greater understanding of myself as a person — something I never imagined I could have achieved.

Writing in a journal each day allows you to direct your focus to what you accomplished, what you’re grateful for, and what you’re committed to doing better tomorrow. Thus, you more deeply enjoy your journey each day.

Hal Elrod

Overall, I would say that I have grown a great deal thanks to journaling, and although I know I still have a ways to go, I’m glad I decided to pick up that pen a year ago.

It might be hard to believe for some, but journaling isn’t only for people with a lot of spare time or an extra creative brain. Journaling is for and can help just about anyone. All you need is a book, a pen, maybe some markers, and an open mind.