Mental Health Tracking in Apple’s Journal App
On logging your state of mind.
I haven’t used Apple’s Journal app much since it debuted. For the past ten years, I’ve been dedicated to the app Day One for my digital journaling needs. This is in part because it’s been around a long time, far before Apple debuted their solution. But it’s also been extremely feature-rich, although that ground is constantly shrinking.
But I ran across something I really like about Apple’s Journal app: mental health tracking. Now, you can already track mental health in Apple’s Health app or through the Mindfulness app on an Apple Watch. In there, you state how you feel, ranging from very unpleasant to very pleasant. From there, you can get more specific on your feelings, such as “stressed”, “frustrated”, or “relaxed”. Below that, you can choose what factors are making you feel this way, such as work, relationships, or self-care. When you log it this way, you can then view your charts for your state of mind, which will allow you to break things down by the metadata you’ve given it. So, you choose “work” and see an overall picture of how work is making you feel. I find this very useful.
The Journal app offers the same prompt for your state of mind. Where I really love this is you then also have the immediate opportunity to flesh out the thoughts in your mind making you feel a certain way. This is especially helpful for releasing negative energy, because nobody wants to carry that around. But I also encourage this for things that cause positive energy, as those are the things we’ll want to come back to when we’re feeling down. It’s good to remember what will bring us back up, whether that’s going on a run, going to a movie, or simply journaling.
I had some negative thoughts that I carried last night into this morning. I woke up a couple of times with tension headaches and could feel my whole body feeling uncomfortable. It’s not a good place to be. Being able to flesh that energy out into words that help me process everything has done wonders for me, and I feel it would help many others as well.