How journalling helps my mental health

Bullet journals are useful for self-development, organisation, goal setting and tracking. But how can it support one’s mental health?

I made my first bullet journal in 2018. It was a Filofax binder with loose sheets of A5-size paper. At first, I was experimenting: I watched bullet journal setup videos, looked up related content on Pinterest and tried to recreate them. When I was in secondary, I had extracurricular art classes at a private school, so the art aspect of bullet journalling brought back all the pleasant emotions art classes used to come with.

After a while, I realised that certain bullet journal spreads were just a burden to make and keep track of. It was a nightmare to make the weekly spreads as they took too much time and my schedule was so hectic that I kept overwriting the information I first put in (classes, meetings, etc.). I created some of my very own spreads, though, which was a fun experience. In 2022 I still decided to take a break from journalling and didn’t start until 2023. Why?

After my divorce was finalised, my daughter and I moved out of our family home and found a place of our own. It was a messy move, a lot of family drama, a lot of anxiety and I felt that sitting down to set up my bullet journal for the month ahead was just adding to the stress.

Last year, though, I realised that I was missing journalling, so sometime around October or November, I decided to take bullet journalling more seriously, and sat down to make a list of spreads I would need for my bullet journal to be a useful tool for me. I ordered I spiral-bound bullet journal and when my ex-husband picked up my daughter for a one-week visitation period at Christmas, I sat down to create my bullet journal for 2024.

In October, it turned out that I have moderate ADHD and in November, during a routine ultrasound examination, a mass was found in my right breast, so I looked at these events as wake-up calls to start fixing my life. I wanted my bullet journal to help me with my mental health, anxiety, boundary setting, and goal setting and because of ADHD, I needed an effective tool to get myself back on track.

One of my anxiety triggers is chaos. ADHD is a vicious cycle as it makes it difficult for me to manage my time and organise my life, but I can’t function properly when I’m in the midst of a mess.

Now let me tell you about the spreads I use in my 2024 journal to help me become more organised and reduce anxiety:

Yearly spreads:

• a future log with one line left empty for each day of the month where I can put any major events
• an end-of-year review for self-reflection
• 2024 goals for goal setting in eight areas of my life + a hand-drawn mood board
• a period tracker
• favourites and never again pages to keep track of everything I liked and everything I should never buy again
• a “not to do list” for boundary-setting
• a “when did I last…” page for keeping track of car maintenance, our pets’ vaccinations, laptop and phone backups, etc.
• a bill tracker where I have all the types of bills I have to pay and I just every month once the payment is done
• an electricity tracker to keep track of our consumption (we don’t have gas in our home, only electricity and water and as electricity is our major power source, it’s useful to keep an eye on the meter)
• tax payment because I’m self-employed
• an income tracker to make the accounting procedure easier
• a master grocery list to make sure we don’t run out of anything
• thing I can and things I can’t control (just a reminder for myself)
• a school year calendar for all the upcoming events and tasks at my daughter’s school

Monthly spreads:

• a monthly log
• a page for to-dos, to-buys, events, deadlines and TikTok ideas (I have a TikTok channel where I teach English)
• Finances, including outgoing invoices with invoice numbers, amount and fulfilment dates and the amounts of monthly tax, social and healthcare contributions
• a gratitude log because being grateful helps with mindfulness and puts the mind at ease
• meals to try to help me with the meal-planning process
• kitchen inventory broken into each week of the month so I know what ingredients I already have
• a monthly shopping list page divided into categories so I don’t walk around the shop, which might mess up my brain even more
• a brain dump page for random ideas

I hope you found some useful ideas in this post. How do you use your bullet journal? What spreads do you use?