Does anyone do this? I have so many thoughts going on in my head. I'm wondering if there is some point to writing them all down. Is this journalling? I"m not even sure. And is it helpful?

I already have a book where I write what I'm thankful for, and another on achievements.

Hi Katyonthehamsterwheel,

I have and do in different forms and found it to my be helpful. I can have "all" those thoughts in my head and when I write them down on paper the number of those thoughts reduce, and sometimes moves from the head to paper - not all the time and if not, the intensity of the thoughts is not as great.

One type of journal I was to write was three things to look forward each day.- it was a particularly bad day and I wrote the thoughts were in my head. You can only imagine what I wrote down. Suffice to say they were not positive which is what my psychologist was hoping for. Knowing that, I took each thought that I had written down and turned it into the opposite things and therefore was a positive.

I don't know how well it works for everyone except that it worked for me.

Tim

PS. Some of the journaling ideas from my psychologist I initially found difficult, so I would use google to get ideas. It did take some time to begin to work.

Katy,

i find writing down my thoughts helps. It is up to you there are no rules.

Some people just do free writing , writing without stopping and editing.

Other people like to wrote about what’s happened and how the felt,

Whatever works for you. I like to date my entries.

Everyone has their own way of journaling.

Quirky

Thankyou both for your replies. Yes, I was hoping if I wrote stuff down it might lessen the constant spiel in my head. It gives me tinnitus all this useless thinking. I did do a bit of googling and I read that just venting or wallowing through writing is not helpful though, so I'm not quite sure how to go about it. I like the idea of turning a negative into a positive, but I'm not quite sure how that would work if I just want to get my thoughts out about some trying circumstances I've been dealing with. I'll think on it (some more thinking lol). arrrrggghhh

Hi Katyonthehamsterwheel,

Thank you for your post and I can see that you've already gotten some really helpful answers and feedback. I personally am a big fan of journalling and found that it's helped immensely.

I honestly think that even if you were to journal and vent, this can be helpful. It might just be what you need! I think if there was a problem, it would be around constantly journalling about the same thing over and over - which given that you don't journal, isn't really a problem :)

For me personally, I have a journal that is actually full of venting and rambling and negativity, and then like Tim said, I have entries that are more positive (or gratitude journals). It's completely up to you how you'd like to start, but I really encourage you to ignore whatever articles you read - journalling in itself has so much good research behind it anyway.

RT

Katyonthehamsterwheel,

Maybe you could just try to write and see how you go.

I think writing about venting can be helpful.

There are no rules just what helps you.

If you google structured journaling there are a few ides there.

Some of the sentence beginnings I like is

If my feeling could talk it would say

what I would want to say back to this feeling is.

It also encourages at the beginning to write a date and time, I find that helpful and to write 3 words that would describe your feelings.

Of course you may not want a structure , but I find on some days I just do free writing, then on another day I may do some sentence beginnings and on other days I make Lists. I am a listmaker. Could be something simple like

Things I like to do

things that scare me

Things I find frustrating

These are just showing you how many ideas there are for writing in a journal.

Have a go, do what works for you and after a week see if you want to make changes.

Quirky