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

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Hopefully later, I'll find time to reply more substantially, but I just wanted to say that reading this comment, my first response was "hard relate".

I also struggle with a perfectionist mindset which causes me to get into a "failure-spiral", where the demoralisation from failing causes me to disengage and continue to fail.

"After reading your insight, maybe I'm sensing a change in my perspective. A positive change. Maybe I can LET GO of the feeling of failure and move on."

This is a really positive achievement, and I'm proud of you for it. However, it's important to remember that a quest like this never really stops. Regarding my own propensity to put more pressure on myself, and my frustration that I could neatly solve that problem, a friend compared the effort spent on self improvement to my heart beat — a rhythm that is essential to life, something that only finishes when my life does. This is to say that I'd wager that there will be a point where you will fail in your quest to let go of the feeling of failure. You will inevitably burn out and slip into old patterns of thinking that are harmful to you.

But something I cannot emphasise enough is that this is okay. It's a part of growth and healing. You've grown around this mentality for years, so it's going to take tenacity and time to unpick that and build something new. The important thing is to build the rhythm. When you find yourself failing to fail gracefully, give yourself some time and space to wallow, if you need it, then get back up and keep trying.

Maybe this perfectionist mentality is something you will never fully shake and that's okay, as long as you keep yourself grounded in where you're trying to go and who you're trying to be. Come back and read this post, or other writings of yours that remind you that you want to be more than what you are now. Genuine progress is so subtle and slow that it's hard to notice it when you're focussed on pushing forwards, but if you keep yourself grounded and know where you want to go, you will make progress.