Decrease Your Anxiety through Journaling. A Practical Guide (Part 1)

Everyone feels anxious - the world can be a stressful place, and anxiety is a natural response. In fact, a small degree of anxiety can help us stay on our toes and keeps us self-aware enough to navigate the challenges of day to day living. Concern about the future - when well-placed - can propel us into taking action to avoid negative outcomes. For example:

 anxiety about growing older spurs us to start pension funds, so we’re able to live comfortably when we retire.
 A little anxiety about our health can lead us to make lifestyle changes that ultimately benefit us in the long-term.

It can be a natural response to the uncertainty of the future that’s ahead of us all, and in small, manageable doses, a little anxiety can make sure we make sensible provisions for a happier, less stressful life.

But what happens when your anxiety impacts your life in a negative way?

If you’re reading this post, you’re probably at least somewhat aware of what anxiety can do. Unwarranted feelings of fear and depression about the future, lack of motivation to do things, even physical reactions, such as tremors and shortness of breath, can eventually culminate in a panic-attack. The most noticeable thing for those close to anxiety sufferers is that the anxiety might not be something that warrants such a response. Friends and relatives may find it hard to relate to the reactions that their loved-one is having. They should remember, however, while the cause of this kind of chronic anxiety-response is not something physical that can be looked at or touched, it can cause real distress.

One way many people find they can alleviate anxiety is to keep a journal of their thoughts, a practice known as ‘Journaling’, and that’s what this post is concerned with. According to the medical literature, journaling, when practiced consistently, has many benefits. It is appealing because there is no need for medication or other prescribed treatments (although I would mention that, if you are on a course of medication, listen to the advice of your doctor before making any adjustments to your routine). While journaling cannot replace the important role of therapy in recovery, it can provide an outlet that otherwise be denied to those who cannot afford it or cannot access it. For those already in therapy, it can be a complimentary practice, providing you with yet another tool to help you reflect. It has been shown to provide these benefits to people with mild to chronic anxiety. Most of all, journaling is a very safe practice that requires little in the way of resources - all you need is a pen/paper or a computer with a word processor, and you can begin!

This series of posts is intended as a practical guide you can use to get you started. In essence, journaling is the practice of ‘externalising’ your thoughts onto a paper, making them so they are no longer abstract thoughts floating around in your head, but something real and tangible that you can see, pick up, and reflect on - a narrative like in a film you can understand and interpret. Through this process of ‘externalising’ and reflecting, you can look at your problems with a more objective eye, without a fog of worried thoughts clouding your outlook

In each part , I will run through some of the psychology behind journaling, and I will also recommend quick-and-easy exercises at the end of each one to help you get started. The exercises will be short (5-30 minutes), and you should be able to integrate them into your daily life fairly easily. I want you follow along, but don’t feel there’s any pressure to do all exercises in a row, or even in the order they appear. I would recommend you work at your own pace, in whatever way makes you feel most comfortable.

If there’s an exercise you find helps your anxiety more than the others, only practice that one. Similarly, if there are any you don’t like or you see no benefit, there’s no need to practice it daily. I would only ask that you try all of them and give them your proper attention. Try to use this guide to come up with a routine that works for you, and over-time, you should see results.

There will be no deadlines and you don’t answer to anybody but yourself. My advice is to take it slowly - don’t read the whole series of post at once, just dip in whenever you have free time and you’re feeling up to it. Think about the prompts in the exercises and try to be honest with yourself. On a practical level, you can either write these by hand with a pen and paper in an actual journal, or if you’re more comfortable with the computer, then there’s no harm in simply typing the documents in a word processor. Whatever makes the most sense to you! If you’re worried somebody might find your journal, try to keep it hidden away - many diaries can be purchased with small locks on them, and if you’re using a computer, it is possible to password-protect entire folders.

The main thing is you get into the habit of actively practicing journal writing, even if it’s for only five minutes or fifteen minutes every day - you can journal first thing in the morning after you’ve had your coffee, on your lunch-break, when you get home from work, or before bed. I find the best way of bringing any new habit into your life painlessly is to think of it like brushing your teeth - you have to do it every day if you want to feel the benefits in the long-term!

