The Best Underrated Mental Health Tool

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This is the best mental health tool that I have found. And best of all, it’s inexpensive, simple, and available to anyone.

Text "The Best Underrated toold that will improve your mental heath" and three notesbooks fanned out on top of each other

My Favorite Mental Health Tool

During various times in my life, I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression. If this is something that you have or are going through too, I don’t need to tell you how bad they suck.

Last year while going through quite a bit of anxiety, I found Emma on her YouTube channel, Therapy in a Nutshell. I completed her Processing Emotions course, and one of my biggest takeaways was writing things down. Basically, journaling.


I’ve always found journaling to be important in my life. But I looked at it more as a record keeping than a mental health tool. When I realized how much it was helping me to process my emotions and create real change in my life, I committed to journaling more regularly. And I knew it needed to be a regular part of my self care.

Around this time I was able to collaborate with Erin Condren to create and share a self care tool kit with all of you. The blog post is linked here, and the YouTube video is below if you’d like to check that out too.

One year later, I am still just as obsessed with journaling and I wanted to follow up and share more about how journaling can help you improve your mental health, at whatever stage you are at.

How I’m Journaling Now

I have three journals that I’m currently using. Each one serves a different purpose, and all have been helpful to me.

A Regular Notebook Journal

Erin Condren coiled notebook with floral cover and floral sticker book

The first is my regular journal. I’m using an Erin Condren A5 lined notebook for this one. I love using coiled books, and that tends to be what I keep choosing. All the way from the cheapest spiral school notebooks, to ones I’ve purchased at Barnes & Noble, and now my Erin Condren notebook.

My favorite part about this journal is that I decided that it gets to be everything. It is a journal to record what happens in my life. It is a scrapbook where I add pictures and mementos. And it is where I can braindump my feelings when they get overwhelming (or before they get overwhelming). I love flipping back through the pages and seeing my memories. But I also love the emotional stuff that I’ve been able to leave on the pages. This journal has become a major mental health tool that I use a lot!

Year Over Year Journal

Erin Condren Pink Notebook with text on cover "make the days count"

Also an Erin Condren product (what can I say, I love and use a lot of their stuff), my next journal is the Year Over Year Journal. I’m using the one that came in the 2021 Winter Seasonal Surprise Box, but there is a coiled version too that is still available.

And P.S. I like the coiled version because 1) You can change the cover if you want. 2) It is predated (not with the year, you still add that in). And 3) It’s coiled. We’ve already established I like coiled books. You can flip them over backwards on themselves.

In this journal, I just write a few things that happen each day. This is easier when something significant happens, but it’ll also be nice to just look back at little snippets of daily life too.

And while this is one of my journals, it’s not really one that I use as a mental health tool. It is mostly just for memories and so I can look back next year and see how things have changed (or not changed).

My Art Journal

Archer and Olive Notebook and 3 Acrylograph Pens

Sometimes I don’t want to write words. Sometimes I just want to get outside of my head and do something creative. That’s where my art journal comes in. Mine is an Archer & Olive Journal. It has really awesome paper quality that even holds up to paint (they have specific notebooks for watercolor paint too) and it’s just such a beautiful notebook!

But what means even more to me than a good quality notebook, is their mission. Archer & Olive’s whole purpose is to help people improve their mental health through art journaling.

I also use their acrylograph pens which are so cool! They are a bit of an investment (use code MSBL10 for 10% off), but seriously worth it! Even for a noob artist like me (really, I’m not that good. I just doodle hearts, flowers, and houses with trees), they are so fun to play with, and I just love the colors.

archer and olive discount code MSBL10 for 10% off

Journaling Doesn’t Have to be Words

I had someone tell me awhile back that journaling doesn’t work for them because they aren’t much of a writer.

Something that I’ve learned over the past year is that journaling as a mental health tool doesn’t have to be writing down your feelings and what’s going on. I’ve also learned that many people don’t realized how much journaling in other ways can also help, and I wanted to make sure to share this important bit of info with you.

Like I mentioned earlier, I use an art journal too. It really helps to round out my journaling options. I’d really recommend trying it even if you don’t consider yourself an artist. First of all, you can do more than you think. I took a college class on fashion design and the teacher just blew me away with how she taught us that mindset is a huge part of art. I never considered myself an artist until I saw what I could create when I just started believing that maybe I could do this.

And I still choose to just doodle or I try and mimic things I’ve seen other people create in my art journal. I decided as soon as I got my A&O Notebook that I didn’t want the fear of it being perfect to hold me back from using it. I decided that whatever came out of my pens is what would be there. It was going to be a notebook of personality, not perfection. I embrace the imperfection. And that frees me to be able to let go of stress when I’m drawing, rather than creating stress by hoping that it’s “good enough.” I love that anything goes. I just draw what I feel.


You may also like:

Creating a Self Care Toolkit

5 Tools for Stress Relief


Journaling is a mental health tool that anyone can do. You can write, draw, paint, collage, just lay down a bunch of stickers. I know some people who create other pieces of art, or take photographs, or sew. It can be any art that helps you express your emotions instead of keeping them trapped inside.

Even when I am thinking through what is going on, it rarely feels like I’ve truly released the emotion unless I get it out of my head and expressed in some other way. And I’d really encourage you to try lots of methods that appeal to you and you’ll find the one that really lets you process what you are experiencing.

My Something Beautiful Life

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