When I was asking my friends in Sydney what constitutes good mental health and wellbeing, one of them mentioned: “I love reading and being outdoors in nature. This helps me to think beyond my little bubble of stresses and chaos and either escape to somewhere imaginative or remember that there is more to life than my own situation.” She went on to add “I love journaling because it helps to reflect and process thoughts and feelings whether big or small!”
She raises two important issues that support mental health. One being how to distract yourself from feelings and emotions and stress with activities such as reading and the outdoors and secondly how to also spend time reflecting with activities such as journaling.
In fact, I highly recommend journaling as a way of capturing difficult (and not so difficult) feelings, processing those feelings, and looking back over time to see patterns of behaviour that you can work on to change in your life.