How to Journal For Your Mental Health
Follow These Therapists' Tips For Journaling If You Experience Anxiety or Depression
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"For those with depression, journaling can be beneficial in the same way it can for anxiety in that it offers a release of the pain, suffering, and other feelings that are causing emotional, psychological, and physiological distress," Kim said.
If you have depression, Kim recommends doing a combination of free-flow writing, "meaning just freely writing how they are feeling at the time to get the weight off of them," she said. "I would also encourage them to maintain a gratitude journal and start listing all of the things that they are grateful for and anything that they find good so that their mind can now start to identify with and acknowledge that things are not all bad and that there is still hope," she continued. According to Kim, this method is beneficial because "it helps to change the constant pattern of negative thinking and allows them to see the good where they would not have otherwise."