Emily Hanka
5 JOURNALING STRATEGIES FOR ANXIETY | how to journal for mental health
Journaling is an amazing tool to help you combat stress and anxiety, so I'm here to share 5 of my favorite tools and strategies to journal your way to better mental health. I've dealt with panic disorder, generalized anxiety and emetophobia for most of my life, so believe me when I say these methods are tried and true, y'all! I also just want to mention that I never want to encourage toxic positivity – sometimes “thinking about a situation positively” doesn't really work. But if you struggle with day-to-day anxiety, I hope you'll find some of these strategies helpful! 🙂
01:30 daily journaling prompts
04:00 visualization journaling
05:15 simple habit and mood trackers
06:53 identifying cognitive distortions
08:25 questioning negative thoughts
list of cognitive distortions: https://www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/cognitive-distortions.pdf
questions to break down a negative or irrational thought:
1) Is there substantial evidence for this thought?
2) Is there evidence contrary to this thought?
3) Am I attempting to interpret this situation without all the evidence?
4) What would a friend think or tell me about this situation?
5) If I look at the situation positively, how is it different?
6) Will this matter a year from now? How about five years from now?
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[Music] [Music] so [Music] so what's up y'all welcome back to my channel or welcome if you are new here my name is emily and today i'm going to be showing you five journaling strategies that you can use to combat or reframe anxiety now i just want to disclaim really quick before we get into this video that i am not a mental health professional however i do have 20 years of experience as a person with pretty severe anxiety so i'm just speaking from experience here and sharing some things that have worked for me in the past i actually do personally use all five of these strategies myself pretty regularly and they really have helped me fight back against my anxiety and kind of reconsider how i react to anxious thoughts these are all super simple and most of them are pretty quick to do and all you need is a notebook and a pen maybe some markers if you want to get crazy but that's not really necessary so yeah without further ado let's get journaling so number one and really the backbone of my journaling practice for anxiety are my daily journaling prompts i've been journaling consistently for the past three or four years-ish and this little set of four prompts is what i go back to every single day i feel like it gives me a nice balance of honesty positivity and some productivity without taking too long so first i do a little feelings check-in i give myself some space to check in with how i'm feeling that day i let myself be completely honest with my feelings so if i'm feeling really shitty i'll say that i'm feeling really shitty and doing this helps me understand how i need to move forward into my day so if i'm feeling bad i know that i should probably try to take some positive steps to feel better next i will write out a couple bullet points for things that i'm grateful for i usually try to think of some big things like having a fridge full of food and some small things like maybe having a nice conversation the day before with my friend or like my nails are growing long finally for the first time and forever it really is just helpful to keep my negativity in check and remember that i do have so many things to be grateful for so after that i will usually offload all the to do's that i have floating around in my head for that day sometimes these to-do lists aren't really realistic for a single day but it does help to get everything i want to get done out of my head and onto paper where i can see it and sort it out and finally i write down my daily affirmations these are something that i've used in one form or another since i was a kid and they are so so helpful in keeping my anxiety in check they're basically just short positive statements that address some source of anxiety in my life so lately i've been coming up with three or four affirmations at the start of the month and then repeating those for the entire month every day this month my affirmations are i accept myself as i am while looking forward to growing i believe i am worthy of success i do what is best for myself even when it's difficult and i am strong confident and capable now you don't have to come up with these on your own there are tons of lists on the internet of affirmations for self-esteem social anxiety generalized anxiety panic attacks phobias whatever so just google whatever it is that you are struggling with and pick a couple that resonate with you and get in the habit of repeating them to yourself every day you will honestly be surprised how quickly you internalize those positive thoughts so prompt number two is visualization journaling i like to use this strategy in the moment when i'm feeling particularly anxious or maybe i'm even on the brink of a panic attack maybe i'm actively having a panic attack basically you just have to describe a positive experience or maybe like your happy place as vividly as you can i usually describe like a vacation that i've been on or fun things that i've done with my friends and family and i'll write down anything i can remember about that day what we ate what the weather was like what i was wearing anything that particularly stuck out for me and i try to keep writing until i literally can't think of anything else to write down then once i have it all written out i'll put my pen down close my eyes and try to visualize myself in that place with all of the things that i've described you can also just do this as a meditation exercise but i find it helpful to describe it in writing first so i can clearly imagine it plus the act of writing it down kind of takes me out of my head this strategy has helped me prevent or even come down from panic attacks so many times especially when i'm feeling kind of disoriented or dissociated from the anxiety it's a really really good way to ground yourself when you kind of feel like you're not on this planet anymore number three is some simple habit and mood trackers if you have watched any videos about bullet journaling you have definitely seen these before personally i've always found them kind of hard to keep up on because i tried to get too artsy with them or i would beat myself up if i didn't go through with every habit every single day but i know that there are certain habits that i need to stay on top of in order to keep my mental health in check so i created some super simple habit and mood trackers that take less than 15 minutes to draw out so here i'm drawing out my november trackers first i number the days of the month down the side of the page and then i draw a couple lines to frame it off and then i just start marking every other row and then every other column and then along the bottom of the page i will write down the habits that i want to track that month so every day i keep my journal open to this page on my dining room table so it's easy for me to mark off my habits with a dot as i complete them and this has helped me stay on top of tracking my habits and hold myself accountable more so my mood tracker is not the cutest but you know what it does what it needs to so i don't care i literally just draw out a rectangle for each day of the month and then divide it in half i do this because my mood at the beginning of the day is often very different from my mood at the end of the day so i tried my morning mood and my evening mood by coloring in each half of the box with one of five colors that correspond