This article also contains prompts to help you deal with anxiety, stress, and depression
In the past week, several stories filled the airwaves of people embracing the cold hands of death. Not by accident, but by suicide. The stories were heart-rending and stirred up all kinds of conversations. While some threw blames, others advised, some others simply stayed aloof and questioned themselves.
We have to recognize that we have Mental Health Crisis on our hands.
Mental Health Crisis is real. It is not a cliche, a facade, or something a number of people are saying or writing about to feel relevant.
I even think it’s another Pandemic that we need to urgently deal with today. Like, right now.
With research showing that one in four people suffer from one mental illness or the other, urgent action needs to be taken.
Are you battling depression, stress, anxiety, or even suicidal thoughts?
Here’s how writing can improve your mental health
When I speak of writing, I speak of therapeutic writing or journaling for the self. I have also included prompts to help you in this regard.
- Writing can help you identify your stressors
Stress causes a strain on your mental wellness. You may be in between jobs trying to secure a better one, or preparing for a professional examination, or dealing with some relationship challenges; all these create stress and tension. It weighs on the mind in a way only a few things can.
Many times, we keep going through the motions, feigning a smile, and saying ‘All is well’ without addressing the elephant in the room. Identify your stressors.
What is really making you stressed? Can you put a finger on it?
Journaling helps you do this.
PROMPT 1: List at least 10 situations/events/people that make you feel stressed. Then, DESCRIBE WHY these things stress you so much. How best do you think you can eliminate or minimize these stressors? (Write it down).
Many times, we keep going through the motions, feigning a smile, and saying ‘All is well’ without addressing the elephant in the room. Identify your stressors.
- Writing helps you SHIFT your perspective
Typically, when going through stress or dealing with anxiety, people seek a means of escape. Only that sometimes, the ‘escape’ becomes more of a pit, a black hole that sinks them deeper into their depression. Some seek an escape via alcohol, pornography, partying, scrolling mindlessly through social media, and so on.
Journaling helps you SHIFT your perspective. A change in perspective will change your mood and ultimately, your action.
PROMPT 2: Open a Victory Journal. A Victory Journal should typically consist of a list of personal victories or testimonies you’ve experienced recently or that you consider significant. Write at least 10 of these. List them out and describe why they are so significant and how these testimonies shaped your life.
Journaling helps you SHIFT your perspective. A change in perspective will change your mood and ultimately, your action.
- Writing helps you to track patterns
Scrolling through the timeline of many of those who took their own lives recently, there was a pattern. A pattern was evident in their writings. While many may not have seen it until they did the irreversible, it was always there.
Writing helps you to identify patterns in your own thoughts, patterns you may not be aware of. It exposes you to how you really think, how you see issues, and how these issues affect you.
More importantly, it opens you up to how to deal with those issues promptly.
Are you aware of your patterns? Are you aware of how you think and process the daily events of your life?
PROMPT 3: Pick one of the major stressors you listed in Prompt 1 above and journal about it for the next 7 days. As each day passes, read again and notice the patterns, see how you have improved in your view and perspective. At the end of the 7th day, revisit the entire journal and see how you feel.
Writing helps you to identify patterns in your own thoughts, patterns you may not be aware of. It exposes you to how you really think, how you see issues, and how these issues affect you.
- Writing helps you build awareness
Writing utilizes both the left and right brain. That means your entire mental faculty is always in use when you write. As you attempt to journal about your daily experiences or recall certain memories from your life, you’ll realize that you will be ‘in the moment’ as you write/type. That awareness is crucial for your mental health.
Usually, life seems like a roller coaster of several events and happenings cascading into an avalanche. But writing helps you ‘stop’ and build awareness. The more you do this, the more in control of your thoughts and actions you feel.
PROMPT 4: Describe what you are thinking or feeling right now. Describe your day, and try to recall one event that happened or one conversation you recently got into.
Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. — Charles R. Swindoll
- Writing helps you evolve new and empowering meanings
Life is 10% of what happens to us, how we react or respond to it forms the remaining 90%. How you respond to the matters you are currently dealing with will determine whether or not you come out feeling new, positive, and empowered, or you fall deeper into the cesspit of loathing yourself.
What can do you in this regard?
Review what that situation means to you.
PROMPT 5: Imagine you were someone else (maybe a Parent, Teacher, Life Coach) and you are giving advice or counsel to someone who is currently in your situation. What will you tell the person? How will you empathize with that person and offer help? Write down everything that comes to mind.
I have taken the time to write extensively about this and to provide prompts to help you kickstart the process. Your mental wellness is your personal responsibility.
Take out 10–15 minutes daily to carry out these exercises. Studies have revealed that those who practice these techniques of journaling for 10–15 minutes daily experienced a significant reduction in stress levels, a more positive outlook on things, and a general sense of well-being.
Above all, you must guard your heart with all diligence. You must police the thoughts that travel through your mind.
Therapeutic Writing helps you not only to recognize the toxic thoughts in your mind but also helps you to eliminate them.
