Free For All Friday No 779 by Laurie

This year I've had several identity-altering changes in my life. Some positive, some not so positive. And there's even more change coming for me next year when I become an empty-nester.

I realised recently I need a way to process my thoughts and emotions about these changes. I didn't want to write about it in my regular journal, which I like to keep mainly for happy memories. I needed something that could be functional and adaptable as a mental health journal.

I could have used a notebook for this purpose, but instead (and unsurprisingly) I chose the flexibility of a Filofax.

I pulled out one of my A5's I wasn't using and fired it up with tabbed sections for each month, and extra tabs for topics. I didn't want to add this to my day to day Filofax because I didn't want to struggle to fit everything onto the rings. I wanted plenty of space to expand my journaling practice as I need.

I have tabbed sections for each month, where I can add whatever I need at the time. It will be an ongoing experiment on what works and doesn't, what to add, remove, and tweak. For now I'm starting with:

Gratitude/ good things that happened every month (which I had been doing regularly until spring).

Challenges/ what was difficult, and how I dealt with them (emotionally, and actions I took). I tend not to write about these, but I think this will probably be one of the most useful sections.

Space to journal freely to process thoughts and emotions.

A worry/ anxiety log, where I write things I was worried about and whether or not they actually happened. (Almost always, they don't happen.) This technique was recommended to me as a way to help reframe my thoughts. Also I find when I get the worry down on paper it doesn't need to swirl around in my head, so I don't feel like I need to pay so much attention to it.

I like that I can record these by month, to see how things develop month to month, or if I decide later to take something out into its own section I can. For example I can have my worry log all together in one section, to notice repeating worries over time.

Something else I like about this is the impermanence. Unlike in a bound notebook, if there are pages I don't like, I can remove them (and even burn them if I want) without disrupting the rest of the journal.

I also have a couple of books on mental health I've been meaning to start reading, but in a silly way have been putting them off because I didn't know where to take my notes about them: in a notebook? Separate notebooks for each book? What if I start a notebook and don't finish it? Ugh. So now each book's notes will have their own section in this Filofax.

I will be interested to see how my use of this mental health journal Filofax changes and develops over the coming months. I hope it will help me handle these changes, and anything else that comes up in the coming year. I will be interested to see how my practice changes and develops.

Have you made any big changes in your Filofax recently?

As always on Fridays, feel free to ask and/or discuss anything ring binder organiser related!