More Tips for Mental Journaling

  Awhile back I wrote about a thing I like to call mental journaling, as an alternative to normal journaling. This is basically where you just simply imagine words in your mind, rather than actually writing or typing them out.

Since writing that post, I have had some new “revelations,” if you will, about the subject, and figured it was time for a follow-up post. With that, here you go:

5 minutes per day (alongside real journaling)

Over the last few months, I have come to realize that physical journaling and mental journaling each have their own unique set of pros and cons. For instance, physical journaling is great for keeping track of things numerically (in my case, the number of days since I started my diet), while setting aside specific time daily to practice mental journaling can help to reinforce that “muscle” in your brain, so to speak. That way, if you’re ever in a stressful situation and want to journal but can’t do so for real (out with friends, etc.), you’re better prepared to mentally journal instead, thanks to daily practice. Therefore, I feel it’s best to do BOTH forms of journaling daily. I usually get my physical journaling out of the way in the morning (I detailed that process here), and then set aside 5 minutes in the evening for mental journaling, and during this time, I make sure to avoid all other distractions (TV, music, phone, etc.) as much as possible.

“Rapid” mental journaling in loud situations

Unfortunately, some scenarios are gonna be so loud and stressful to the point where normal mental journaling will be difficult. For these cases, I’ve gotten into the habit of just doing very simple, “rapid” journaling in my head, where I just focus on one or a few words at a time and tell myself things like “fuuuuuck” or “god dammit” or whatever. EDIT: I actually find now that what works better here is to just focus on muscle-relaxation techniques (like trying to imagine all the different little muscle fibers at the tip of your nose, and then spreading out to the rest of your face, or even the rest of your body, if you need to).

Same goes for flashbacks/ fits of anger

I find that the “rapid” mental journaling described right above can also be beneficial for bad flashbacks/ intrusive thoughts. I used to have a habit of screaming “fuck” really loud, or something to that effect, when a bad memory appears in my head out of nowhere, but thankfully this habit has been declining ever since I started mental journaling more, and specifically rapid mental journaling. EDIT: I think now that the muscle-relaxation technique mentioned above works better here too.

Vague formats

I said in my first mental journaling post that I sometimes like to imagine the words being typed out in a word processor in my head, while other times I like to imagine them being handwritten in cursive (since that’s what I do for physical journaling anyways). Lately, however, I’ve started to imagine the words in a “vague, wavy” sorta format. It’s hard to explain, really, but I felt the need to address this so that you’d know that it’s okay to use the limitless potential of your mind to imagine forms of wording that can’t really exist in reality. In fact, I’d almost recommend it above the more “realistic” forms of imagining the words, at this point.

Song lyrics

When all else fails, I like to also just simply sing songs in my head, and imagine the lyrics being typed out in my mind as I do.

…Well, once again, hopefully some of this helped at least someone.

Peace!

UPDATE: I don’t really do this stuff anymore, but I’ll leave this post up in case anything here still helps anyone.

Related: List Repository

Specific Tips for Journaling

Scroll to the bottom for a TL;DR summary! 

Not too long ago I blogged about journaling and how beneficial it has become to my well-being in recent times, so I figured I should now take things a step further and detail how exactly I journal, in case it helps anyone out there who may be trying to get into it more…

No further introduction needed, so here we go:

Prioritize small notebooks

The smaller the notebook, the less intimidating the act of journaling itself will be. Holding a rather large notebook in your hands may feel daunting, whereas a smaller notebook may feel like something that can be filled out rather quickly (because it can). Completing your first few notebooks quickly and seeing them getting stocked on top of one another in a short amount of time may help you to stay motivated to journal longterm. Pocket-sized notebooks also have the convenience of being more portable, of course. That said, regardless of size, I also like to flip the notebook upside down for every other page, so that I don’t have to change my writing position!

