journaling to keep a record

This post is part one in a “start writing” series of posts I plan to write. Here is a link to the series archive.

I will admit, journaling is not for everyone.

For some folks, it may increase the likelihood of the writer hyper-focusing on negative aspects of their life or past trauma. For some people who struggle with managing narcissistic personality traits, journaling may actually be a tool in convincing themselves that they are in the right, even when they may in fact be engaging in toxic behaviors and habits. This is the disclaimer. I am not trying to claim that journaling is a panacea that will cure all ails. Personally, it works wonders for me to write things down, to keep track of tasks that need to get done, and to process my mental turmoil, but I am not the one to know whether journaling is the right tool for you. You must find that out for yourself if you wish to do so. I am merely trying to share my decades-long experience with journaling for those who would like to give it a try but do not know quite where or how to begin.

This series of posts is for those who have wanted to start a journaling habit for a while, but they may need a bit of help with the logistics and/or motivation. If you’d like to start writing daily, but you either;

feel like you will not be able to keep up with the habit,
think you just don’t have the time,
don’t know where or how to start,
feel overwhelmed by the online journaling community’s artistic or aesthetic overload,

then, this series I plan to write may be right up your alley. If any of the above applies to you, and you are still interested or at least intrigued by the idea of keeping a daily journal, you might want to read on.

why journal?

Here are some reasons you may want to start or maintain a journaling habit:

to keep a record of your mood, state of mind, and events in your life as they happen
to plan and manage tasks in your daily life and to schedule events in advance
to express yourself, exercise your creativity, and have a space to be your authentic self
to process thoughts and emotions in a private, unfiltered way
to be more self-aware and discover areas in need of personal growth
to set goals, track your progress, and celebrate your achievements

There may be some other reasons I have missed, but personally, all of these reasons I mentioned above play a part in my decision to keep up with my daily writing habit. I have been working on creating a sort of hybrid (digital & analog) planning and journaling system that will meet my personal needs for years now. I am pretty happy with how I have things set up right now, but I’m sure there are areas in which my planning system could be improved.

Now, let’s start exploring why you may want to start a habit of writing daily:

1. journaling to keep a record of your mood, state of mind, and events in your life as they happen

I’m going to get a bit personal here, but this is not an AI-generated post, so I hope you find it refreshing, rather than bothersome, that I am openly choosing to be my authentic, flawed, human self.

I have been diagnosed with Bipolar II and have been receiving treatment for it for a decade by now. An interesting thing about experiencing extreme mood states so frequently is that it may distort your memory and ability to recall past events in a sinister way. Being mostly depressed for the majority of my recent years, I had times where I doubted my bipolar diagnosis, thinking I may have Major Depressive Disorder instead, because I could not remember a time when I ever felt anything except despair. I could not remember ever feeling joy.

But I must’ve, at some point, right?

Right. So I looked through my past journals (and I had a lot of them from over ten years of journaling!) and collected evidence about myself.

I’ve read parts of the DSM V-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for mental disorders, for those who may be unfamiliar,) that pertains to depression and bipolar disorders. I’d also considered the possibility of Borderline Personality Disorder, just to see whether it would be a better explanation of my symptoms.

I checked off the relevant criteria for each of these three disorders and the best fit ended up being Bipolar II to explain my mood states, behavior, and other symptoms. So, through journaling on-and-off, I was able to collect data about myself about past happenings from the perspective of my then-self. This data was crucial evidence that my distorted view of the past was objectively incorrect; I was being misled by my mental state at the time.

While reading through past journal entries, I found out that I had felt joy before. I did experience happy memories. I discovered that, once upon a time, I must have had genuinely pleasant days where I did not feel tortured every hour by some anxious or self-loathing train of thought. This was eye-opening.

I am still not “cured,” neither do I think being entirely free from depression is a reasonable expectation from my treatment plan. But I can use my self-awareness and self-reflection skills to make sure I counter, or fight back, against my inner voice. I am not helpless against the cruel, inconsolable, feral child in my head who keeps tearing my sense of self-worth to pieces.

I want to keep each post to a manageable length, so I will save the remaining “why journal?” reasons for another time. Stay tuned.