Emotion Journal 101: How to Get Started on Controlling Your Emotions

If you feel like your emotions control you, try this journaling exercise.

Ever feel worked up, depressed, or just plain bad without knowing exactly why?

Many of us can wander under a cloud of vague, undefined gloom or anxiety for days — if not longer.

It can make us feel like we’re living at the mercy of our emotions instead of being in control of them.

In this fog, we often forget to ask some key questions that might bring relief, like “What are these emotions?” and “Why am I experiencing them?”

One useful exercise to get to the root of lingering negative feelings (and increase positive ones) is keeping an emotion journal.

Join the free Depression community!

Connect with thousands of members and find support through daily live chats, curated resources, and one-to-one messaging.

Sign up

What’s an emotion journal?

This type of journaling isn’t your typical record of daily activities. Rather, it’s a way to identify and take action around your feelings.

“If you can record how you are feeling and what you are thinking, you are better able to track your emotions, notice people or places that are triggers, and recognize warning signs of your strong emotions,” says therapist Amanda Ruiz, MS, LPC.

Journaling your thoughts, emotions, and challenges has been shown to reduce anxiety and depression. One reason: Putting down our problems on paper often helps us see the causes — and therefore solutions — more clearly.

An emotion journal is similar, but since it’s focused on your emotions, it’ll bring clarity to how to improve your mental health.

“An emotion journal allows you to record your feelings over several days or weeks and then notice patterns or trends,” Ruiz says.

When you can recognize these trends, you can work to eliminate or avoid certain triggers — or focus your energy on how best to respond next time.

How to keep an emotion journal

While premade emotion journals are available for purchase, there’s no need for any special products or materials to get started. All you really need is a blank notebook and a pen.

At bedtime, or whenever you have a few quiet moments, outline the following columns to help you reflect on a few of your biggest emotions from the day:

Here’s more on the questions to consider in each column when you’re writing:

What emotion are you feeling?

Identifying, as a noun, the emotion you’re feeling at any given time is a great first step when you pick up your journal. You may also feel multiple emotions at the same time.

If it feels difficult to pin down your feelings, keep a list handy to help you name yours. You can print one out here.

What caused this emotion?

When we pause for a bit of self-reflection, we can usually identify the situation fueling an emotion.

Maybe it wasn’t really the mess your kids left in the kitchen that prompted that after-dinner blowup, for example, but the stressors you experienced at work that day.

Take a moment to get honest and write down the real cause of what you’re feeling.

You can start by remembering what thoughts you were experiencing when you started feeling that emotion. It may also help to ask yourself questions like, “How did I interpret the situation at the time?”

What behaviors or actions did this emotion lead you to?

It’s human nature to act in response to emotion. Sometimes this leads to beautiful expressions of love, gratitude, or joy. But other times, it means giving in to road rage or spending an hour locked in the bathroom crying. What did it look like for you today?

Is this emotion appropriate to the situation?

Many therapists call this step “checking the facts.” Do your emotional responses match with the circumstances that caused them? Consider the scale of your response, too. It may help to consider what you’d tell a friend if they were in your situation.

Is this situation a stressor to be tolerated or a problem to solve? And how?

If today’s emotion wasn’t such a positive one, you have a decision to make: What are you going to do about it?

For situations you can change, make an action plan. Have an honest conversation with a friend who said something hurtful, for example, or set an appointment to get a troublesome health problem checked out.

Some circumstances, however, are simply outside our control. In this case, it’s wise to embrace the concept of building more “distress tolerance.” This is our capacity to withstand difficult emotions.

Consider what healthy coping mechanisms you have at your disposal (better self-care, perhaps, or time with good friends), and take care to implement them.

If you react to your triggers fairly immediately, perhaps on a scale that doesn’t align with the trigger (like a delay during your commute sending you into a rage that ruins your entire day), it can help to practice self-care in the moment.

If you feel yourself experiencing a distressing emotion, consider taking a short walk, taking 10 slow breaths, or listening to your favorite song.

And more importantly, write down your in-the-moment game plan in your emotion journal.

Working on improving your mental health with an emotion journal doesn’t necessarily mean that identifying your triggers or behavior patterns will lead to immediate solutions. Seeing results may take a while.

Don’t be discouraged, though. Continue journaling and fine-tuning your action plan to find what works best for you.