How I Use a Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health and Self-Care

How I Use My Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health and Self-Care | A Bullet Journal can be an efficient method for keeping track of every aspect of your life, but did you know you can track your mental health also? Using my BuJo for mental health and self-care helps me recognize when I'm healthy and when I need to ask for help. Learn how to set up your own spreads here.

Using a Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health

I have always been prone to bouts of anxiety and depression so, after a difficult pregnancy, I knew I was going to be a prime target for those pesky postpartum blues that could potentially turn into something more serious. Knowing this about myself ahead of time, however, gave me time to figure out exactly how I was going to keep track of my moods so that I would recognize when it was time to seek help. My bullet journal has been my go-to for pretty much everything: grocery lists, daily/monthly/yearly calendars, reading lists, and meal and weight tracking. So, of course, my journal would be the perfect place to start tracking my mental health as well. I always have it with me so I can easily make note of my mood anytime. How I Use My Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health and Self-Care | A Bullet Journal can be an efficient method for keeping track of every aspect of your life, but did you know you can track your mental health also? Using my BuJo for mental health and self-care helps me recognize when I'm healthy and when I need to ask for help. Learn how to set up your own spreads here.

What Is Bullet Journaling?

If you have never heard of Bullet Journaling before, I encourage you to look into the original system and to browse Pinterest for inspiration. It’s a wonderful way to keep different parts of your life organized, especially if you are a fan of pen and paper lists and calendars but haven’t found that one date book that really works for you.

Creating a System That Works For Me

The most important thing for me to start tracking was my mood, but I was also interested in how it was being affected by my workouts and sleep, or lack thereof. I liked the ‘year in pixels’ idea so I adapted it for my needs by adding a few extra grids to help track exercise and sleep. Having everything on one spread makes it much easier to look for patterns and correlations between the emotional and the physical aspects of my health. How I Use My Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health and Self-Care | A Bullet Journal can be an efficient method for keeping track of every aspect of your life, but did you know you can track your mental health also? Using my BuJo for mental health and self-care helps me recognize when I'm healthy and when I need to ask for help. Learn how to set up your own spreads here.

Adapting As I Learn

After getting started with the sleep tracking, I realized that I needed one more metric. I had all these pretty high numbers, sometimes 8 or more hours, but I was still feeling so sleep deprived. I couldn’t figure it out. After taking a closer look at my sleep tracker (which is actually my baby’s sleep tracker), I realized that I felt a thousand times better on the days when I got a continuous block of sleep that lasted for 4-5 hours rather than 2 or fewer hour chunks. As you can tell from my tracker, and the lack of green spaces in my sleep chart, I don’t get as many of those as I would like. How I Use My Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health and Self-Care | A Bullet Journal can be an efficient method for keeping track of every aspect of your life, but did you know you can track your mental health also? Using my BuJo for mental health and self-care helps me recognize when I'm healthy and when I need to ask for help. Learn how to set up your own spreads here.

Don’t Make It Too Complicated

Originally with my mood tracker, I would use two colors if I felt multiple moods during the day, but I found that this wasn’t that helpful and only made it harder to read. Now, I simply choose one emotion that made the most impact to my day and stick with my gut. I also found it incredibly useful to see, after the month is over, how many days were ‘good’ and how many were ‘bad’. I can make sure that my orange, green, and pink days outnumber all the red, yellow, and blue days. If the bad ever outnumber the good, I know that it is definitely time to ask for help. How I Use My Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health and Self-Care | A Bullet Journal can be an efficient method for keeping track of every aspect of your life, but did you know you can track your mental health also? Using my BuJo for mental health and self-care helps me recognize when I'm healthy and when I need to ask for help. Learn how to set up your own spreads here.

