Journaling: A Personal Experience

 

I have always been an anxious person. I have the tendency to overanalyze, overthink, and obsess over every little thing. After the pandemic hit, my anxious tendencies shifted to obsessing about safety. Do I have Covid? Is that surface I just touched contaminated with the virus? Will my family be okay? It didn’t take long for these thoughts to totally consume and control my mind. The majority of my thoughts surrounded Covid and my family’s safety. The constant worry was exhausting. How could I be a school psychologist and not have control over these thoughts? How can I help others when I cannot even control my own worry? 

After some gentle prompting from someone else in the helping field, I started to journal. I found that I was instinctively using a technique called stream of consciousness journaling. Stream of consciousness journaling is a writing technique used to narrate and keep track of thoughts. When I cannot shift my obsessive thoughts to something positive, I open my Notes application (on my phone) and begin typing. If you were to look at the things I have written, you will see incomplete thoughts, run-on sentences, misspelled words, and many punctuation errors. My stream of consciousness journaling isn't tidy, perfect, or poetic. It is just as it sounds, my stream of thoughts transferred to “paper.” 

Having a Type A personality means that I struggle to leave the stream of consciousness in a disorganized mess. After I let my streams sit for a few days, I reopen my app and review my initial thoughts. I take my streams of consciousness, organize them, and then expand upon my initial thoughts. I work to specifically name and identify my feelings. If you are like me, you might need a little bit of help to actually name and pinpoint your true feelings. So I use a chart like this to help me label my feelings: 

Once I identify my true feelings in an organized manner, my mind is able to let go and release the thoughts that once took my mind hostage. While no one reads my journal entries, writing has allowed my brain to release these recurring thoughts. I am also able to process and make sense of things in a way that obsessing over my fears and thoughts doesn’t allow. 

Journaling has been proven to help adults and children manage anxiety, reduce stress, and cope with depression. Personally, writing has become a therapeutic outlet for me. I have been able to identify negative thought patterns and pinpoint my stress triggers. These connections have allowed me to identify potential obsessive thought patterns and use coping strategies 

(deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation) to help stop the cycle. When I go back and look at my original streams of consciousness, I am able to see how much improvement I have made since the beginning of the pandemic. 

Writing about writing is weird but I have seen improvement in my life since I have been journaling. While I still have some worry about my safety, my thoughts related to the pandemic are no longer all consuming. If you think journaling might be helpful to you, check out these resources: 

• How does journal therapy work?
• Journaling for kids
• Using a Pen and Paper to Enhance Personal Growth
• Journaling as a Tool

****Journaling is not meant to replace researched based therapeutic practices. If you or a loved one is struggling to function due to anxiety, please seek help from a therapeutic professional.