How Journaling Helped Me Through 2020
Setbacks and disappointments are normal.
You've experienced them in all parts of your life. What helps you work through them, so you can pick up the pieces and start again?
Do you call your BFF?
Dance it out in your living room?
Go for a run?
Journal through your inner monologue?
When you have a bad day or something doesn't go quite right, there's always an opportunity to begin again.
What can help the most, is first working through the discomfort, disappointment, and frustration. Finding the thing that works for you to let those feelings go, is essential to moving forward. I find journaling works best for me.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 shelter in place order I found myself in the deepest darkest mental space I've ever been.
I'm quite sure I was clinically depressed when I moved to New York City in 2002 and had no friends except my boyfriend. This Covid-19 experience in 2020 was so much worse for me.
The first week of shelter in place I could barely function. We watched a lot of TV and most of it felt like a blur.
At that point I’d barely started my book project,
it was something I was working on but didn't have a set deadline. I realized as shelter-in-place grew longer that it would give me more time to write,
I didn't realize that it would be my salvation.
At the beginning of shelter in place I needed to do an hour of yoga everyday just to make it through the day. That wasn't going to be sustainable sharing our open floor plan house with the other two humans in my family. I needed something else that I would help me cope, work through the troubled thoughts in my head, and keep me from shutting down completely.
I became more consistent with journaling every morning. Words flowed out of me and onto the page.
7+ weeks into shelter-in-place I reflected on my mental state and discovered my mental state was better than before quarantine began! I found that surprising considering the dark place I was in 7 weeks before.
It was thanks to my consistent journaling, that allowed me to be an observer of my thoughts instead of being overrun by them.
It gave me a safe space to process and talk through what I was going through without feeling like a crazy person.
That was exactly what I needed.
When helps you work through frustration, disappointment, or a setback?
If you’d like to make journaling part of your process, but don’t know where to start. Get my free Thoughtful Journaling Guide. It walks you through the most common things stopping you from journaling and gives you a simple five step process to make journaling an easy and enjoyable thing to do. Click Here to Get Your Free Thoughtful Journaling Guide
Kerstin Phillips is a Life Coach & Yoga Instructor, E-RYT 200 living in Berkeley, California with her daughter, husband, and kitty, Pesto.
She loves to journal, read, do all things yoga, and hike in Tilden.
Kerstin guides women and non-binary folx out from the shadows so they can embrace their true selves, feel confident in their decisions, and define their purpose, because everyone is valuable and no one deserves to be overlooked.
When a million thoughts pop up each time you want to try something new, about how difficult it’s going to be, allllllll the things that can go wrong, and how you’re just not ready, that’s your reptilian brain at work.