How Journaling Can Help You Manage and Cope with Depression

Tracking your symptoms is just one reason to use your journal. Read on for other creative ways your notebook can be a tool for your mental health.

For many reasons, journaling can be an effective tool in the battle of day-to-day experiences of depression. In my experience, journaling has helped me stay healthy and organized, feel empowered, be more aware of what works for me, and stay accountable for my mood and symptoms.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I started to write in a journal every night for many reasons: to express the sadness of depression, to process the anxiety that I wouldn’t get into a “big ticket” college, and to explore the conflicting feelings of my parents’ divorce.

I’ve always been a writer, but you don’t have to be to get something out of journaling. Anyone with a paper and pen or a computer can benefit from that cathartic release that comes from analyzing the moods and struggles of your depression. 

In this piece, I share a few ideas for things you might want to include in your journal. But in the end, this is something very personal and individualized to you. Your journal can be a document of your very own creation to help pull you out of the depths of despair when you need it the most.

So, try some of these tips and see how journaling may work for you!

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1. Tracking your response to medications

When you’re experimenting with different medications for a mood disorder, it can be hard to keep it all straight. Each one may have different side effects or benefits. So, you might want to document how you feel on a certain medication. Did it make you feel better or worse?

When I was in high school and trying a lot of antidepressant medications, I tried to keep track of everything to make it easier for my psychiatrist to figure out what was happening to me.

I could pull out my journal and show the psychiatrist that these pills weren’t helping — it was tangible proof that the Zoloft or Paxil or whatever was only making me feel worse.

This is also a valuable document to bring to new medication providers trying to determine your diagnosis or what medications to try (or stay away from) next.

2. Tracking your symptoms

Your journal can also be a place to let it all hang out about your thoughts and feelings. There are no judgments, and you can say anything you want. You can describe the details of your depression and what you’re going through.

Are you feeling anxious or irritable, too? Write it down! Hopeless? Tearful? Angry? There are no wrong answers here. This will also help you when it comes to diagnosis and treatment. You can have a clear description of your condition when you meet with a professional.

In addition to understanding your symptoms better, it just feels good to release the pain of all that sadness that comes with depression. You don’t have to worry about annoying friends or family with your unrelenting symptoms. Your journal is there for you 24/7!

3. Documenting your coping skills

Once you start learning about how to manage your symptoms of depression, it’s a good idea to get it all down on paper for easy access.

This could include a safety plan. It could also include things that soothe you or make you feel better, like a few of your favorite movies, books, etc.

Journaling itself is also a coping skill that can help you deal with your depression. Keeping all this information in one place can help you when you feel down and don’t know what to do.

It can also help keep you safe when you’re experiencing intense and uncomfortable emotions. 

4. Venting about your relationships

Where else can you say whatever’s on your mind about someone in your life? Are you feeling angry at someone? Write about it! Getting these thoughts out will help you deal with the resulting depression. Again, your journal is your very own document that nobody will see.

Your journal can also help you process intense relationship issues that you might not be able to discuss with anyone else. You can also look back at other conflicts you’ve had with that person or someone else and see how you handled it.

In this way, journaling can empower you in so many sticky situations.

5. Making a mood chart

You can also attach a mood chart to your journal to help keep track of your highs and lows. This can help you better understand your mood changes and what makes them easier to manage.

For example, you could start by recording how many hours of sleep you get each night and rating your mood and how you’re feeling.

There are many mood charts on the internet. You can also record your level of anxiety. If you’re a female, you might want to keep track of your menstrual cycles because they can have a profound impact on your mood.

A mood chart can also help your mental health professional make appropriate medication choices for you. It will help show them whether a particular medication helps or worsens your symptoms.

6. Connecting life events to your symptoms

Major events in your life can contribute to your depression. For example, when I started college, my depression got worse. Seeing this on paper made it easier to know why I was struggling, and it helped my therapist give me therapeutic tools to manage my depression and anxiety better.

When I was in high school, I worked through my parents’ divorce and how it was making me more depressed. Illnesses, divorces, and new beginnings are all major life events that you can work through in your journal, even if you’re already talking about it in therapy.

7. Holding yourself accountable

In this journal section, you might want to write about how you feel on medications and off them to remind yourself how they affect you. Sometimes, after a while, when my mood evens out, I mistakenly think that I don’t need to take my medications anymore.

During my last major episode, my psychiatrist told me to journal about the whole thing so that the next time I even questioned my need to take my medications, I could remind myself that going off of them had worsened my condition and led to hospitalization.

What does medication mean to you? Getting your thoughts down on paper will help you have clarity during those confusing moments when you wonder if you should go to bed without taking your pills.

8. Reminding yourself what you live for

This last suggestion is a very important one. For some people, depression can lead to thoughts of suicide and wishing you were not here. Consider journaling about what is important to you and what brings you joy.

This can include your loved ones, hobbies, jobs, or anything. Keep it ready for whenever you need it. Perhaps you can keep it with a gratitude list of everything you’re grateful for.

The bottom line

A journal can’t replace individual therapy but can be an important supplement. And it can help if you can’t afford to be in therapy.

Your journal can help you manage the experience of coping with depression and can continue to be a helpful tool each day you come back to it.