Ask Lemmy

31122 readers

3032 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world

TheSaneWriter@lemm.ee

TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com

Asudox@lemmy.world

lemmy_bot@lemmy.world

beefbaby182@lemmy.world

ModeratorCan@lemmy.world

neidu3@sh.itjust.works

KaneLivesInDeath@lemmy.world

asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev

candyman337@lemmy.world

candyman337@sh.itjust.works

Does journaling really help to maintain a profound psychological state? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by uncurable_utopia@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've( 22M ) been an overthinker for almost my entire life. Not only that, I have hyper-anxiety and overwhelmness. I haven't been scheduled with a psychiatrist so far.

A few months ago, I seriously realized that I was wasting my time on devices( phones, laptops etc) and haven't been paying attention to real life and responsibilities. Because I had made devices as a way to escape from reality.

Then I made a schedule to maintain that included low and controlled use of devices and some other things. Journaling was also a part of that.

I began to write my daily events on a journal app in my phone. I had a physical diary that I started to use to write down advices, methods, facts, important instructions that I was gathering from youtube. That diary is now filled around 60%.

I continued writing my daily journal in the app for 1.5 months and then lost the drive to continue for unknown reason. Consider this one of my main psychological problem. I lose drive very quickly.

Then I realized that, when I continued journaling, I had more control of my overall daily activity that I used to do. I had less laziness, more energy, more drive, healthy sleep schedule etc. And now, it seems that I've sunken into my peak rabbithole again.

Now I'm seeking advices from people who turned their life in a positive way by writing journals as a first step. Any other advices except journaling is also welcomed.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Acamon@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

It depends on what you overthink. If it's anxiety and stress stuff, you might be right that doing that with some safe support (friends, partners, professionals) might be wiser. But there are some techniques for quantifying and putting into perspective worries. Something that a therapist recommended and has helped me is to track specific, measurable and reasonably immediate anxieties, then tracking if they were justified or not.

So I don't bother writing down vague big concerns like "maybe I'm a terrible person / it's the apocalypse / etc" but if I'm stressed about an upcoming event, interaction, or outcome I can write it down, record how anxious I am on 1-10 and then the day after it happened I record how big a deal the consequences of it actually are. And for me at least, I would often be very worried about something, but afterwards realise that it didn't really matter much. Even if it went badly, it was just a bit awkward, it didn't actually make my life worse or ruin anything, unlike the anxiety which impacted my life much more and for much longer. If I spend a lot of mental energy and make myself miserable trying to avoid some relatively minor negative outcome, then the medcine is worse than the disease.

But my main type of overthinking isn't really anxiety related, it's just not thinking clearly about what I'm interested in exploring (adhd related, probs). And journalling has been great for that, I don't worry about getting it right or it even making sense, I just start writing about an idea. And even if I repeat or contradict myself it doesn't matter, I'm not writing a book or blog, this is just for me. And having to slow down my thinking to writing speed, and consider what I'm saying, helps me actually pursue a train of thought rather than just thinking chaotically about a topic.