Skip every line between sentences

So if I had to guess, you’ll eventually run out of small notebooks and start having to fill out larger ones that you find around your home. No sense in wasting money on other small notebooks when you have plenty of big ones that haven’t been used yet, right? Well, when you eventually get to this stage, and still feel intimidated by normal, non-pocket-sized books, simply do what I do and start skipping every line between your sentences. Nobody ever said you had to fill out every line, after all (assuming you’re even using lined paper to begin with). Also, feel free to take your time to think about what you wanna say next after each sentence. It’s not a race!

Bullet-points/ incomplete sentences is fine

By skipping every line between sentences, you’re already doing a form of bullet-journaling, sorta. Therefore, I would argue that forgoing grammatical-correctness and simply writing in incomplete sentences is fine. More than fine, in fact. By prioritizing incomplete sentences, you’re allowing yourself the opportunity to get thoughts “out of your system” faster. Who cares if the writing itself is hard to follow? Nobody is gonna read your journal other than you anyways, most likely. Heck, you don’t even have to read back through old entries (I almost never do).

Try writing in cursive

A long time ago, someone encouraged that I write in cursive “to make writing more fun.” I started doing so, and never looked back. As this old friend of mine had said, writing in cursive is just simply much more fun. Plus, as another friend of mine from around that same time had said, it’s “a dying art.” As far as I’m concerned, we might as well all start writing in cursive just for the sake of keeping the art alive, so to speak.

Use a good pen

Going into journaling with a shitty pen is like going into battle with a shitty gun. Personally, I’m partial to either BIC or Pentel RSVP, fine-size, but you do you! My dad is really into fountain pens. I gave those a try, and they’re not my thing, but maybe they’re yours. More power to you if so. Pencils are cool too, of course. UPDATE: Now I’m into felt pens! They’re much better for the speed at which I wanna be journaling at, turns out!

Start your entries by noting daily things

While I personally feel it’s important to journal at least a little every day, I understand that some days are more “journal-worthy” than others. Because of this, I always like to start my entries by making note of a few things that are “constants” in my day-to-day life: How many hours of sleep I got the night before and what I plan to eat throughout the day, mainly. As the day itself progresses, I also like to use my journal to keep track of how many friends I text throughout the day (I prefer texting over in-person interactions by a landslide). Lately I’ve also been noting what I plan to do each day, and have also been reminding myself on a daily basis that “The most (but not only) important thing is survival.” UPDATE: Regarding what I do each day, it’s usually just journaling itself now, so I’ve been reminding myself “it’s okay to just journal today.” After all, the earliest humans just did cave drawings of the same stuff over and over…

Regrets/ worries (“that’s what journaling is for”)

Now this is the real “meat” of everything that I’ve been trying to accomplish by journaling as much as I do now. I mentioned in my last journaling-themed post that I struggle with two things in particular; regretting the past, and worrying about the future. I usually make note of that at least once per day in my journals. Sometimes I go into details about whatever specific worries or regrets I may be experiencing in that moment, but most of the time I just simply write something like “having regrets again this morning.” Either way, I usually follow this up with the sentence “But that’s what journaling is for.” Lately I’ve also been feeling nostalgic for my parents’ homeland (which I visit most summers), so every day now I write a quick sentence about the thing I miss most from there on that particular day (but also remind myself why I’m happy to be where I actually am now, despite the bad parts). I also make sure to (vaguely) write about at least one regret every day now, as well as at least one “second-hand embarrassment” moment.

Noting reactions to bad flashbacks

This may not apply to everyone reading this, but some of my past regrets are so bad that it causes me to have distressing “reactions” (twitching, cursing at the top of my lungs, etc.). That said, I’ve noticed that ever since I started journaling daily over this past year or so, I haven’t been having these sorta reactions as much, and I think I large part of that is because I journal about them. Again, I’m usually pretty vague, and just write something like “had a couple of reactions as I woke up this morning, but I think they’re getting less frequent still, so that’s good at least.” I also try to remind myself daily that my flashbacks are usually at their worst in the morning.

