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Now wait a minute, PopMom, how can a journal help me sleep better?

Now you know what a worry journal is and the benefits it can deliver, it’s time to learn the best ways to use them.

There are a lot of different ways you can use a journal to help soothe your worries and get a better night’s sleep. Here, we’ll look at just 5 ways to use your journal most effectively to combat those worries.

1. Write down your worries a few hours before bed

Whether you write in a worry journal in the morning or at night, you’re still going to experience some benefits. However, if you’re looking to sleep better, experts do suggest using your journal around three hours before you get into bed.

This enables you plenty of time to not only list your worries, but to analyze them. This is a crucial step in eliminating the worry in order to get to sleep.

The trouble with writing down your worries as you get into bed, is it can take a while to process them. You might not feel instantly better. Instead, you’ll need to delve into the worry and figure out ways to tackle them head on. After a few hours, the brain will be much more relaxed.

2. Don’t go too in-depth

While it is important to analyze your worries, it’s also important to ensure you don’t go too in depth with them.

Spend just a few minutes writing about each worry you have. If you go too in-depth, you risk becoming overwhelmed with it all. Stick to the main points, why you have the worry, how it makes you feel and what it is that you’re actually worried about.

Once you have these basics written down, it’s easier to start challenging and reducing them.

3. List your fears and concerns

Listing your fears and concerns and try to organize them into chronological order. Focus on the worries that are affecting you right now in the present. A lot of the fears and concerns we have are focused on the future. So, what concerns do you have right now that need to be taken care of?

Once you have list, go over each fear and concern and explore what you think is going to occur next. Then, write down what you fear is going to happen after that.

This gives you an idea of where your fear stems from and whether your fear over what’s coming next is justifiable.

4. Avoid judgements

One thing you may struggle with when you’re writing about your fears, is judging yourself harshly for them. Once you’ve identified they may not be as pressing as you thought, it’s easy to feel weak for allowing yourself to become stressed out over them.

Similarly, look at your worry journal as a safe place to vent your worries and concerns. You may subconsciously try to avoid writing down your full emotions and fears. This causes you to basically censor yourself, and you won’t get the full benefits out of the journal.

5. Identify ways to view your worries differently

Finally, one of the main things that’s going to help you reduce the worry and get a better night’s sleep, is identifying different ways to view them.

For each fear or worry you’ve written down, try and identify at least one way you could view the situation differently.

So, if you’re worried about failing an exam for example, try and switch your thinking to what if you pass. Think about the positive things that will happen. It’s so easy for us to focus on the worst-case scenario, but what about focusing on the best scenario which is equally as likely to happen?

The above are just 5 ways you can use your journal to reduce worry and get a better night’s sleep. By understanding how to use the journal most effectively, it’s going to significantly reduce the fears you have.