I’ve( 22M ) been an overthinker for almost my entire life. Not only that, I have hyper-anxiety and overwhelmness. I haven’t been scheduled with a psychiatrist so far.
A few months ago, I seriously realized that I was wasting my time on devices( phones, laptops etc) and haven’t been paying attention to real life and responsibilities. Because I had made devices as a way to escape from reality.
Then I made a schedule to maintain that included low and controlled use of devices and some other things. Journaling was also a part of that.
I began to write my daily events on a journal app in my phone. I had a physical diary that I started to use to write down advices, methods, facts, important instructions that I was gathering from youtube. That diary is now filled around 60%.
I continued writing my daily journal in the app for 1.5 months and then lost the drive to continue for unknown reason. Consider this one of my main psychological problem. I lose drive very quickly.
Then I realized that, when I continued journaling, I had more control of my overall daily activity that I used to do. I had less laziness, more energy, more drive, healthy sleep schedule etc. And now, it seems that I’ve sunken into my peak rabbithole again.
Now I’m seeking advices from people who turned their life in a positive way by writing journals as a first step. Any other advices except journaling is also welcomed.
For all the things I journal except for writing daily activities, I really find them enjoyable and interesting.
I too use 2 physical diary to write down certain things. 1 is for writing down my understanding and explanation of youtube videos, forums, thread, articles that I find informative.
And the 2nd one is for writing down random 1 line thoughts, facts, ideas throughout the entire page.
But I can’t keep myself continuous to write my daily activities for some reason. Firstly, I don’t find it interesting, secondly, I don’t find it useful.
What I DO want to explore is that, I keep hearing people saying that, for those who overthink, writing down their thoughts really helps.
But I couldn’t quite take myself at that point. Maybe because I don’t know how to write my constant thoughts in an organized way or do I REALLY NEED to write down my thoughts or I need other people’s company/ or emotional relationship with someone of my opposite gender to quiet down the current inside my brain.
I never really tried the later possibility as I am a very anti-social person. Nor do I have any “friends” whom I can hang out with freely.
Ultimately I’m seeking to organize my entire life. May it involve the help of other persons, physiatrist, emotional bonding, socializing or just journaling as I want, I don’t care which might help.
Other than journaling, the other methods are hardly executable for me.
It depends on what you overthink. If it’s anxiety and stress stuff, you might be right that doing that with some safe support (friends, partners, professionals) might be wiser. But there are some techniques for quantifying and putting into perspective worries. Something that a therapist recommended and has helped me is to track specific, measurable and reasonably immediate anxieties, then tracking if they were justified or not.
So I don’t bother writing down vague big concerns like “maybe I’m a terrible person / it’s the apocalypse / etc” but if I’m stressed about an upcoming event, interaction, or outcome I can write it down, record how anxious I am on 1-10 and then the day after it happened I record how big a deal the consequences of it actually are. And for me at least, I would often be very worried about something, but afterwards realise that it didn’t really matter much. Even if it went badly, it was just a bit awkward, it didn’t actually make my life worse or ruin anything, unlike the anxiety which impacted my life much more and for much longer. If I spend a lot of mental energy and make myself miserable trying to avoid some relatively minor negative outcome, then the medcine is worse than the disease.
But my main type of overthinking isn’t really anxiety related, it’s just not thinking clearly about what I’m interested in exploring (adhd related, probs). And journalling has been great for that, I don’t worry about getting it right or it even making sense, I just start writing about an idea. And even if I repeat or contradict myself it doesn’t matter, I’m not writing a book or blog, this is just for me. And having to slow down my thinking to writing speed, and consider what I’m saying, helps me actually pursue a train of thought rather than just thinking chaotically about a topic.
The biggest thing that freed me to journal better is to cut all the bs rules I forced on myself. My only standard is to include the date everyday I write and try to add highlights to reflect on the day. Everything else is just random stream of consciousness tasks, thoughts, whatever. I also have a ton of random thoughts and I think that helps.
I tried keeping separate journals like you said but that’s too much form for me. Just throwing everything at one is best for me or I just won’t do it.
The best tip I have for organizing life is to keep a stupid easy non streak based habit tracker and a tasks list.