Introduction
For those managing the complexities of ADHD, journaling isn’t just a creative outlet—it’s a lifeline.
From gratitude journaling to ADHD-friendly prompts, these techniques make it easier to slow down, connect with positive feelings, and break free from negative thought patterns.
This article explores accessible ways to use journaling for a powerful mental health boost, helping you establish a practice that’s as rewarding as it is transformative.
Key Takeaways
- Gratitude Journaling: Writing down a few things you’re grateful for can significantly boost your mental health. It’s about noticing, reflecting, and appreciating the positive aspects of your life.
- Feeling Gratitude Takes Practice: Truly experiencing gratitude involves a conscious effort to recognize and value the good in everyday events.
- Overcoming Negative Thought Patterns: Gratitude can override negative brain functions, making it a potent tool even during challenging times.
- 2-Minute Blast Exercise: Writing continuously for two minutes taps into your unconscious mind and slows down rapid thoughts, helping you uncover underlying feelings and ideas.
- ADHD-Friendly Prompts: Using simple and enjoyable prompts can make journaling less daunting and more effective for those with ADHD, avoiding triggers like rejection-sensitive dysphoria.
Post contents
Gratitude
Gratitude journaling is simply writing down the things that we are grateful for.
What’s cool about gratitude journaling is that it only takes writing a few words about a few things to benefit most, so long as we do it frequently. It’s a “little-and-often” deal.
As simple as it appears at first glance, truly feeling gratitude can actually take some practice.
There are three distinct elements that make up the feeling of gratitude, namely; noticing, reflecting and appreciating.
Here’s how to achieve a feeling of gratitude:
- Start by noticing the neutral events that occurred during the day
- Work out which of those events had a positive impact on you personally
- Reflect on what you might be sad about if you didn’t experience or have
- Use that reflection to appreciate what you do experience and have
- Repeat
The more you repeat this process, the more naturally gratitude will come to you.
How it helps
When our mental health is causing us problems, it can be difficult to feel appreciative. We end up in a cycle of negative thought patterns that lead us to feel bad.
Expressing gratitude is universally accepted by mental health professionals, self-help gurus and your mum to be super-beneficial for mental health because it has been shown to override brain functions responsible for negative thought patterns.
Put another way - our brains physically can’t make us feel like shit when we feel truly grateful for something.
Where the little-and-often approach is a powerful method of getting gratitude to work for us, it can be a useful journaling tool even if we are in a state of poor mental health.
How I use it
Just three points of gratitude is usually enough for me to start feeling better more or less immediately.
When I first started gratitude journaling it all felt a bit slow and tedious. Just noticing stuff didn’t fill me with confidence about this technique.
That being said, I stuck with it and it has become probably the most potent tool in my mental health maintenance shed.
Practising gratitude through journaling showed me how I could practise it in real life.
It has helped me improve my world view, my relationships and (duh) my mental health in general.
To get started with Gratitude Journaling - have a look at this particular journal by Clever Fox. It’s lovely to hold and you get stickers - who doesn’t like stickers?
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2 Minute Blast Exercise
The 2 minute blast exercise is exactly what it sounds like.
Write for 2 minutes - and blast it!
That means write anything and everything that enters your mind, messy, scribbled, unfiltered, untamed.
Here’s what to do:
- Open your journal
- Set a timer for 2 minutes
- Start writing, as fast you can, whatever comes up
- Stop when your 2 minutes is up - wherever you get to
How it helps
Writing frenetically like this does two things.
- It taps into our unconscious mind
- It slows down our conscious thought process
By frantically pouring out whatever comes into our minds we start beating a path connecting our conscious and unconscious brains.
This new path can reveal some of the things that may be deteriorating our mental health, while also giving us an opportunity to understand what may be improving it.
Whether you’ve got ADHD or not, our conscious thought process happens at speeds far exceeding that of which we are able to write.
The act of writing out our thoughts, by its nature, limits the speed at which we can think - this is a good thing, particularly if you have ADHD.
By slowing down our processing speed, we create space for things that are worth investigating further and / or taking action on.
How I use it
To get started, I sometimes just write one word before starting my timer. Most recently, for me, I have started with an emotion, like “ANXIETY”.
My 2 Minute Blast on anxiety started with “I’ve never really identified with anxiety…”
By the end of it, I realised that I experience more anxiety than I was aware of and, crucially, that I do manage to calm down from these bouts of cognitive discomfort.
You don’t have to get all touchy-feely with your….feels (I guess), so some alternative one-word starting points could be:
- a person’s or pet’s name
- an event
- a concept
- a place or
- literally anything else that just gives you an anchor to get started
The trick is to let it happen, not make it happen.
