Journaling: Cheaper Than Therapy

As the stigma around mental health subsides, there is still work we can do to understand ourselves and how to navigate our mental health. One way to do this is by journaling.

When I was in high school, my mother had a nervous breakdown and as a result, had to stay in a mental hospital. As you may know, adolescence can be a time of hormonal imbalance as your body adjusts to changes. Hormone changes, which can happen at any time in your life, have a huge impact on your mental state. When my mother was in the hospital, I was worried about what she was going through and how she would feel when she returned home. When this event started to affect my parents’ relationship and our family as a whole, I felt like there was so much out of my control and there was nothing I could do about it. Then one day, my dad suggested I keep a journal to get all my feelings out. I was surprised that my dad was even open to talking about feelings in that moment because I had never seen him cry or heard him talk about his feelings until we had to deal with such hard times. Talking openly about what your feeling is hard and sometimes exhausting, but when I took my dad’s advice I realized that it doesn’t always have to be.

Writing in a journal allowed me to, in a way, confide in someone without burdening them with my worries. It allowed me to ask questions for which I had no answers and as I wrote, I got a little closer to answers each day. The primary goal of journaling is to write without overthinking what you are saying. Once you start, just keep going until you feel like you have nothing left to say! No one will see it so you don’t have worry if it sounds smart or even coherent. When I was a teen I wrote huge scribbled messes of confusion and profanity just to get out all my aggression at the world. Now I am a bit more thoughtful, which just goes to show how much we change over time. This brings me to the secondary goal of journaling, which is to record your thoughts through the most significant moments of life. How do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been? Through journaling, I can look back and see all that my family and I have overcome and truly appreciate what we have today.

By Christina Olague, FCC Student, WRC Tutor