How Journaling Saved Me From Emotional Instability

If you ask anyone that has ever talked to me, they would consider me to be an emotionless person, I don’t show any signs of affection to anybody other than really close friends, and even then, it’s sporadic.

I don’t tend to care about much, and I don’t find it fun to gossip or to be in the middle of any drama (that’s why I don’t understand how people like watching reality shows.)

If you ask me though, I would tell you that I mask my emotions with tons of sarcasm and teasing to avoid any real commitment to anything, which in turn makes it seem like I’m a smartass and emotionless rock.

But like any other human, I too have moments in life where emotions need to come out to avoid drowning in them.

My solution for years was to bottle it up until I couldn’t take it any longer and then just let it all out at night. It was horrible. I felt like shit, and it didn’t really help because I never knew what the hell was the problem.

That meant there was never a solution to it.

This didn’t happen often, but when it did, it messed me up for days, or until I could distract myself with something else.

Last week my dog got very sick in the same timeframe where I was emotionally unstable.

To sum it up, it SUCKED. I couldn’t get out of my head, and all of my thoughts were negative, I thought he was going to die and that I would have to deal with it for the passing days.

Fortunately, he’s recovering right now, and he’s getting better each day because my dog is that much of a badass.

Despite everything being better, I still felt like anything I did, caused my emotions to come pouring out, be it anger, sadness, nervousness, etc.

The sense of loneliness started to come up (which had never happened before), and I began to panic.

I didn’t know what the hell to do, so I did what any person would do. I went to Google for an answer.

I did a lot of weird tests to check if I was feeling “depressed” which didn’t help me at all. I read a lot of articles that were so generalized that I might as well be called Jeff from Arkansas and didn’t really find anything of use after 2 hours of search.

Feeling tired, I went to bed so I could sleep it off as I’ve always done for the past 15 years of my life.

And how you would’ve guessed, I couldn’t sleep. I was so caught up in my emotions and thoughts that I wasn’t able to stay still and rest.

So I started to think of ways I could drain these types of thoughts and emotions regularly, so they don’t drown me every single time.

The idea of journaling came to my mind, and I went back to Google and started searching.

Not long after, I found an article created by none other than Ryan Holiday talking about journaling and how different people throughout the years have used journals to do a deep dive on themselves and see where they can improve.

I was amazed at how people used their journals, some used them as a way to keep track of their objectives, others used them to throw all of their negative thoughts first thing in the morning, and most added a part where they showed their gratefulness towards people and mundane things in their life.

Still, I didn’t know where to begin or what routine to follow.

Maybe by fate or luck, I found this

Forget All The Rules About Journaling. Do What Works.

That’s the phrase that let me understand the true potential of journaling.

I didn’t have to look for the perfect routine; I just had to start writing and adapt.

So then, at 3am on a Sunday, I started writing in my journal.

I wrote how that day in the vet let me feeling. I wrote how the loneliness was eating me up at night even though I had amazing people around me, I wrote about how a series I watched connected to me in a spiritual level that I never thought possible.

I let it all out, and I wrote until nothing else popped into my mind.

I closed my laptop and went to sleep. Surprisingly fast too.

I woke up the next day and read it all.

I was able to understand that my loneliness didn’t come from me not finding someone I could spend the rest of my days with, but instead of how I had separated myself from those amazing people I had around me by being a smartass and a sarcastic prick.

I found that even though that day in the vet was a horrible experience, the result was positive since my dog was still here with me and that I should be grateful for every single second I have with him.

I even understood why that series connected with me on a spiritual level. So much so that I’m considering getting a tattoo about it.

When I finished reading it, I felt great, so to not forget, I went and put it all in my morning journal entry.