Self Care Journal Prompts For Nurturing Mind, Body & Soul
These gentle self care journal prompts will help you discover what you need to thrive.
Journaling as self care
We get a TON of messages about what self care is and what self care isn’t. Despite all those messages (and maybe in part because of them), there was a time when I honestly found self care really confusing. In large part, this is because I was looking outside myself to answer my questions about what self care looks like.
We’re told self care is getting a pedicure, or buying ourselves a treat, or setting boundaries, or standing up for ourselves, or taking a bubble bath, or we’re told that thinking self care is pedicures and bubble baths is a “not deep” silly way to talk about self care. What I learned when I began to use journaling to really listen to myself is that self care can be a bubble bath, pedi, setting boundaries, or pretty much anything else that actually makes me feel cared for by me. Writing it out this way it seems so obvious, but this was truly lost on me for a long time.
Self care was definitely not something I was taught growing up, and I didn’t really know how to listen to myself to find out how I needed to experience care. It turns out that the self care I most needed was learning how to hear myself over the noise of ingrained coping patterns and societal messages. Journaling became my designated time to sit and listen to myself and hear about my needs and desires. As my journaling practice helped me connect more deeply with myself, I also learned to hear myself throughout the day. This made self care so much easier! Sometimes I fall into old patterns and quell my own voice and needs to accommodate someone or something else, and sometimes life is just hard and that makes self care difficult, but it is so much easier to meet my own needs now that I know what they are!
I wrote these self care journal prompts with the hope that these prompts will help you nurture your connection with yourself and learn what self care looks like for you.
Self care journal prompts
How am I feeling right now? What do I need right now? (I’ve found that asking myself these two simple questions throughout the day has been absolutely life changing. If you want to practice asking yourself these questions for a week, you can use this free self check-in printable for self care.)
What does my body most need right now?
What does my mind most need right now?
What does my soul (or spirit) most need right now?
What is my best memory of feeling cared for by myself or someone else? What can this memory teach me about how I like to experience care?
In what ways am I really good at caring for myself?
In what ways do I struggle to care for myself?
How easy or difficult is it for me to hear prompts from my body about what I need? (This can be things as simple as the need for water, food, rest, or a bathroom break.)
When I hear prompts from my body about what I need, do I commonly respond to meet those needs? Do I commonly ask those needs to wait? Do I commonly ignore those needs?
How easy or difficult is it for me to hear prompts from my mind about what I need?
When I hear prompts from my mind about what I need, do I commonly respond to meet those needs? Do I commonly ask those needs to wait? Do I commonly ignore those needs?
How easy or difficult is it for me to hear prompts from my soul (or spirit) about what I need?
When I hear prompts from my soul (or spirit) about what I need, do I commonly respond to meet those needs? Do I commonly ask those needs to wait? Do I commonly ignore those needs?
If my only goal for an entire day was to care for myself, what would that day look like?
If I woke up tomorrow and self care was 50% easier for me than it is right now, how would that impact my life?
When I was growing up, how did the adults in my life model self care? Did I see the adults in my life provide care for themselves? What kinds of things did the adults in my life do to care for themselves? Were there aspects of self care that the adults in my life struggled with? How did the self care the adults in my life modeled for me growing up impact me? How did this impact me as a child? Does it still impact me now?
Something people might think is kind of silly that helps me feel cared for by me is ____.
If I had to imagine an image or picture to symbolize self care, I would choose and image or picture of ____. I chose this image or picture to symbolize self care because ____.
Someone (a real-life person, celebrity, or fictional character), who I think is really amazing at self care is ____. I think this person is great at self care because ____.
One message that I hear from the culture around me about self care that I agree with is ____.
One message that I hear from the culture around me about self care that I disagree with is ____.
One way I really want to care for myself is ____.
I need to care for myself the most when ____.
I felt really cared for by myself when I ____.
The most important thing I learned about self care from this journaling exercise is ____.
Photos for this article were created with Adobe Firefly.
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