Welcome to the forum I hope you find some ideas on how to get through your day well.
I am a compulsive journal writer… It does help to get some of what’s in my head on paper…
it helps me clear my brain… or it helps me get my thought in order… or if I have something I just need to express… and no one who I feel I can express it to… using the journal has helped.
Here’s a bad joke…
Why does a chicken coupe only have 2 doors… because if it have 4 doors it would be a chicken sedan… My jokes are usually rated G …for Gee that’s bad.
^^ THIS. I don’t do anything fancy. I open a text file on my computer and start pounding the keys about whatever is going on in my head. Sometimes all I can manage is to relay what the voices say. Today I made a worthwhile entry about a conversation I had with my uncle regarding my mother who, like my father, passed away at an early age. I no longer see a therapist, but I try to do what my old therapist taught me (to journal and/or write). My psychiatrist thinks I don’t really need therapy, just medication. He did refer me to a therapist in his practice, but she was awful.
A lot of my old journals are hand written… It really does help me to empty my head some where…
Also… my older journals are full of my past delusions and hallucinations… and mean and hurt full conversations with my voices… and dreams that were terrifying.
But to look back on them now and see that I’m stronger and not having as much of the head circus that I used to give me some confidence to keep going.
Like I said a few posts earlier in this thread, I can’t see the difference in myself from day to day, but month by month I can, and certainly as the years go by. If I feel myself swerving off the road, I print out my journal entries and show them to my psychiatrist. Sometimes he acts on them, sometimes not. He gives me tidbits of advice about how I can tweak my thinking sometimes, and will sometimes increase (but oddly, never decrease) my medications. Sorry for reviving a dead topic, but I wanted to reply to @SurprisedJ, and I was unable to post after 15 posts last night, and didn’t want to seem rude or dismissive.