The Daily Mental
Health Journal
A Tool to Help You
Develop Self-Awareness
and Stress-Resilience
This tool is uncopyrighted. Please feel free to share it on your
website with an attribution and a link to our website.
THE WELLNESS SOCIETY | WWW.THEWELLNESSSOCIETY.ORG
Introduction
The purpose of the journaling is to be able to identify and analyze your thinking, emotional and
behavioral patterns, but also to nd ways to adapt, change and manage them.
Writing promotes self-awareness and self-understanding, as well as personal development,
unconditional self-acceptance and goal achievement.
It can also help you release tension and bring clarity about the situation you’re in or the problem
you’re facing.
Journaling can be used in many dierent ways and situations, but the one we’re addressing here
is writing things down when you’re experiencing distress and challenging emotions.
Benefits of Journaling
It helps you slow down your thoughts
You cannot write as fast as you think. Writing can slow down your thoughts, helping you feel less
overwhelmed by the number of thoughts you’re being ooded with.
It helps reduce rumination
Rumination refers to the tendency to repeatedly focus your attention on distressing thoughts,
mental images, stories, memories and emotions. You spiral deeper and deeper into repetitive
cycles of mental suering. This spiralling process impacts your mood, increases anxiety, and
leads to uncomfortable physical sensations.
You may ruminate because you believe that if you keep analyzing things in detail - going over
them again and again and again - you might nd a solution or have a way to x or change
something. But this is rarely the case!
Rumination can be very intense and extremely dicult to get out of. By slowing down your
thoughts, journaling helps you reduce this unhelpful thinking habit.
It helps you gain clarity
Your thoughts can move extremely fast, and by deciding to write things down, you can choose
what to pay attention to.
After you’ve nished writing, you can look at what you’ve written and decide what you want to do
with what’s there. Remember: you don’t have to solve or manage every single thought right then
and there.
Very often after looking at your written thoughts, you’ll nd yourself thinking: “Yeah, I might be
catastrophising here” and “That thought might not actually be true”. In this way, journaling helps
you gain clarity and put things into perspective.
It helps you feel calmer
After your journaling session, you can often feel that a burden has been taken o your shoulders.
You have a clearer mind and a calmer body.
THE WELLNESS SOCIETY | WRITTEN BY ROXANA PETRUS
How to Journal
When you want to write, you can use the structure on the next page.
You can either:
Journal in dicult moments
Set aside 15 minutes every day to connect with your thoughts and emotions
In some situations, it’s easier or more ecient to write on your phone. For example, if
you’re at work and have a dicult emotion, you can take a few minutes to write what’s going
on. Later when you’re at home, you can focus on better understanding what caused that
feeling and how you can manage it better next time.
When writing, your writing skills, grammar, and punctuation don’t matter. Try not to let these
factors inuence you.
Positive Journaling
It’s also important to remember that you don’t just have to journal when you feel bombarded
with dicult thoughts and emotions. You can also journal in positive moments.
Here are some ideas to put into practice:
A record of your steps and progress regarding a goal that you set for yourself
An ongoing achievement list
A daily gratitude journal
A journal of positive memories
An open list with your favorite quotes and inspirational sayings
Positive journaling is a scientically proven way to boost your mood.
If you’re interested in developing a long-lasting positive journaling habit, check out step three
of The Mental Wellbeing Toolkit.
THE WELLNESS SOCIETY | WWW.THEWELLNESSSOCIETY.ORG
The Daily Mental
Health Journal
Write down your thoughts and emotions below
If you experienced a challenging emotion, can you identify any potential triggers?
How intense was your emotion on a scale of 1-10? Approximately how long did it last?
How did you respond to these thoughts/emotions (e.g., what behavior did you do,
what strategy did you use to cope)?
How would you like to respond in future?