____________________________THE INTERNAL MONOLOGUE__________________________

Most people, from all countries, nationalities, and walks of life, have thoughts running through their heads at every waking moment. This is how humans make sense of the world, by telling themselves a story about themselves, so there is a continuity to their experience of life. Usually, it’s something we barely even notice - you might wash the dishes and think to yourself that you need to buy more liquid soap or that it’s your housemate’s turn to do the dishes, which might turn you to think of a friend that both of you know and the fact they’ve just started going out with a new boyfriend, and so on, and so on. The mind naturally wanders from topic to topic - this isn’t something strange; it’s perfectly normal. It’s called your internal monologue.

One feature of anxiety - the one we will deal with in this post - is this internal monologue we’ve described becomes littered with feelings of dread, negativity, and fear about the future.

Typical thoughts that can run through the head of an anxious person can include:

 “I’m not good enough - I’m going to fail/get fired.”
 “I’m such a phony - if they knew the real me, nobody would like me.”
 “All my friends are doing so well; why can’t I be like them?”

Notice these thoughts are all ‘qualitative’ - meaning they have to do with subjective or opinion-based qualities about the person thinking them. “I’m not good enough.” That’s an opinion, not a fact, and it’s an opinion probably causing the thinker to suffer.

Anxiety is a perceptual disorder. To bring your anxiety down to manageable levels then, you may have to change your perspective on things - not too much, you will still be you - but just enough so your anxiety no longer forms a barrier to your personal happiness.

We need to look at the internal monologue I mentioned, to notice patterns in our thoughts and become more aware of how we create this worldview before changing it.

EXERCISE ONE

The first exercise I will give you is in two parts.

The first part will be simple. I will ask that you simply take 15 minutes away from all distractions - this means no television, no music, no phone - and write down everything that runs through your head for that 15 minutes. And I mean everything. If you’re thinking about what your boss or teacher said when you were late for work or school, write that down. If you’re thinking about what you will have for dinner, that’s fine too - write it down. What we’re trying to do is get a good representation of your ‘internal monologue’ on paper. You can use a timer on your phone to make sure you write for the full time - if you’d like, you can even continue writing if you find you’re enjoying it!

The only additional instructions for this exercise is you keep writing until the timer is finished. Don’t edit it or delete portions after you have written it; just let it all come out, and as soon as the 15 minutes is done, put it away. Think of it like a photograph of your mindset at that moment in time, including all positive and negative thoughts, warts and all.

As soon as you’ve finished writing, I want you to file the page away somewhere private and forget about it for the moment - continue reading, once you have finished writing!

At this point, I’d like you to reflect on the actual practice of journaling you’ve just carried out. How did it feel? If you felt embarrassed writing down your thoughts, don’t worry; this is perfectly normal when you start, and it means you’re not yet in touch with your internal monologue. Did your hand get sore typing or writing? If so, try going a little slower or switch from writing by hand to typing on the computer. Make sure the actual physical practice of journaling (sitting down, typing, etc.) is something you feel like you could do comfortably daily.

I will not ask you to do this exercise daily. This one is useful to do every once in a while, just to check in on how you’re doing.

When you have 20 minutes in the next couple of days, I want you to come back to the page you have written and read through it. Continue reading the second part of the exercise below in a few days or whenever you’re ready to come back to it. In the meantime, give yourself a pat on the back for taking this first step on your journaling practice; by getting this far, you’ve demonstrated to yourself that you want to take action and ownership of your mood and emotions! Fair play!

If there are any negative or anxious thoughts you’ve written down during the exercise (don’t worry if there aren’t!), make a note of them on the same page and ask these questions:

1. Do I have these kinds of thoughts often? Do I notice that I’m thinking them?
2. Do they relate to any specific events or moments in my life? What are they?
3. Is there a pattern to these thoughts? Do they relate to my social-status, my workplace, my spouse or significant other? Try to see if particular issues are weighing on your mind.
4. Ask yourself, ‘How do I feel different?’ ‘Do I still identify with each one of these thoughts?’

Don’t overthink it. The most important thing is that you recognize your internal monologue and how it might change.

In the next part, we will look at something a little easier that you can incorporate into your daily life - ‘Gratitude Journaling’.