Journalling has really taken off in the mental health sphere.
When I was growing up, it was 'gay' to do anything that had anything to do with self-care and therapeutic. For a long time that lingered around my local area. Men had to be tough and women were basically victims and couldn't handle life. They got to do more things like that because it was 'girly' and 'feminine' and essentially indicative of weakness. Men stood around drinking BEER and SMOKING (EMPHASIS STRICTLY A REQUIREMENT - BEER AND SMOKING! BEER!!!! SMOKING!!!! BEING A MAN!!!!) as well as being total units. Yeah, my area had a lot of social problems and still does in many ways. We don't talk about that stuff around here. Rural life for 'ya!
Today it's different and I think the small-minded old fashioned dysfunctional way of living that put people into boxes and prevented them from going deeper has started to fade. We have become more self-aware, more open and more willing to talk about our feelings, connect with others and get beyond facades that kept us playing roles. Our old fashioned means of survival are fading away too, and that means the trauma, the coping mechanisms and the very restricted view of the world are fading. It wasn't long ago that our worlds were quite small and it is amazing how long it takes socially and culturally for shifts and transformations to start coming into view. It can take decades and even centuries for old ways of doing things to fade away and new ones to take center stage. Our comprehension of our mental world and along with it emotional, psychological and spiritual were greatly restricted in previous times and that was down to conditioning that taught us to essentially fear our own minds and put faith in religion. We were naturally cursed and so we needed to repent. There was no time to evaluate ourselves because evaluation meant dancing with the devil. Someone else had to do that. Summon the exorcist! Our society and culture is still based on these age-old beliefs to this day. That's why the ruling 'elite' act in very bizarre ways and at the helm of their visions are to reign supreme in the universe and live forever more. Dying is not allowed. Talking about death is a taboo subject. Talking about the shadow within us all is taboo. Our insecurities and how invalidation, our fears, our paranoia, our anxieties, our narcissism around our finite place in this cosmos are a product of centuries of social and cultural constructs that failed to penetrate the issues we were facing at the time and the direction we were headed into.
It has changed a lot over the last several decades. Along with that, society has been more able to re-imagine ways of expressing itself through mediums like journalling. The progress in our view on therapy and on our understanding of ourselves beyond just material and superficial limiting beliefs.
Mental health awareness has dramatically increased and more and more people are taking their own mental health into their own hands as opposed to the age-old traditional belief of putting it down to a doctor, a psychiatrist or a magician of some sort. Journalling really does help and it helps to hold you accountable and actively involves you in your own life, which is what we often forget about in the modern world. It puts you at the helm and then gives you a platform to do all that as well as increases creativity, introspection, healthy habit-forming and provides an outlet. You become your own psychologist, scientist, life coach and all the data you need is right in front of you. You can go as basic or as advanced as you want. You can record anything.
Bullet journals are amazing too. You can get ideas for these on places like Pinterest