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Prompts
Starting a journal entry can sometimes feel like an arduous task in itself - especially if you have ADHD.
Journaling prompts can be really helpful to guide our thoughts in a journaling session, yet they can be tricky fish for someone with ADHD.
A lot of journaling prompts expect us to plumb the depths of what we perceive to be the human condition.
It’s overwhelming, to me anyway, to ask myself “What’s my favourite form of self-care?” Prompts like this bring up more questions than answers.
I’ve found myself arrested by the prompt itself, applying my already heightened emotions to the creation of deep shame spirals, because I can’t find the words to answer the bloody question! Not helpful.
Here are some ADHD-friendly journaling prompts to get you started:
- What is my current hyperfocus? Am I enjoying it?
- What do I look at next, after reading this prompt? (It ain’t gon’ be the page)
- What’s a cool thing I’ve read about this week?
- What did I last buy and why?
- What is the one thing I want to do today?
- Am I currently feeling strong enough to check my bank balance?
- Who is someone I haven’t got back to in a while? Could I get back to them today?
- Draw something. What did I draw and how does it make me feel?
- What’s a favourite movie quote / song lyric of mine?
- What was the last thing I ate?
How it helps
These prompts are designed to do 3 things:
- Focus you on something enjoyable
- Minimise thinking before you start writing
- Hack your pathological demand avoidance for good instead of evil
Prompts like “What can I do to take care of myself today?” run the risk of triggering rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD).
The question implies that we do not take care of ourselves - and have to be reminded to do so. Fuck that! NEXT!
By bringing focus to the things we enjoy, there is little-to-no risk of triggering RSD and greater opportunity to just start writing.
Reducing the number of interpretations a prompt could have reduces the number of questions that might crop up to clarify it.
In turn, this reduces the amount of thinking we have to do and helps us avoid the shame-spiral of despair that forms from not getting started on writing.
You’ll notice that these are largely closed questions, only requiring “yes / no” or specific short answers.
If there’s something ADHD does really well, it’s going against the demands placed on us in most given scenarios.
A closed question gives our pathological demand avoidance (PDA) a chance to say “I know you want a one-word answer, well fuck you, here’s my life story!”
Said life-story will often contain the things that we need to process, and thus our PDA works for good and not evil.
How I use it
These prompts are great utility tools for when I need a starting point to do some journaling.
In general, keeping track of my life is itself an rather laborious task for me, so I also tend to lean on these prompts when I’m feeling like I could do with a little steer back on track.
{{element_hairline}}
Conclusion
Journaling is more than putting words on a page; it’s a practice that can profoundly reshape how you experience life.
With tools like gratitude journaling, 2-minute blasts and short, engaging prompts, it’s possible to transform challenging days into moments of personal growth.
Especially for those with ADHD, these techniques offer simple ways to start small, build consistency, and discover the lasting benefits of reflective writing.
So, grab your journal and explore how these approaches can bring clarity, calm, and connection into your life.
{{cta}}
Gratitude
Gratitude journaling is simply writing down the things that we are grateful for.
What’s cool about gratitude journaling is that it only takes writing a few words about a few things to benefit most, so long as we do it frequently. It’s a “little-and-often” deal.
As simple as it appears at first glance, truly feeling gratitude can actually take some practice.
There are three distinct elements that make up the feeling of gratitude, namely; noticing, reflecting and appreciating.
Here’s how to achieve a feeling of gratitude:
- Start by noticing the neutral events that occurred during the day
- Work out which of those events had a positive impact on you personally
- Reflect on what you might be sad about if you didn’t experience or have
- Use that reflection to appreciate what you do experience and have
- Repeat
The more you repeat this process, the more naturally gratitude will come to you.
How it helps
When our mental health is causing us problems, it can be difficult to feel appreciative. We end up in a cycle of negative thought patterns that lead us to feel bad.
Expressing gratitude is universally accepted by mental health professionals, self-help gurus and your mum to be super-beneficial for mental health because it has been shown to override brain functions responsible for negative thought patterns.
Put another way - our brains physically can’t make us feel like shit when we feel truly grateful for something.
Where the little-and-often approach is a powerful method of getting gratitude to work for us, it can be a useful journaling tool even if we are in a state of poor mental health.
How I use it
Just three points of gratitude is usually enough for me to start feeling better more or less immediately.
When I first started gratitude journaling it all felt a bit slow and tedious. Just noticing stuff didn’t fill me with confidence about this technique.
That being said, I stuck with it and it has become probably the most potent tool in my mental health maintenance shed.
Practising gratitude through journaling showed me how I could practise it in real life.
It has helped me improve my world view, my relationships and (duh) my mental health in general.
To get started with Gratitude Journaling - have a look at this particular journal by Clever Fox. It’s lovely to hold and you get stickers - who doesn’t like stickers?
