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Create a journal

Strong feelings, daily stress, and changing relationships can make your head spin! Want help? Try getting your thoughts out of your head and into a journal. Writing can help you understand your feelings better. It also can be a great release. And it may even help you come up with ideas for solving some of your problems.

Here are some tips for journal writing:

• Don't plan what you are going to write. Just write down everything that comes to you. The words may be funny, sad, angry, silly, or happy. Just write what you feel.
• Keep your journal private. If you share what you write, you might start thinking about other people's opinions. This is a chance for you to express yourself without any fear or worries. This is just for you!
• Reread your journal. You might wait a few weeks and then look back at what you wrote. See what challenges you have tackled. See what you've learned about your feelings. See if some of your successes can boost your self-esteem.

If you need a journal, you can create one here. Click the image of the page you want from the choices below. Then print and scribble away! If you want to write whenever and wherever the mood hits, you also can use a cloud-based tool, like Google Docs.

= You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader® to view some of these files after you've downloaded them. If you have problems with PDF documents, please download the latest version of the Reader®.

Content last reviewed January 07, 2015
Page last updated February 23, 2015

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