How You Can Effectively Document Your Anxiety Through Journaling - Sally W.
Anxiety disorders affect 40 million adults in the United States aged 18 and over, making it the most common mental illness in the country. Treatment through medication, counseling and therapy are common and important ways to manage anxiety, but supplementing your treatment with tools like journaling can be a valuable way of helping you to manage your anxiety as well. With several journaling mediums to choose from — including video and writing — here’s how each can present a worthy self-help solution, as well as a helpful addition to your routine.
How documentation can help
Documenting your anxiety via journaling not only helps you to effectively record your growth over a long period of time, but it can also help you to calm your mind, let go of negative thoughts, and allow you to explore your experiences with anxiety. Documenting your anxiety through journaling also brings an effective and insightful way of letting your emotions out, and helps in organizing your thoughts so that you can better analyze them. James Pennebaker, a researcher, who studied the impact of writing on HIV patients, noted that “By writing, you put some structure and organization to those anxious feelings. It helps you get past them.” In turn, this can allow you to process your emotions more easily.
The benefits of keeping a physical journal
Writing out your feelings in a journal or notebook allows you to privately and productively get your thoughts out, allowing you to express and relieve your anxiety in the process. One way to document your anxiety through journaling is by maintaining a bullet journal, which will allow you to express yourself creatively with a totally blank canvas. Furthermore, a bullet journal may be particularly beneficial with insightful tasks like keeping track of your anxiety-related behaviors, such as panic attacks, which allows you to better monitor your anxiety in an organized and easy to view manner. By making journaling a daily habit, this gives you a concrete record of how you’re feeling on any given day, which is beneficial in looking back and identifying triggers, and working from there to further manage and understand your anxiety.
Finding a community with vlogging
Digital journaling through vlogging is another great way to document your anxiety, allowing you to explore your feelings and relieve your symptoms. For example, vlogging will allow you the freedom to talk out loud about your anxiety triggers and related symptoms like panic attacks, and presents the option of uploading the videos to a public platform such as YouTube. Millennials view an average of 12.1 hours per week of video: it is clear that there is an audience to connect with, allowing you to share your experiences with others and see that you’re not alone. By ensuring that your content is fully accessible through using features like captions or subtitles, you can widen your reach by including those who may be hearing impaired, or those who might not speak your language fluently. This makes it even more likely that your videos will find your tribe: people who can relate to your experiences with anxiety.
Managing anxiety is not an easy task, but documenting it can help to make things easier. Whether you choose to journal, vlog or both, you can reap the many benefits that documenting your anxiety brings, including the ability to identify triggers and look back at your growth over time.
How documentation can help
Documenting your anxiety via journaling not only helps you to effectively record your growth over a long period of time, but it can also help you to calm your mind, let go of negative thoughts, and allow you to explore your experiences with anxiety. Documenting your anxiety through journaling also brings an effective and insightful way of letting your emotions out, and helps in organizing your thoughts so that you can better analyze them. James Pennebaker, a researcher, who studied the impact of writing on HIV patients, noted that “By writing, you put some structure and organization to those anxious feelings. It helps you get past them.” In turn, this can allow you to process your emotions more easily.
The benefits of keeping a physical journal
Writing out your feelings in a journal or notebook allows you to privately and productively get your thoughts out, allowing you to express and relieve your anxiety in the process. One way to document your anxiety through journaling is by maintaining a bullet journal, which will allow you to express yourself creatively with a totally blank canvas. Furthermore, a bullet journal may be particularly beneficial with insightful tasks like keeping track of your anxiety-related behaviors, such as panic attacks, which allows you to better monitor your anxiety in an organized and easy to view manner. By making journaling a daily habit, this gives you a concrete record of how you’re feeling on any given day, which is beneficial in looking back and identifying triggers, and working from there to further manage and understand your anxiety.
Finding a community with vlogging
Digital journaling through vlogging is another great way to document your anxiety, allowing you to explore your feelings and relieve your symptoms. For example, vlogging will allow you the freedom to talk out loud about your anxiety triggers and related symptoms like panic attacks, and presents the option of uploading the videos to a public platform such as YouTube. Millennials view an average of 12.1 hours per week of video: it is clear that there is an audience to connect with, allowing you to share your experiences with others and see that you’re not alone. By ensuring that your content is fully accessible through using features like captions or subtitles, you can widen your reach by including those who may be hearing impaired, or those who might not speak your language fluently. This makes it even more likely that your videos will find your tribe: people who can relate to your experiences with anxiety.
Managing anxiety is not an easy task, but documenting it can help to make things easier. Whether you choose to journal, vlog or both, you can reap the many benefits that documenting your anxiety brings, including the ability to identify triggers and look back at your growth over time.
