Burnout to THRIVING
How to use Journaling as a Therapeutic Tool || Mental Health & Wellness
Journaling can be used as a cheap and quick therapeutic tool. A tool to process your thoughts and feelings deeper, to rediscover yourself, and to take steps towards changing your life.
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I am a HUGE advocate for journaling and use it for myself regularly. Journaling with pen & paper has a huge impact on how we can process these thoughts and feelings within us.
Writing is a way to grab hold of your thinking & train yourself to think a little bit slower to process those thoughts.
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[Music] hi thanks for tuning in i am cecilia manella and i hop on here pretty much every single week and share some a mental health tips and tricks this week i want to share with you all things journaling so if you know me you know i'm a big advocate and fan of journaling i'm talking about it all the time if you don't know me then i'm happy to talk to you about journaling so journaling is a fantastic tool for processing and figuring things out in your life it's the cheapest and quickest way to get deeper within yourself and there's a bit of a way to do it when we talk about journaling we often think you know dear diary kind of way of writing where when we were teenagers and writing in a diary and that's not really the type of journaling we're talking about here so therapeutic journaling has a approach that's a little bit deeper than just documenting your day so what i want you to think about is journaling as a way to brain dump so what that means is you take everything that's in your head and you just dump it on a piece of paper no judgments no concern about grammar where you know spelling mistakes any of those kind of things you're letting go of all the things that have been hammered into us as children during school so getting over that piece usually takes a good week or two of constantly journaling to get over that ingrained way of looking at our writing to get rid of that critical voice and then you want to just be focusing on dumping what's in your brain now why is journaling so powerful let me tell you there is a biochemical change in your brain when you put pen to paper so we're not talking about typing journaling or in your phone because we all know we can do the digital things and be thinking about a million other things you know you do that i do it you can write an email and be thinking about your grocery list and all the other things you need to do now that's not the type of journal you want to do when you put pen to paper what happens is that if you actually stop really focusing on what you're doing or your mind wanders your hand actually stops moving so what that means is it requires a lot of engagement so you want to do old school pen to paper journaling and the biochemical change that happens in your brain is this magical thing that that really that our brain engages in in an active way in a present way in an authentic way now we've been writing or documenting our life since the beginning of time we've been writing on cave wall since the beginning of time so this is just part of your dna when you get out of the way you will do what your brain actually really needs to do because it's in there it's already in there so the change that happens that's really powerful around processing especially around therapeutic journaling and the brain dumping way is that you're thinking the thoughts which is one process and then you're having to write the thoughts that you're thinking which is a second piece of the process and the third piece is that you're reading what you're writing so it creates this feedback loop in your mind in your heart and your soul of all the things that you're thinking about all the things that you're feeling which is this really magical therapeutic way of coming into contact with your own thoughts and feelings in a deeper way we want to think our way out of problems or think our way out of something but here's the thing especially with anxiety and we're all very much riddled with worry and anxiety is that the brain moves really fast and fear thoughts are very very quick and they're just statements about fear like what if this happens or they're going to think this they're just like really short statements there's not a really big story to them so if you want to identify fear thoughts or anxiety thoughts know that they're just really powerful statements that get thrown at you now that part of your brain is meant to do that because it's meant to keep you safe it's meant to keep us away from bears and saber-toothed tigers and all the things so fear thoughts really serve a purpose the problem is is that it's actually not based always in reality 99 of the time these fear thoughts actually have no grounding in reality and they're based on an old belief an old perspective or a future perspective that we're trying to grab onto something in writing you can write the fear thought and challenge it you can come face to face with it you can dig into it and ask yourself where does this come from you know what information do i have to even think these things we cannot use your thinking process to solve a problem when the thinking process is actually the problem so if your thoughts move really fast the brain moves very very quickly writing is a way for you to grab hold of your thinking and train yourself to think a little bit slower to process what you're thinking because you don't have to believe everything you think i want you to hear that again you do not have to believe everything you think we have the power to believe different things than what our mind is actually creating and journaling is a quickest cheapest way to get there i hope this was helpful um to help you uh dive in a little bit we do have an email opt-in if you want some journaling prompts we will email that to you just throw your name into um the link below above or below where it happens to be and we will send you some journal links so i hope you have a great day
#Journaling #Therapeutic #Tool #Mental #Health #Wellness
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Clear your mind
This is the most helpful video I've seen on journaling, clear and to the point, not dragged out for half an hour or boring. This is the information I needed. I'm starting my journal today. It might be a little bit bumpy at first, but I catch on rather quickly. Take care, everyone and a good day to you!😊
So glad I found your site. I have been journaling on and off for decades, but your statements shone new light on something I thought I knew very well. Thank you for that shining light!