{{element_hairline}}
2 Minute Blast Exercise
The 2 minute blast exercise is exactly what it sounds like.
Write for 2 minutes - and blast it!
That means write anything and everything that enters your mind, messy, scribbled, unfiltered, untamed.
Here’s what to do:
- Open your journal
- Set a timer for 2 minutes
- Start writing, as fast you can, whatever comes up
- Stop when your 2 minutes is up - wherever you get to
How it helps
Writing frenetically like this does two things.
- It taps into our unconscious mind
- It slows down our conscious thought process
By frantically pouring out whatever comes into our minds we start beating a path connecting our conscious and unconscious brains.
This new path can reveal some of the things that may be deteriorating our mental health, while also giving us an opportunity to understand what may be improving it.
Whether you’ve got ADHD or not, our conscious thought process happens at speeds far exceeding that of which we are able to write.
The act of writing out our thoughts, by its nature, limits the speed at which we can think - this is a good thing, particularly if you have ADHD.
By slowing down our processing speed, we create space for things that are worth investigating further and / or taking action on.
How I use it
To get started, I sometimes just write one word before starting my timer. Most recently, for me, I have started with an emotion, like “ANXIETY”.
My 2 Minute Blast on anxiety started with “I’ve never really identified with anxiety…”
By the end of it, I realised that I experience more anxiety than I was aware of and, crucially, that I do manage to calm down from these bouts of cognitive discomfort.
You don’t have to get all touchy-feely with your….feels (I guess), so some alternative one-word starting points could be:
- a person’s or pet’s name
- an event
- a concept
- a place or
- literally anything else that just gives you an anchor to get started
The trick is to let it happen, not make it happen.
{{element_hairline}}
Prompts
Starting a journal entry can sometimes feel like an arduous task in itself - especially if you have ADHD.
Journaling prompts can be really helpful to guide our thoughts in a journaling session, yet they can be tricky fish for someone with ADHD.
A lot of journaling prompts expect us to plumb the depths of what we perceive to be the human condition.
It’s overwhelming, to me anyway, to ask myself “What’s my favourite form of self-care?” Prompts like this bring up more questions than answers.
I’ve found myself arrested by the prompt itself, applying my already heightened emotions to the creation of deep shame spirals, because I can’t find the words to answer the bloody question! Not helpful.
Here are some ADHD-friendly journaling prompts to get you started:
- What is my current hyperfocus? Am I enjoying it?
- What do I look at next, after reading this prompt? (It ain’t gon’ be the page)
- What’s a cool thing I’ve read about this week?
- What did I last buy and why?
- What is the one thing I want to do today?
- Am I currently feeling strong enough to check my bank balance?
- Who is someone I haven’t got back to in a while? Could I get back to them today?
- Draw something. What did I draw and how does it make me feel?
- What’s a favourite movie quote / song lyric of mine?
- What was the last thing I ate?
How it helps
These prompts are designed to do 3 things:
- Focus you on something enjoyable
- Minimise thinking before you start writing
- Hack your pathological demand avoidance for good instead of evil
Prompts like “What can I do to take care of myself today?” run the risk of triggering rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD).
The question implies that we do not take care of ourselves - and have to be reminded to do so. Fuck that! NEXT!
By bringing focus to the things we enjoy, there is little-to-no risk of triggering RSD and greater opportunity to just start writing.
Reducing the number of interpretations a prompt could have reduces the number of questions that might crop up to clarify it.
In turn, this reduces the amount of thinking we have to do and helps us avoid the shame-spiral of despair that forms from not getting started on writing.
You’ll notice that these are largely closed questions, only requiring “yes / no” or specific short answers.
If there’s something ADHD does really well, it’s going against the demands placed on us in most given scenarios.
A closed question gives our pathological demand avoidance (PDA) a chance to say “I know you want a one-word answer, well fuck you, here’s my life story!”
Said life-story will often contain the things that we need to process, and thus our PDA works for good and not evil.
How I use it
These prompts are great utility tools for when I need a starting point to do some journaling.
In general, keeping track of my life is itself an rather laborious task for me, so I also tend to lean on these prompts when I’m feeling like I could do with a little steer back on track.
{{element_hairline}}
Conclusion
Journaling is more than putting words on a page; it’s a practice that can profoundly reshape how you experience life.
With tools like gratitude journaling, 2-minute blasts and short, engaging prompts, it’s possible to transform challenging days into moments of personal growth.
Especially for those with ADHD, these techniques offer simple ways to start small, build consistency, and discover the lasting benefits of reflective writing.
So, grab your journal and explore how these approaches can bring clarity, calm, and connection into your life.
{{cta}}
