If you know me, you know I rarely leave the house without my journal. There was a time when I used to be terrified to bring it to work and school; I’d imagine someone mischievously poking through my bag and finding it, proceeding to read it aloud to a derisive room of people who would point and laugh at me—the usual. I was so afraid of anyone knowing what went on inside my head (there’s a LOT). However, once I realized that journaling gave me emotional clarity and stress relief, I found it hard not to bring my journal places. What if I feel anxious on the train when the crazy, shoeless man talks about Democrats being Salem witches reincarnated? Eventually, my journal dependence reached a point that outweighed my paranoia. Now, it is my little companion.
If you were to open my journal, you’d see a lot of cursive-slob handwriting, dates, time stamps, bullet points, agendas, geometric doodles, coffee stains, and the most frequent words: “I feel.” I am constantly writing how I feel in my journal, and often I am writing how I feel when I don’t feel so good. I write the most when I am anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated, irritated, hormonal, sick, in despair, having a panic attack, or just tired. Sometimes I write tens of pages at a time if I am really going through it. When I finish journaling, the feelings I have just poured out onto paper often change to some degree: I feel less of them—that is the beauty of journaling. It’s like talking something out with a friend and finding comfort in the fact that every feeling, awful or wonderful, is temporary.
For anxious overthinkers like myself, life can become overwhelming very quickly. Sometimes, all it takes is one extra piece of information, one extra task, one extra event in the day, and everything suddenly goes from somewhat manageable to: “Wait, let’s just all be quiet and take a break before I start to cry, please.” Personally, I find I get anxious when I don’t have enough time to process information, or I don’t have enough information in general. Journaling helps me both process information and brainstorm information, which makes me feel like I have a little more control over my situation.
This morning, I journaled at 5:00 a.m. This is not a normal occurrence, but I just so happened to be wide awake, with various stressors and details of the day flashing before my eyes. You know that feeling when all your responsibilities are jumbling around in your brain, seemingly growing in size by the second? I got up, washed my face, put some clothes on, and sat back down in bed. I took out my journal and started to unfold all the events I had today, tomorrow, and this weekend. I also wrote about the feelings that came up for me when I thought about these things. “I’m anxious because I’ll have five days in a row of being mentally ‘on’ for twelve plus consecutive hours, and I just want to be able to manage everything but also have a moment to relax.” Insert dramatic sigh. Sometimes there is no direct solution, but by writing this I realized I needed to take this week day-by-day, even hour-by-hour, and focus on being present rather than looking at the week as a whole, which is much more overwhelming.
A Joan Didion quote about journaling I have always resonated with, for better or for worse, is the following:
“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”
The most wondrous thing about journaling is that it may not solve your problems, but it can help you look after yourself. It is especially useful if you are one who tends to get swept up in the incomprehensibility of what is seemingly ordinary to everyone else.
Brenna Sheets is a graduate student in Emerson College’s Writing and Publishing M.A. program. She is currently a teacher, specializing in middle school history. Her hobbies include going on long walks, watching bad television, reading, and writing.
