Overcome Overthinking: Discover the Benefits of Journaling for Your Mind

It’s not uncommon to get caught up in your thoughts. Especially if you are prone to overthinking. But as those thoughts build and build it’s easy to become stressed. Thankfully, it’s never been more simple to rid yourself of those thoughts and anxiety. 

As you get older, it can be alot easier to become anxious through overthinking. It always begins with one thought snowballing into another. Then the next thing you know you’re left feeling overwhelmed and stressed. This is something I struggled with too. And for the longest time I held onto those negative feelings because I had no clue how to rid myself of them. Then one day, I came across this book, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. 

The Artist’s Way is an eye opening read because it teaches the significance of journaling. Having a journal isn’t just a cute replacement for a filing cabinet of memories. Journaling is a form of self care. I would even relate it to meditation in the sense that it helps you clear your mind. The number one thing Cameron encourages in her book are the morning pages. Three pages written by you first thing in the morning about whatever is on your mind. 

At first, I didn’t understand why she was so adamant about three little pages, but nonetheless, I did them. The immediate wave of relief and calm you feel after writing those three pages and closing your notebook is an unforgettable experience. It’s as if all the cortisol you woke up with exits your body through the pen as you write.

Personally, I struggle with anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and am a frequent overthinker. In a simple translation, my brain is in constant overload and I am used to a state of feeling overwhelmed. I understand from an outside perspective how crazy it must sound that writing on three pages of paper can alter one’s emotions so drastically. I too was a skeptic until I tried it for myself. 

I had begun reading The Artist’s Way because I had been feeling creatively blocked for a while. I was just about to start film school and felt none of my film ideas were good enough. I wasn’t even remembering my dreams, which used to provide me so much inspiration for films. So in desperation, I started reading and did whatever Cameron said.

After the relief the first day of journaling brought me, I was excited to do it again the next morning. However I was completely shocked to wake up to remember multiple dreams from that night’s sleep for the first time in months. As I continued my daily journaling I realized I was manually clearing my head and anxieties simply by writing them out.

Writing your thoughts down on whatever is overwhelming you in the moment, allows you to thoughtfully think through and understand why you are feeling that way and realize whether or not it is rational for you to be overwhelmed about it. Without even realizing it, you are fixing the problem you are writing about. 

Students of Cameron’s have credited the morning pages to their shift in perspective and emotions as well. After experimenting with the morning pages for himself, Oliver Burkemen, A writer for The Guardian, reviewed them by saying “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised at how powerful Morning Pages proved, from day one, at calming anxieties, producing insights and resolving dilemmas. After all, the psychological benefits of externalizing thoughts via journalling are well-established.”

There is no right or wrong way to journal. Sometimes there would be one thought torturing me that I just had to get onto the page. Other times, I just wrote about what I was doing that day. However no matter how different the subjects I was writing about were, they always had one thing in common. Writing them helped me understand and make discoveries about why I was feeling the way I did. Writing them helped me realize how my overthinking was simply just that, overthinking. There was no substance to those thoughts other than my worries and “what ifs” which were conjured up by imaginary fears and insecurities. 

Of course we’re going to have worries and fears, we’re human. But journaling gives us an escape from and a place to put and learn from those dooming thoughts. If something is on your mind, write it down. Do not stress about not writing the write thing or not doing it right. It’s impossible to journal wrong. 

No matter what you write, as you write, you will find you begin to naturally connect one thought to another and begin to realize why you might be feeling a certain way. You will find a lot of the time you will subconsciously create solutions to your problems just because you have given yourself the time and space to write out your troubling thoughts. So give journaling a try. It will make you feel relaxed, stress free, and like a new you because writing down your thoughts keeps them on the page and out of your head.

NOTE: The morning pages are just one topic discussed in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. In the book she guides readers through discovering the truth behind their creative blocks along with guiding them through unblocking their creative minds by partaking in creative activities. 

As a product I have personally used and seen results from, I recommend giving it a try if it is something you are interested in.