Whenever I get asked for a single thing that a girl can do to cope with all the emotional struggles that come from her feminine development, my answer remains constant. Start a feelings/mood journal and write in your journal every day, without fail. Writing in your feelings journal is the path to the quickest breakthroughs in your emotional development.
You use a feelings journal to record how things that happen make you feel on the inside. Over time you will recognize patterns in those feelings. Use the awareness to change how the outside factors affect the way you feel. Your feelings journal is a tool that will help therapy progress faster too.
Let’s take a closer look at the feelings journal and how this powerful tool can help your progress.
What Is A Feelings Journal?
A feelings journal is a way to focus on, celebrate, and track your emotional life.
Many younger people keep a general diary. Perhaps they were inspired by a character on their favorite tv show or maybe their teacher required it as an assignment. In the U.K., “diary” is even an interchangeable term with “personal calendar.”
However, a feelings journal/emotion diary/mood notebook is much more specific than that. It’s a great practice to start whether you’re regularly journaling already or you stopped journaling long ago.
You can expound on “why” as much or as little as you want. But the point is not to record what happened. It is simply to jot down what your heart and guts are wanting to say.
Where Can You Get A Feelings Journal?
You can purchase pre-designed notebooks filled with emotion-exploring exercises (Etsy and booksellers like Barnes & Noble or Half Price Books have a wonderful variety of styles that won’t break the bank), or find free mood journal templates online.
If you are looking for a notebook to use as your journal, here is this cute Pink Femme notebook on Amazon. I’ll be adding more notebooks soon.
However, the truth is all you need is paper and something to write with.
Typing on a phone or computer is also a viable option if that’s what you have nearby. But consider trying a pen and paper if you can. There is something visceral and powerful and important about connecting to your inner life through your handwriting.
How Do You Write A Feelings Journal?
First and foremost: THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO DO YOUR FEELINGS JOURNAL.
Again, you can either scribble or type. The virtual way saves trees and might make your bag lighter. On the other hand, the slower rate of the old-school method gives your brain more time to marinate on what you’re writing. It also allows greater freedom and individualization.
Regardless, you can explore the same daily questions about what you’re feeling and how that manifests for you physically in your body.
Or you might set a timer on your phone and pick a representative emoji at regular intervals.
Or you could create a chart to rank how intense your feelings are and what kinds of things set them off at what hours.
Get creative. Embrace google. Find what works best for you.
Who Is A Feelings Journal For?
This awesome tool is for a person of any age (as long as you’re old enough to, ya know, write), any gender, culture, religion, creed, educational level, or even hair color (including those with the hair shade of “invisible”).
It’s for anyone who wants to improve their life through self-awareness and validation.
So… basically, it’s for everyone.
You don’t have to be a writer, you just have to be you. Some days the emotion might not even be expressed in words- colors, doodles and garbled messes are also welcome! Whatever will help you to process and get out what you’re going through is completely valid. Good or bad are banished categories when doing this work.
What Does A Feelings Journal Help With?
It helps release whatever is going on in your head and your heart. You don’t have to repress, ignore or carry the burden of anything. You can express it and move forward.
It helps clarify where you are from a mental and emotional perspective. Once you have a few entries, it becomes easy to identify patterns and triggers. Then you can work on improvement. But first, you have to be able to see what’s happening. The more information you have, the more you can enjoy the present and be better prepared for the future.
If you are looking for more lifestyle-related posts here on Pink Femme, you can find them all here.
Ms. Edith,
This is another brilliant, yet commonly overlooked aspect that many people may not be aware of, especially since actually ‘handwriting’ a journal entry is probably a foreign concept to younger aspiring girls today. But even even if it’s typing, or even as you stated, using ’emoji’s’, anything that documents your feelings after a day or week to record. The point of the journal is that it is ‘personal’! So correct, it does not have to involve being a great writer or poet, just a way to document your feelings over time. Which means it can consist of any random entry on a given day whether it was a nice dress you saw a woman wearing on the train or maybe even the inner desire when getting a glimpse of an attractive man, who you could not help glancing at and even fantasizing about for a few seconds. This is definitely a constructive and beneficial activity for doing on a regular basis for any girl that helps further solidify indentity and a positive outlet