How To Journal For Better Mood

Do you get triggered easily and have a hard time bringing your emotions back to normal? If so, journaling might be your solution.

The root of many Childhood PTSD symptoms is emotional dysregulation. We all get dysregulated sometimes, and we all eventually return to regulated. However, trauma survivors suffer from more triggers, the amplitude of dysregulation is larger, and it takes survivors longer to bring emotions back to the norm. For all these reasons, managing emotions well is crucial to thriving post-trauma.

One of the most effective ways to get back to a calm emotional state is to release fears and resentments by taking it out of our heads and put it on paper. We basically “free-write” our thoughts in a journal, which is why this therapy is called “ freewriting.” Freewriting allows us to be our own therapist and let our inner wisdom guide us. By writing down our thoughts and feelings, we not only validate how we feel but quite often, we come to see the absurdity of some of the thoughts that so troubled us a minute ago. Instead of automatically believing everything we think, we give ourselves the chance to review the thoughts objectively and decide if they are thoughts to keep or change.

“Journaling is like whispering to one’s self…