Two very good therapists I met, the ones I liked, the ones that had a positive effect on me told me to journal. I never did step into this habit until my mum offered me a Journal, with a striking image, (she knows me my mum,) this is a famous print by Esher, the hand drawing the hand
I politely said “thanks mum” and put it on the side, it stayed somewhere for a few months until I picked it up and began to write, it was 4 years ago, to write whatever, what came to mind in the morning. I got into this habit. It is good, even and above all as a mind dump. You get rid of things that bug you and if something repeatedly comes up, you will get pissed off with it and try to fix it or if you cannot find a way out, a solution, you will accept it as a fact and turn the page, write something else.
A really good exercise to clarify your thoughts or simply get rid of them, it just frees space in your mind. You push your reasoning. I wrote by hand for years, gel pen on A5 paper, with a slight filet system.
Once a journal is finished, I put it on a pile, I create a new one, until now I never went back to read any of them however I designed a system to title after the fact. On the margin in vertical, if ever I had to go back to it or if, you never know I am curious about what I wrote in 2023 I can go back there and straight away see what I wrote about by looking vertically in the margin.
I did not know the benefit it would give me. To write down and reason on things, to push on what bugged me, my thought, what made me tick and react, what triggered me. I did this in the morning, used to call it a mind dump. And it frees you in a way. You don’t have to carry things around in your mind all day.
Journaling is a time you have with yourself, it does not need to be a lengthy process, I used to set aside 20 minutes of my day to do so.