If You Journal for Mental Health, Here Are Some Effective Prompts

Keeping a journal isn’t an activity that’s just for people with a lot of time on their hands. In fact, it can be a priceless mental health tool, especially for people who have a lot going on. In fact, Asha Tarry, LMSW, psychotherapist and certified life coach and author of Adulting as a Millennial, has found that her clients who have mild to moderate anxiety and commit to writing in a therapy journal at least once a day notice improvements in their overriding thoughts, intrusive thinking and catastrophizing.

“We’ve recommended journaling to our clients for years, because it provides both a general mental outlet as well as a way to gain insight and perspective,” adds Janna Koretz, Psy.D., a psychologist and the founder of the therapy practice Azimuth.

The good news is, you don’t need any special talents or supplies to create a mental health journal. Whether you opt to put pen to paper, type away in the Notes app on your iPhone or record your thoughts in password-protected voice memos, there’s no one right way to create a mental health journal. Use the expert-approved prompts and advice below to see how a journal can transform the way you feel.

A journal that you use for self-reflection can help you recognize your behavior patterns. “It helps to ground people with the body-mind connection,” says Tarry. “So you can become more insightful as to what are your feelings and what do your feelings motivate you to do?”

These prompts should help you identify strong feelings, notice how they can result in physical sensations, and then bring awareness to your responsive behaviors:

• What are you feeling? Take a moment to really think about what emotions you’re experiencing right now. Maybe you didn’t realize how exhausted you were until you paused, or maybe something happened that made you feel really content.
• Where are you feeling your emotions? Slowly scan your body from the top of your head all the way to your toes and see if you can locate the origin of your feelings. If you're worried about a meeting, you may feel flutters in your gut. If you're angry from a fight you had with your partner, you might have a sensation in your lower spine or heat behind your knees.
• How did your feelings change during the day? If you’re journaling at night, describe how your feelings shifted over the course of the day. Did feelings of nervousness always appear around the same people? Did you forget about your anger when you got to work?
• What did you do with your feelings? Think back and note the actions you took when you had strong emotions. Did you send impulsive texts? Did you eat junk food? Did you shut down in bed under the covers?
• How would you like to respond in the future? Maybe, after carefully thinking about it, you’re happy with how you’ve been handling your emotions. If not, this is your chance to consider small steps you can take to change your behaviors.

Keeping a gratitude journal allows us to see the bright side of things even when we’re feeling down. “Our culture is so focused on identifying problems and fixing them that we forget to see the parts of life that are worth being deeply grateful for,” says Koretz. “When we allow ourselves to feel gratitude, we gain the perspective and mental space needed to feel joy despite any life difficulties we are experiencing, making our day to day easier and more enjoyable.”

She recommends starting with these prompts:

• Describe a small, everyday moment from today that you're grateful for and why it brightened your day.
• Reflect on a challenge you've faced recently. What unexpected positive outcomes or lessons emerged from this difficulty?
• Think of someone who has positively impacted your life. What specific qualities or actions of theirs are you most thankful for?

Often when we set goals, they’re too big and overwhelming to put into reality, but an intention journal trains us to focus on what we want. “Many people will set daily or weekly intentions, and use the journal to guide their actions during these time periods to ensure they reach their goals,” says Koretz. “It helps decrease distractibility and outside influences, so you don’t get sidetracked and lose sight of what is really important.”

Here are some prompts she’s found useful for an intention journal:

• What is one goal you'd like to accomplish this week? Break it down into three actionable steps you can take each day.
• Visualize your ideal day tomorrow. What intentions can you set now to help make that vision a reality?
• Identify a habit you'd like to build or break. What is one small, specific intention you can set to move towards this change?

This type of journal is the closest thing to a traditional diary. “Review journaling is essentially summarizing the day, noting how you felt, and considering what you might do differently next time,” says Koretz. “It tends to be a bit of a ‘stream of consciousness,’ but it can be a helpful tool for remembering important events that happened, as well as giving you a space to release pent-up emotion.”

If you’d rather not just think back on the day you just finished, she suggests these prompts for a review journal:

• Reflect on your past week. What were your top three accomplishments, and what factors contributed to your success?
• Describe a situation where things didn't go as planned. What lessons did you learn, and how might you approach a similar scenario differently in the future?
• Looking at your goals from the start of the month, how have you progressed? What adjustments, if any, do you need to make to stay on track?

Sometimes it’s easy to be swept away, go with the flow and lose sight of what matters most to you, but a values journal may help you get back on track. “Values journaling lets you take the time to really consider the ‘why’ behind what really matters to you,” says Koretz. “For example, ‘family’ may be very important to you, but are you driven by the value of being a caretaker, a provider, building a legacy or something else? As you journal about your day, you can reflect on which parts were and were not in line with your value system. Then, you can make changes to your behavior to get more aligned with your values, which are associated with a greater sense of well-being.”

To see what she means, try the prompts below:

• Think of a recent decision you made. How did this choice align with or diverge from your core values?
• Imagine you're at your own retirement party. What would you want people to say about how you lived your life? How does this relate to your values?
• Identify a value that's important to you (e.g., creativity, honesty, kindness). Describe three specific ways you could express this value in your daily life over the next week.

Your journal doesn’t need to follow a strict format to be beneficial to your mental health. Maybe one day you want to reflect on what you’re grateful for, and the next you’d rather do a body scan and get in tune with your feelings. Here are three random prompts that Tarry recommends to her clients:

• What are you thinking? When you’re overwhelmed, it can help to do a “brain dump” and pour out all of your thoughts, even if they don’t form proper sentences or cohesive paragraphs. Your journal is a safe container to place restless thinkings in.
• Do I have a safe person? It’s great to have someone that you trust and can open up to and who can help you process things that happen. As you write, consider how available the person is, how supportive they are, and times in the past when they gave you good advice.
• What did I dream about when I was sleeping? Keep your journal next to your bed and if you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, write them down. This can be especially helpful for people struggling with past traumas.

Starting any new activity can be intimidating, even if it’s something no one else will see (like a journal). “Remember, it’s just important to start,” says Koretz. “There is no right or wrong way to journal, but the more you can stick to it, the better. With practice, you’ll find the approach that is most helpful to you.” Use these tips to begin:

Sometimes journaling isn’t going to cut it. “If you’re having really strong, negative self-harming thoughts or thoughts of harming someone else, you don’t want to leave that in a journal or put that in a note in your app or in a voice note,” says Tarry. “People can have thoughts and not have plans or intentions, but that’s not something I think that if you’re having, you should deal with on your own. Those are risk factors for other things that you want to make sure you talk to a professional about.” Call your provider and share those sensations or thoughts, especially if they continue to grow, so that your provider can intervene. If you’re having an urgent crisis, call or text 988 to reach a crisis counselor serving the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.