By Trafalgar’s Editorial Team
This Content is Created By Kinga Burjan, M.A., R.P.
Hi there, thank you for joining me on your wellness journey. Today’s short video is a video on journaling prompts for depression.
Depression can affect people in so many different ways. Sometimes it’s a shorter bout of depression, especially when someone’s grieving. Other times it can be more of a chronic illness. No matter what it is, if it’s short-term, circumstantial or long-term journaling is a way to provide some relief from the depression.
However, if you do have chronic depression, please reach out to your family doctor or any other professionals to help assist you in working through and moving through the depression. So with depression, a lot of times they are heavy feelings affecting the way we think, and that way we think also influences our behaviour.
So by journaling and writing out our thoughts and recognizing the thoughts that we’re holding inside and bringing some light to them, we can create more awareness of what might be some drivers in the backseat dictating what we should and shouldn’t do and therefore give us some more hope and clarity in moving forward.
So let’s start with a few prompting questions. You don’t have to ask yourself all of these, it’s a start and you can also expand on any of these.
So let’s start with where do you feel the feelings of depression in your body? A lot of times when we have negative thoughts about the world, it’s easy to disconnect ourselves from our body and even have feelings of numbness Or we might do things to numb our feelings.
So by actually giving yourself permission to challenge what’s going on and notice where that depression might be like heaviness in your chest, it might be a feeling in your gut, whatever that is, to help bring that mind-body connection is really important in the healing process.
So you can also ask yourself when do I think I started feeling this way? Was there anything that prompted these feelings of depression? Is there anything I’ve been worried about? Am I feeling overwhelmed? Yes. Write out why and do your best to break up all the components that make up overwhelm.
So sometimes feelings of overwhelm can come from multiple feelings that we haven’t been able to label yet, so we’re not really sure even where to start, but by at least noticing that there’s more than one feeling we can start breaking that overwhelm down. Another reason people might feel overwhelmed is they might have a lot going on in their life, and they’re not sure where to start.
They’re not sure to prioritize. So by writing all of these things down can help you break apart the different components of the overwhelm, and you can even go as far as to create small action steps to address these components. And in any of these things that you wrote down, is there anyone that you could reach out to ask for help? Maybe you don’t have to do everything. Maybe there are services out there. Maybe there’s a friend or family member that can help you do something, but you won’t know unless you ask.
Other prompting questions are. Write out, something you overcame this past week or this past month. Write out, something positive someone said to you, even if you don’t necessarily believe it. And lastly, are there moments where you have been able to feel some joy?
Thank you for joining me in this short video and a friendly reminder that mental health affects one in three people. So if you are feeling stuck in your depression and journaling isn’t really making things better for you. I highly suggest reaching out to a professional. And also we have the Continuation of Care Counsellor as part of Trafalgar services that you can reach out to as well. I hope you enjoy the journaling prompts, and we’ll see you again.