I been journaling for four years.
I found you today 02/26/25 😊
Between this video and asking for your prompts (then following through!), i think I will finally start being consistent with The Big J!!! Thank you so much!!!
This video is so well thought out, I recently started therapy and my therapist suggested I journal about my feelings to help me process my feelings and to have a record to keep for the future anyways before I started threapy I did try to journal but I wouldn't know what to write or how to start and I would start but would only write "Dear diary" and then leave it and not look at it for months, I'm so glad I found your video it help me so much when I get a mindset block and I don't know how to express my feelings on paper thank you so much ❤️ ✨
A technically well-made video. However, there are two things missing for me. First, keeping such a journal without the proper distance to oneself carries a significant risk of re-experiencing traumas, which may unfortunately become deeply anchored due to such journaling. In the video, you should have discussed in detail about how to self-protect from this (e.g. RC – Reframing [self-] Counseling). The mere fact of writing slowly (compared to the speed of thinking) is far from sufficient. Second, I disagree with the statement that anxiety is caused by delusions rather than facts. On the contrary, facts definitely outweigh delusions (70/30, sorry for not providing links to reaserch papers), and only very severe anxiety states can be triggered by echoes of real traumas. I hope you'll supplement what is otherwise a good piece of material. Thanks.
Great description. Thank you.
Being 3 years since this video was posted I’m not sure that anyone will see this but just in case; firstly this is an excellent straight to the point video I wish I had seen when I first started journaling.
Secondly, when I first started trying to journal I would stare at the clean blank paper and get writers block. Until one day something happened that made me so cranky, not full blown angry but really upset and with no one at home to talk it over with it just kept going around and around in my mind making things worse. Then I remembered that so many people say journaling is a great tool against ruminating so I grabbed a pen and some random paper and once I started writing it just poured out of me. My hand had trouble keeping up with my mind 😅
But it was so good that it made trying to journal the next day or so later that I decided it was worth pursuing an exercise book to keep everything in one place and to make my ramblings more secure as random bits of paper could end up anywhere.
I don’t journal every day and sometimes I will go several weeks between entries but I do always come back to it.
Hopefully this is of help to someone 😊
Great! ❤
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This is so helpful ❤
You can go "old school" on an iPad with the Apple Pencil, and then tell it to convert to text so that it's readable afterwards, and it can go in the same Apple Notes as any text entry, or photos etc.
Thank you so much. This video is very helpful. 🇬🇧
4:41 "you don't have to believe everything you think" Wow. 🤯 No, I don't, and from now on I won't. Thank you!
the link for 30 day doesn’t work 😅
I love writing in general and I want to start Journaling but I don't want to write down my thoughts, because my anxiety is related to my past trauma, I just don't want to write that down, because I know one day I will read it and will again feel those things. Please can you help me with what else can I pen down. I find writing therapeutic in general.
Are you a therapist?
The link with journal prompts isn’t working. Could you please reshare it?
Journaling is the highest cost-to-benefit ratio of anything you're going to do in trying to improve your mental health. The funniest – and even strangest, at the beginning – is how you're not really in control of what comes out. Sometimes you really are surprised about what comes out of you. One cool thing I do, while journaling – is to collect specific questions that I will answer, if "nothing comes up".
I’ve started journaling and I love it
Brilliant!
I'd love some links to help me explore journalling,
"Pen to paper, because if your mind wanders, your hand stops writing." What a gold piece of information. 😊 Thank You
Maybe provide some examples of "brain dump" or journal prompts. Your link does not work