A little background about me:
I finally accepted that everything was not well in my head a few years ago.
How?
My world lost colour one fine year, like I was in a black-and-white movie. The year was full of triggers, and I didn’t know of any healthy coping strategy.
I tried to cope on my own, but it came at a huge price. I did seek therapy later and had access to the tools to manage my mental health (combination of medication & self-care for the win). But some days are still hard, specifically before periods and that’s where journaling makes a sea of difference. The shift in my mood and thinking is easily noticeable, and the awareness makes the management easier and real time.
Initially, journaling used to be me just blocking my thoughts and I would just write the things I thought I was proud about.
Pretty much like how you sometimes shove the dirty laundry inside the machine because you’ve visitors and you’ve run out of time ( I can’t be the only one doing that!).
But that only made the first few attempts pretty pathetic to read in retrospect and I was no closer to finding the real me in those pages.
It took me probably a month to get my journaling right, accept the parts of me that needed to be addressed, parts that I may not have been proud of then, but I would soon be.
Now, it just comes naturally to me and I do it twice ( mostly), where I write once in the morning about how I am feeling, things I have got to do that day and things that I should be mindful about and then at night I honestly(mostly) share what I managed to do, how I am feeling and things I was grateful about.
Some days I still manage to blow over my issues but mostly it is great and it really helps me with the not so good days.
I also practice writing with my non-dominant hands some days and I must say, my handwriting has really improved.
Fingers in symphony 