with a particular mood it's pretty simplistic but it helps me understand how my habits impact how i'm feeling and it can also alert me to any trends or downward spirals that might be coming so i can try to take extra good care of myself in anticipation of maybe an anxious spell that i can feel coming on so this next prompt is identifying cognitive distortions if you don't know cognitive distortions are essentially all the ways that our brain tricks us into believing things that aren't true everyone experiences these to some degree we all over generalize or jump to conclusions now and again but sometimes as in the case of severe anxiety these can be really harmful and they can also be pretty difficult to spot if you are not looking for them there are a lot of different distortions i've linked a list of some of the most common ones in the description box down below if you're curious so when i notice myself latching onto a thought that i think might be irrational i pull out my list of targeted distortions i have one printed off that i keep in the little pocket of my journal and i try to determine which one or ones are involved with this thought so after a while you'll probably start to notice yourself gravitating towards the same distortions over and over so you can identify your thought patterns and call out these irrational thoughts more easily as they come up for example i tend to go back to magnification or making a mountain out of a molehill and fortune telling or expecting a situation to turn out badly without any evidence to support that expectation so once you've identified your cognitive distortions you can then use that knowledge to reframe the thought and create a positive affirmation to use instead so for example if you are over generalizing to justify the irrational thought i did poorly on this test so i'm just not good at this subject you can reframe the thought of something like i can change my approach to learning and studying to continue improving my grades and finally the last strategy is questioning negative thoughts i have a list of questions that i return to if i find myself having a persistent or recurring negative thought which happens pretty frequently writing a few quick bullet points though to address each of these questions helps me assess the validity of the thought and reframe the situation in a more realistic light so there are six questions and they are is there substantial evidence for my thought is there evidence contrary to my thought am i attempting to interpret this situation without all of the evidence what would a friend think or tell me about this situation if i looked at the situation positively how is it different will this matter a year from now how about five years from now so this is a great exercise to work through thoughts that you know are irrational or even just small things that are bothering you and that you want to let go of challenging your irrational thoughts is really the first step to changing them and letting them go and this is a really quick exercise to help you do that so those are all the tips that i have for you guys today i really hope that you found this video helpful i know that when i started using my journal a little bit more mindfully instead of just dumping all of my thoughts into it it really helped me start thinking critically about the way that i think and the way that i respond to my own thoughts so if you use any of these strategies uh please let me know i would love to hear how they work for you and if you want to see more videos like this one please give it a big old thumbs up and subscribe to my channel i would really appreciate it and i will see you guys back here very soon thank you for watching my sweet little beans i love you very much bye you
#JOURNALING #STRATEGIES #ANXIETY #journal #mental #health
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This is a great tutorial for journaling. Especially liked the fifth section, particularly what a friend would think about a certain thought.
Super helpful video. One of my favorites.
thank you
I have the same pencil case 😜👍
Great video, thank you for sharing!
Hi. thank you for the tips and examples. Extremely direct 🙂
I have struggled with anxiety since middle school and as an adult it unfortunately remains a struggle for me. I'm hoping that learning how to journal properly will help reduce my anxiety. Thank you for the journaling tips
Good work matey 🙂
its crazy how some people don't even believe that anxiety is real
Yellow journal notebook link/name please?
as someone who struggles with anxiety, this is such a helpful video! thank you so much.
Just watching this video helped a little bit with my anxiety bc even tho I haven’t started writing anything down just thinking about the answers helped
thank you so much.. i really need all the tips! thank you!
This was so helpful. Love this so much. I have borderline personality disorder, anxiety and depression. This would benefit me so much putting this in my journal. Thank you for posting
Its the most useful video about anxity I watched today, thx u too much you ar eol dpusea ysluutt!
I love this! This is so simple yet so in detail. I always had trouble journaling as I either got bored or it got too much. But this actually helps me a lot to get started and it seems fun to do for my anxiety.
Can we just appreciate the soothing intro-
Thank you so much for sharing this! I've created a spread in my journal to refer back to to try to reframe my thoughts. I really appreciate you sharing your techniques with us!
Do more journaling videos pleeease! 💕💕
Hi from Canada 🇨🇦 I have been dealing with stress and anxiety lately and I'm also dealing with chemo only 3 more to get done ✔ yet I am not sure of what to do regarding moving again im never happy where I move got any ideas thank you
Wow! This was SO helpful! I made a spread in my bujo just scribbling down all of what you said. It will be so good to have this to look at when I need to write myself out of anxiety. Thank you so much for this <3
Young lady you had me in the very beginning w that mug 😂 also I love these ideas I don't think I'd be able to keep up with the mood tracker consistently but the irrational thoughts one… yeah that would've saved me so much heartache🥺 thank you for the video! Super helpful! I'll bookmark this to write everything down when I have some more free time 💜
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This is very helpful! Downloading and printing the worksheet now to put in my journal. Will definitely be using it moving forward. Thank you for sharing and hopefully there are some more videos soon!
Really helpful, thanks for sharing. I have subscribed and I'll share the video too. You will have a large following very soon with these kind of insightful and helpful videos.
Thank your tips are very helpful
Great video! TFS! ❤️
Love the way you film! Excellent content! What is the marker brand you’re using? Does it bleed onto the next page?
Thank you sooooo much ! This is exactly what I was looking for 😍.
i have not been journaling thats much but i will start back doing it again
This is incredibly helpful. Thank you so much for sharing this. I needed this right now.
I found this very helpful. A few of the things you mentioned, I was already doing, but others were very new and I'm going to try them out. I particularly like the idea of using affirmations and even using a page to call out cognitive distortions.
Brain dumping doesn't work well for me either. This is a great example of journaling with that comforting structure while being able to get all my thoughts out. Thanks for the suggestions!
This is very helpful. Thank you!
This was so helpful. Thank you so so much ❤️
Thank you very much for sharing 🙏🌷