I’ve kept a journal for the past 400 days and it has had a true impact on my life. Like many of you, I tend to be a person who keeps all of her emotions bottled inside, but after a while of doing this, any minor inconvenience can cause me to literally explode. I don’t know why, but I hate letting people inside of my head, so I never felt comfortable opening up to people about what I was thinking. This is really not a healthy way of coping with problems, but it can be changed if you’re willing to try!
Actually, the reason I started journaling has nothing to do with my emotional coping mechanism. Two Christmases ago, my grandma gave each of her grandchildren a blank journal and said, “write down everything you do, experience and feel. I only wish that I could remember what my daily life was like when I was young. Take advantage of it.” What my grandma said that day has always stuck with me and is the reason I continue to journal every single day since. My original motive for writing has changed slightly over the past year, but it definitely has for the better.
When I first started journaling, I would only give a brief summary of my day. I would say something along the lines of school being too boring, competition cheer practice wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be and now I’m getting ready for bed. I wrote like this every single day for weeks and still found myself lashing out when my very last button had been pushed.
One day though, I had the absolute worst day of my life, no joke. As I opened up my journal, I couldn’t even bring myself to write about my day, instead I wrote about every single emotion I that was running through my head. Instead of bottling up all of my emotions and feelings, I released them onto the paper. This might sound cliche, but mentally knowing that I could let go of my emotions and store them somewhere else other than my head made me feel a lot better.
If writing every single day sounds too intimidating for you, write whenever you find yourself with free time. You don’t even need to write about your feelings or your day. For example, you can write about a certain topic that you’re passionate about, the things that made you smile today or even the things that made you sad. The possibilities are honestly endless. I promise, that writing down the thoughts that are clogging your head will make you feel so much better, but you’ll never know until you try!