Photo woman's hand poised over journal with pen. Journal is sitting on beige cloth next to mug with coffee and circular wooden tray with white candle and white vase. — Mental health writing prompts

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Journaling for mental health

These journal prompts are designed to help you work through difficult emotions when they arise and to help you explore the state of your mental health and consider what better mental health looks like for you. I’m not a therapist and this isn’t the same thing as therapy, these are simply questions that have helped me improve my own mental health. A lot of the journal prompts on this website are journal prompts for mental health, so feel free to explore and find journal prompts that are a good fit for you. Check out the suggestions for more mental health journal prompts at the end of this article, too.

Before we begin, if you are in thinking about suicide, please call for help. You can find a list of crisis suicide hotlines here.

Mental health journal prompts for processing emotions

If you’re searching for journal prompts for mental health because you’re working through difficult emotions right now, here are journal prompts for processing difficult emotions.

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What does the emotion physically feel like in your body? Where in your body do you feel the physical sensations? What do the physical sensations feel like? If you had to describe the physical sensations as a color and shape, what color and shape is the physical sensation? Where in your body are the physical sensations located?
What name would you give to this emotion? (Angry, sad, depressed, overwhelmed, anxious, etc.)
If you take deep breathes and move around a bit, do the physical sensations associated with the emotion change? If so, how?
What thoughts are arising in your mind with this emotion? What are you telling yourself about this emotion? What memories or past experiences are coming to mind? What are you telling yourself about who you are and how your life works?
If you close your eyes, take a few deep breathes, and try to quiet your mind, what images or thoughts float into your mind? Why do you think these images and thoughts floated into your mind?
If someone showed up and had the perfect words to say to you right now about what you’re feeling, what would they say?
Would it help to say the perfect words you identified above to yourself right now?
What’s one thing you can do right now that will help you feel better or ride out this emotion until it passes?

Journal prompts for mental health

These journal prompts are meant to help you evaluate your mental health and explore what better mental health looks like for you. These journal prompts are best to use when you’re not feeling overwhelmed by how you’re feeling emotionally.

What are my biggest mental health struggles? What have I tried to help improve these aspects of my mental health? How have I made progress in these aspects of my mental health? (Give yourself credit, even if it’s for something you consider small!)
What’s one aspect of my mental health that is going well? What’s something I’m good at dealing with emotionally and/or relationally?
What obstacles do I face in terms of improving my mental health? What’s the easiest obstacle on this list to remove or improve? How can I remove or improve this obstacle?
What are the top five things I say to myself about my mental health? Am I happy with how I talk to myself about my mental health
What are the top five things I would like someone to say to me when I’m having a difficult time with my mental health? Would saying these things to myself help?
Do the relationships in my life feel safe? Do I feel physically safe with the people in my life? Do I feel mentally safe with the people in my life? Do I feel emotionally safe with the people in my life? Why or why not? Are there relationships in my life I should prioritize more, deprioritize, or end for the sake of my mental health?
Are there experiences from my past that I haven’t been able to work through yet? What would help me feel ready to work through these past experiences?
How do I respond to myself when I’m experiencing big emotions? What do I say to myself? Am I kind to myself? Am I attentive to my emotions? Would I respond to a friend the way I respond to myself?
What does my day-to-day self talk sound like? What things do I commonly say to myself? What is the emotional and practical impact of the things I say to myself regularly? Am I happy with how I talk to myself? If not, what’s one small practical habit I can work on developing to improve the way I talk to myself?

Do I check in with myself on a regular basis to see how I’m doing and what I need physically, mentally, and emotionally? If not, how can I work on forming the habit of checking in with myself regularly?

Am I aware of, and do I pay attention to, prompts from my body about what I need? Do I regularly respond to these prompts from my body to provide myself with what I need? If not, what’s one small habit I can work on developing to be more attentive to the prompts coming from my body?
What does it feel like physically in my body when I feel safe? What physical sensations do I associate with safety? What’s one thing that would make my life feel safer?
What’s one small thing I can do to make myself feel cared for today?
When do I feel most connected to myself? What about this activity or experience makes me feel connected to myself?
Do I feel connected to my own inner desires and guidance on a regular basis? If not, what’s one thing I can do to feel more connected to my inner desires and guidance?
Do I incorporate movement or exercise in my life? If so, when I exercise, do I exercise with an attitude of care towards myself, or am I hard or unforgiving with myself?
How much am I asking of myself on daily basis? Is it too much? How many tasks do I ask myself to accomplish on a daily basis? Are the asks I’m making of myself reasonable? Do I give myself credit for what I accomplish?
Is some of my time and energy being spent on things that don’t feel essential, meaningful, joyful, or important to me? If so, how can I reduce or eliminate the time I spend on these things?
Do I provide myself with at least a few minutes of silence a day to sit with my thoughts and feelings?

More journal prompts for mental health

Many of the journal prompts on this website are prompts for caring for your mental and emotional health. Here are a few collections of journal prompts for mental health you might find helpful.

Photo older woman with short grey hair with eyes closed hands held in praying position. — *Photo Marc/stock.adobe.com*

Daily Journal Prompts – If you’re looking for daily journal prompts, check out the 12 month series of daily journal prompts. These journal prompts cover a lot of different topics, but the general focus is on getting to know and understand yourself and caring for yourself emotionally.
Morning Journal Prompts – Mental health morning prompts to help you start your day with emotional self-care. Choose a few prompts that speak to you and use them as part of your everyday morning ritual, or choose different prompts each morning.
Journal Prompts for Positive Self Talk – These journal prompts for mental health are designed to help you take an inventory of your self talk, evaluate your self talk and explore the roots of your self talk, and make a plan for creating positive self talk.
Journal Prompts for Perfectionism – Explore what your perfectionism looks like, how it impacts you, and the “whys” behind your perfectionism with these mental health journal prompts for perfectionism.
Journal Prompts for Anxiety – Explore, accept, and work through feelings of anxiety with these mental health journal prompts for anxiety.
Journal Prompts for Connecting with Your Body – The way our minds and bodies interact with each other has a profound impact on our daily lives and our physical and emotional health. These mindfulness mental health journal prompts will help you reflect on your mind-body connection in a big picture sense to identify what’s working and what’s not working when it comes to connecting with your body and the present moment in each day.
Journal Prompts for Sadness - Explore, accept, and work through feelings of sadness with these mental health journal prompts for sadness.
If you have, or think you might have, a history of trauma, and particularly childhood trauma, that you’re feeling safe enough to start working with, check out the shadow work prompts for childhood trauma and journal prompts for taking a memory inventory. Trauma is anything that overwhelms your nervous system’s ability to cope and it’s possible to have a history of trauma and not understand that what you went through was traumatic or even different than the norm.

Journal Prompts for Connecting with Your Intuition – I have found connecting with my intuition to be invaluable for my mental health (read more about how intuition benefits wellbeing here), so I’m including these intuition journal prompts on this list. Intuitive knowing is different than the knowing that comes from intellectual, logical, step-by-step processing. Both types of knowing are important for our daily lives, but intuition is a type of knowledge commonly denigrated in modern culture and therefore more easily dismissed as untrustworthy or unimportant. Intuitive ways of knowing exist within each of us even if we dismiss or disregard this type of knowing; by being aware of the role of intuition in our lives we can learn to harness this way of knowing to assist us in our daily lives and we can avoid being unconsciously driven by intuitive forces that we have no conscious means of conversing and interacting with. Check out the “What Is Intuition?” post if you’re interested in learning more. I’ve also found dream journaling to be very helpful for connecting with my intuition and improving my mental health. If dream journaling is of interest to you, check out the dream journal example entry here.