Using a Bullet Journal to Track My Self-Care

As a breastfeeding mama, it is very important for me to track things like water intake, vitamins, and medications, as well as make sure I’m eating enough to support not only my own body but my daughters as well. I track my self-care in the form of taking a shower and brushing my teeth which, as a busy first-time mom, I find myself forgetting constantly. With the amount of sleep that I get in solid blocks, caffeine is crucial for my early morning functioning, so I also make sure I drink one cup of coffee (or sometimes sub out for a coke). If I have a headache one day I can usually look back and realize I didn’t have coffee the day before. I used to track what I was eating for my meals, but these days that takes too much time so, instead, I just check off which meals I’ve eaten to make sure I don’t miss any. How I Use My Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health and Self-Care | A Bullet Journal can be an efficient method for keeping track of every aspect of your life, but did you know you can track your mental health also? Using my BuJo for mental health and self-care helps me recognize when I'm healthy and when I need to ask for help. Learn how to set up your own spreads here.

Preparing For The Blue Days I Know Will Come

Whenever I’m feeling particularly stressed or depressed, I have trouble picking something to do that will calm me down. So I drew up some quick sketches of things I can use to re-center myself, like meditation or taking a bath. Now, if I’m feeling burnt out, I can just flip to this spread in my journal and pick something. I’ve also left space to add more as I discover new things that help me relax. How I Use My Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health and Self-Care | A Bullet Journal can be an efficient method for keeping track of every aspect of your life, but did you know you can track your mental health also? Using my BuJo for mental health and self-care helps me recognize when I'm healthy and when I need to ask for help. Learn how to set up your own spreads here.

Can A Bullet Journal Improve Your Mental Health?

A bullet journal can be used in so many ways, and I’ve found it to be an amazing tool for tracking mental health and self-care. Busy moms often neglect themselves until it becomes a bigger problem then it could have been. It’s far too easy to neglect your own mental health and self-care, but with a system like this, you too can make sure you’re taking the best care of yourself.

About The Author

Kalen is a new mom and work-from-home artist and blogger at Nerdy Wife, Nerdy Life.  Her blog has a variety of subjects ranging from motherhood and bullet journaling to board games and art.  Kalen loves the freedom of working from home while still being able to take care of her daughter. Follow her adventures on Instagram @nerdywifenerdylife.

 


17 thoughts on “How I Use a Bullet Journal to Track My Mental Health and Self-Care

  1. Hey, can you clarify what is along the top of the mood tracker? J F M A M J J A S O N D

    I’m just starting out to build my bullet journal for my self care PP and this is the most beneficial tracker to me.

    TIA

  2. Of course! Those are the first letters of the names of each month: January, February, March, etc. I’m so glad this tracker is going to work for you, I’ve been using it for 9 months and I LOVE it!!

  3. Tell me I can buy one already made somewhere! This is amazing! I need it, but have no idea how I would go about making one!

    1. Hi Kirstin, thanks for reading and commenting! If you’re looking specifically for the tracker, then I have great news! I’m about to launch a brand new feature on the site! It’s a digital version of this tracker on BohemiMama where you can check in each day and keep track of your dominant emotion. We’re working out the bugs now and I’m hoping to have it launched to the public by April 1st. My subscribers will get the Beta version as early as next week, so subscribe and wait for that email! 🙂

  4. I really love this idea and have never seen anything like it before so am going to give it a go! Im really struggling with my mental health at the moment and im hoping this will help! Thank you so much for the idea 🙂 x

    1. Maggie, I’m so glad you can use this! I’ve been tracking my mental health using this system for nine months now and I don’t know what I’d do without it!! Keep fighting hard and doing what you need to do to take care of yourself! xo

    1. Hi Emily! I can’t speak for Kalen and her exact use of the checkmarks here, but I can tell you what I do on my own tracker. I used additional markings to note things I thought might be affecting my mental health, like exercise, excess sugar consumption, or my period. I marked different corners of the square or wrote tiny letters so I’d remember later which was which. That’s one of the great things about this simple tracker, you can make it super customizable for you!

    1. Hi Anthonya, thanks for stopping by! If you’re asking about the green markings on the “sleep? exercise?” page, those are marking nights when Kalen got at least 5 hours of sleep in a row. With a new baby, getting uninterrupted sleep is nothing short of magical!

  5. I love the idea of seeing the correlation between mood, sleep, and exercise. I’m going to incorporate this into my bujo for this year. But could you please explain the circles, x’s, and green dots on the exercise chart? Thanks so much!

    1. I believe those are marking days where she met her exercise goals. The green and X’s both mark that yes, she did it. The circles are days she did not.

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