Noting current events

Even though I don’t like reading back through old entries, whenever a major event happens, I like to write it down, just for the sake of turning some of my entries into “time capsules,” of sorts. As I’m sure you all know, a lot of unprecedented events have been happening in the world recently, so I’ve been jotting down current events more than usual…

Stream-Of-Consciousness

This probably goes without saying, but when I can’t think of anything else to do, I just write whatever comes to mind, without really thinking about it. Sometimes I write about other tasks I might do later in the day, or just “channel” things in general (especially when it comes to worrying about what others might think about me).

…Well, that’s it! Hopefully at least some of this helps someone out there…

Peace!

PS: I know there’s a stigma against straight men who journal, but that stigma seems to be fading, so pay it no mind! Also, while it goes without saying, what you write doesn’t need to make sense to anyone other than yourself!

UPDATE: Lately I’ve also been leaving my journaling notebook opened to the latest entry and laid out in front of me throughout the day as much as possible. I find that this also helps to keep me at ease. Also, now I write on the top-left corner every day “age brings wisdom (usually).” Additionally, I’ve also started using the Freeform app on my iPhone to do “raw” drawings to reflect stressful moments in my life, as sometimes it’s easier to this instead of turning feelings into words. I call this visual journaling. I remind myself to do both this and mental journaling on the top-right corner of my physical journal daily now too. EDIT: I actually don’t do either much anymore, but I still note them daily in my journal, to remind myself that they’re still options.

TL;DR: I journal about 12 things daily: Sleep quality, “age brings wisdom (usually),” friends spoken to, what I’m eating, “the most (but not only) important thing is survival,” amount of bad flashbacks (roughly), thing I miss the most from Portugal, why I’m happy to be in the US (despite bad parts), biggest regret, 2nd-hand embarrassment moment, main thing(s) I’m doing, and reminders of mental & visual journaling. And this is all separate from any stream-of-consciousness stuff I might write for fun and/or additional stress relief. There’s actually a few other things I journal daily too (which I usually use the margins for), but those are too private to share here.

UPDATE 2: I’ve also started integrating “copying” into my journaling process, as in writing down other people’s poems that I like, inspirational quotes from people I look up to, lyrics to popular songs, etc.

UPDATE 3: I don’t really do this stuff anymore (but I’ll leave this post up in case anything here still helps anyone). These days, I just do stream-of-conscious notes, and sorta pretend like I am writing to a pen pal, to make it feel more meaningful. Listening to an album or playlist at the same time helps, even if I don’t end up writing much during that time.

Related: List Repository

My New Take On Journaling (Words In Your Mind)

  Throughout my life, I have been anxious about two things in particular:

1.Dwelling on the past (which ranges from little embarrassing moments to much bigger mistakes and regrets)

2.Worrying about the future (including things which I may come to regret down the road)

Over the last year in particular, I’ve begun to journal at a much more frequent rate, as many psychology experts agree that journaling is one of the most effective forms of anxiety-relief. While I’m happy to say that I’m at a much better place mentally now thanks to all the journaling I’ve done, up until very recently, something still felt like it was missing…

Part of my worrying of the future involves dwelling over the possibility that someday I may not be able to journal at all. I often find myself thinking about potential grim scenarios like ending up paralyzed, or something to that effect. I understand that the chances of such a thing ever happening are slim-to-none, but when you have a brain as anxious as mine, even the tiniest of possibilities need to be taken into account…

Because of this, I spent the last several days doing a deep-dive online into the psychology of journaling, to understand exactly why it’s proven to be effective for so many, including myself. My goal with this was to see if I could “reverse engineer” the psychological effects of journaling from the inside out, so that I could then figure out how to recreate the experience in a purely mental way, without having to worry about any physical limitations that the future may bring…

My research ultimately led me to stumbling upon a certain video just a few days ago (which I unfortunately forgot to save and can’t find again now), where the theory was stated that journaling works as well as it does because it allows us to literally and figuratively face our own negative thoughts, rather than constantly trying to distract ourselves from them. Distraction, while healthy in small doses, should never be seen as the ultimate “silver bullet solution” to something. You can only run away from your bad thoughts for so long. Eventually, you have to face them head-on. By transferring those thoughts into something tangible, like words, we are able to finally “detach” ourselves from said thoughts, and look at them from an outside perspective. With this new angle, we can then “attack” the thoughts, so to speak…

