The Mental Health Foundation is the UK’s charity for everyone’s mental health.With prevention at the heart of what they do, the Mental Health Foundation aim to find and address the sources of mental health problems so that people and communities can thrive.

Why is there such a stigma around mental health problems?

This year’s Mental Health Awareness  is more apt than ever with millions of us dealing with more challenges right now than the rest of our previous years combined. From job losses to extreme loneliness due to working from home, over a third of the poulation as said that Covid-19 has negatively affected their well-being.

Often life can become overwhelming, and with the year we have had it’s no wonder there’s a widespread issue of mental strain, but self-reflection and journaling our life stories presents a real opportunity to drown out the noise.

Reducing anxiety, depression, and stress - By writing down these intense feelings you are getting them out of your head and onto paper. This clears some space in your head for other, nicer thoughts and also the act of writing stops you falling into the whirlwind of rumination and overthinking which, let’s be honest, only makes everything worse.  

Helps you understand your feelings - When everything in your head feels like a sad, angry jumbled up mess it can be really difficult to actually understand what you’re feeling and what triggered these feelings in the first place. Journaling can help you sift through all these thoughts and turn them into something you can actually understand and learn from. 

Learning more about yourself and why certain things affect you - When you go to the doctors the first thing they do is diagnose you. I mean it would be a bit silly if you walked in and they first tried to treat you without knowing what’s wrong… Well, journaling can help you figure out why something affected you so much, and once you know the what’s and whys it’s a lot easier to figure out an action plan for the future to keep you feeling happy! 

Improving your relationships with others - Your relationship with others can have a huge impact on your mental health, and journaling really can help to improve these relationships. Say you’re annoyed at your friend for something, naturally, we might be a bit off with them, snappy or even have a full-on go at them. But here is the thing, sometimes we’re upset not because what they said or did was that terrible, but because it triggered something in us. So when we journal we can figure that out and if that is the case we can have a calm conversation about it rather than an argument that hurts everyone.  

You can view my mental health self awareness discovery on:

My Blog: https://www.benny2211.co.uk/

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