How to Use Planners and Journaling to Manage Anxiety and Depression

Living in a society that’s in a constant race can leave people feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and depressed. If you think that you deal with continuous racing thoughts and suffer from emotions that contribute to anxiety and stress, it’s having an impact on your mental health and needs to be addressed.

Planners and journals can help people write down and express their thoughts and feelings. There is much evidence that suggests that in doing so, you can help combat anxiety and reduce stress and depression in support of your mental health.

In your younger years, you may have kept a diary or journal as a way to write about your fears, struggles, and dreams. But even as you grow, you can still utilize this same method to manage and deal with your daily challenges. Many seniors struggle with stress and depression due to aging, forgetting what once helped them deal with their feelings.

Here is all you need to know about using planners and journaling as a way to manage anxiety and depression. 

Benefits of Journaling and Planning

Doing something without a plan can feel overwhelming and stressful right off the bat. When you can plan ahead, you can integrate ways to bring solutions and solve whatever the problem is immediately. 

Writing things down in a journal or a planner can be a helpful tool in managing your mental health. It helps you to do some of the following:

• Prioritize your concerns
• Express your fears
• Reduces mental distress
• Track daily symptoms to recognize triggers
• Learn how to control and manage feelings
• Provide an opportunity to identify negative thoughts
• Combat negative thoughts with positive self-talk and corrective behaviors for your well-being.

For example, you may become anxious over your declining memory as you age. When you journal, you may uncover that a trigger is your struggle with technology, particularly your television remote. 

When you have these types of problems and feel out of control, stressed out, or anxious, it affects your mental health. Keeping a journal and planning out your next course of action helps you quickly pinpoint the cause of your problem and work out how to resolve it.

How To Use Journals and Planners

There is no wrong way to set up and use Erin Condren’s flexible planners. But here are some steps to take when you are beginning and don’t know where to start:

• Start by making a decision and dedicating yourself to writing at least once a day. Set aside just a few minutes to write so that you can get the hang of it (and set up a schedule to do it regularly).

• Set a place where a pen and journal/planner are handy to write down thoughts quickly. You can also utilize your smartphone to jot down things as they come to you throughout the day before your scheduled time to journal.

• There’s no specific structure to a journal; only when you move to the planning stage do you need to worry about setting and implementing goals. Starting with a journal means you’re not limited to what you write down – draw pictures, write bullet points, express your feelings, and let the words and ideas flow freely from your mind to the paper.
  • If you need some ideas for what to write or prompts, consider the following:
    • Write what you’re grateful for;
    • Write what happened throughout your day;
    • Write down what’s bothering you;
    • Write down things you remember from your past;
    • Write down what you ate/drank throughout the day (stress can sometimes be related to your nutrition)
    • Write down your schedule for the day (planner/organization)

• You don’t have to share your journals or plans with anyone; they are only for you. So feel free to find a creative method that works for you to help identify your feelings and relieve stress.

Manage Your Anxiety and Depression with Writing

Writing forces you to slow down and organize your thoughts since you can only focus on one thing at a time as you write them down. You can gain a lot of clarity over challenges and things going on within your life, so you can identify patterns and then plan a way to fix them. 

Planners can also help manage time, which is another way to overcome stress if you have a very busy schedule. You can set up your daily, weekly, or monthly schedule to organize your days/weeks/months and help you stay on task.

If you find your mental health is still suffering, seek the help of a medical professional. Journaling can help, but in some cases, it may not be enough, and you may need treatments along with your journaling and planning, such as counseling, therapy, or medication.