Obviously, certain bad thoughts are still gonna keep coming back in your brain, no matter how often your journal about them, but that’s not the point. Rather, the point is to just simply get yourself into the behavior of constantly turning trauma into something tangible, therefore assigning “meaning” to it, over and over. For what it’s worth, though, I’ve found that the more I “process” something, the less traumatic it feels in the long run, but I understand that there are outliers to this sort of circumstance…

So getting back to my initial question of the day: How do you recreate this experience in purely a mental way? After watching the aforementioned video, the answer became simple to me: You simply turn your thoughts into words in your head. For the last few days in particular, whenever I have a bad thought, I picture a standard word processor in my mind (white background with black ink) and then “type out a sentence” that summarizes whatever bad thought I’m having. Sometimes I just do a bullet point, rather than a complete sentence, or even just a singular word. Usually I imagine just one sentence at a time, but sometimes I imagine multiple at once (usually three at a time, cause it reminds me of haikus). My style of physical journaling is “bullet journaling” anyways, so envisioning things this way isn’t too far from what I do in reality.

Obviously, I’m still in the early days of applying this new technique, but thus far, it has proven to be quite effective. It’s my belief that, at least on a subconscious level, humans tend to associate the expression of thoughts with words in particular. If you think about, it makes sense. Humanity has been using the act of writing as our primary “expression tool” for so many generations now that it’s practically burned into our DNA/ instinct. So ultimately, the solution to “peace and acceptance” seems to be this: Turn feelings into words, and if you can’t do that in real life, do it in your head. I suppose some people would prefer to use symbols instead of words, depending on their culture, but ultimately, the principle is the same…

When it comes to mental health and self-improvement, I’ve been through this song and dance enough now to know that the journey is never gonna be linear. If my past is any indicator, this new method will probably work for me for a good while, and then I’ll burn out on it, like I do with everything else (I gradually write stories and poems less and less, for instance). That’s fine, though. Life is all about rotating back and forth between different stress-relievers anyways. The more techniques you gain along the way, the better. That said, I still felt the need to make this post cause this whole “literal words in your head” approach is something I don’t really see being talked about anywhere else online, and I feel like it’s a methodology that could probably help a lot of people…

Peace!

UPDATE: Something else I forgot to mention is that, at least in my experience, it’s a lot harder to burn out on journaling (be it real physical journaling or the “purely mental” journaling that I describe here) than it is to burn out on other hobbies. I think this is mainly because you can journal about literally anything, and humans are always having new, stream-of-conscious thoughts as is. Plus, as I said earlier in this post, it’s okay to revisit topics (especially traumatic stuff) every now and then when journaling. Basically, the key is to find something you can do under any circumstance, and never burn out on it. I see journaling (and mental journaling in particular) as ticking both of those boxes.

UPDATE 2: This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but another thing I do that’s sorta like mental journaling is pretend like I’m “livestreaming” in my head, if that makes sense, or pretend I’m being interviewed. Using my phone to make little reminders for things I wanna journal later also helps. Either way, phone notes or actual journal entries don’t have to make sense to anyone other than yourself.

UPDATE 3: Something else I didn’t think about before is that someone born blind wouldn’t be able to do this, unless they’re able to visualize brail in their head. I don’t know anyone born blind, so I guess I can’t say if that really works or not. Oh, well…

UPDATE 4: Rather than imagining a computer word processor, I’m starting to just imagine myself handwriting in cursive, like what I do in real life, or I alternate between the two.

UPDATE 5: I don’t really do this stuff anymore, but I’ll leave this post up in case anything here still helps anyone.

UPDATE 6: When it comes to worrying about the future, something that has helped me recently is realizing that the worst-case scenarios I imagine are usually just as unrealistic as delusions of grandeur, which helps me not the worry about them as much.

Related: Specific Tips for Journaling

Related: More About Mental Journaling