Yes, I truly believe blogging saved my life, or at least helped towards healing my anxious mind. I turn on my laptop, write what’s on my mind, and feed my soul.

Soul food. It’s what I preach all day long. Giving your soul what it craves. Creative people understand this, but everyone should be aware of it. It’s a need to create and document that feeds and scratches your creative itch.

When you’re suffering with anxiety, a journal or better still a blog you own has the unrivaled potential to ease your thoughts and feelings.

Why is this? It’s an outlet. There’s something special about being able to reach out to people all over the world and connect on levels you never thought imaginable. Blogging for anxiety is has been essential to me.

Although I had got over the worst of my generalised anxiety before starting up projectenergise.com, it has helped me to maintain a level head when I’ve felt like I had something to say. The fact that people listen and take away value is an added bonus and is really what keeps me going.

Feed Yourself Soul Food

Hey, you mentioned soul food? What is soul food? It’s fair to say it’s different for everyone. I personally define it as;

Feeding your mind what it naturally craves to allow it to thrive.

We spend all day long doing what needs to be done to make the day work. How often do we step back and give ourselves permission to thrive and do what we naturally want?

I’m talkin’ about the raw passions our minds naturally gravitate towards. I believe that suppressing this natural need leads to all kinds of nasties like depression and of course anxiety disorders.

What we naturally crave doing usually falls under our passions. If you don’t think you have a passion, you’re either not thinking hard enough or you need to start trying things but that can do with a whole post itself.

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So, part of my recovery was to stop suppressing what my mind craved, I stopped listening to what others wanted me to do and I made time to do what I know I needed to do.

Enter blogging.

Setting Up A Blog Is Easy

Blogging ain’t just for mumma’s. I’m a dude and I can tell you there’s a lot of us out there blogging and sharing our knowledge.

Blogging is still something many people aren’t too aware of or they don’t know what’s it’s all about. Some people might even want to start a blog but they have no idea how and usually give up on the idea before they find out how easy it is.

Yep, it’s easy to start a blog. There’s a lot of over complicated tutorials out there but it’s very straightforward and you can have a blog up and running within half an hour.

It’s not even that technical. Yes, I know a thing or two about tech stuff but I didn’t know how to connect a domain to a host before I did it the first time myself. I found the whole experience very easy and I know that anyone can get going just as quick.

The process is simple.

Purchase a domain name (.com, .co.uk etc)
Purchase hosting (I use Hostgator $5.95 a month!)
Link it to WordPress with 1 click (The management system you use to create your content for FREE)

You can do the first two steps at once. You can purchase your domain and web hosting in a bundle all at once

It’s literally never been easier to get up and running and you’ll be walked through the whole process with ease. If you’ve been thinking of starting your own website or you’ve been interested in looking into what’s involved, there’s never been a better time.

It’s 2017, everyone and their dog has a website up and running! Don’t be intimidated, for real.

You can have a blog up and running for the price of one frappacino a month!

So What Are The Benefits?

Although you may think that blogging or writing isn’t for you or you may think you’re not ‘a writer’ there are countless benefits to blogging.

I never thought of myself as a writer but once I started I just couldn’t stop.

I’m gunna’ let you in on a secret right now…

I’ve never read a book in my entire adult life.

Yep, it’s true – I’ve never read and finished a book in my entire adult life and yet I love to be on the other side of it – writing.

So what are the benefits of blogging for anxiety?

1. An Outlet

Like I mentioned previously, blogging gives you an outlet to talk (or scream) at the world with whatever you’re thinking or going through. It’s gives you away to let out what’s in your mind. I’m a big advocate for documenting how your feel, how your day went and how much you’ve progressed.

A note book is great, but a website is better. It’s better because your words get seen by others and can have an impact on other peoples lives. That’s what projectenergise.com is all about. It’s my outlet and hopefully I can help others along the way.

I’ve found an outlet is important because it allows you to spew out everything that’s on your mind that you’d probably otherwise hold in, especially if you suffer with mental health issues. It’s also a healthy outlet. Instead of going into yourself and becoming depressed, I’ve found that writing down how you feel in a constructive way is therapeutic and calming.

2. Learning A New Skill

Although blogging and or writing is fun, it’s also a skill you can craft and get better at. There can be a few things to learn when you start blogging but in the long run you’re going to learn skills along the way you never knew you could or would learn!

Here are just a few;

Writing
Website setup
Networking
Marketing
Content production

When you’re suffering with anxiety or you’re just in a bad rut, learning a new skill (or at least trying) is the ultimate way to push out of it. You have to get out of your comfort zone to grow, at least that’s what I believe.

Like I’ve said many times before, I didn’t know how to begin with any of the above, I just took action and starting writing, I started learning on the go and started to implement what I was learning.

Soon enough, I had my site up. Looking back, it was a really simple process.

3. Blogging Gives You Focus

It’s easy to get in a rut like I mentioned above. We can find ourselves going into ourselves all too often when we’re anxious or depressed.

I have an addictive personality, and blogging is another creative outlet for me which in turn feeds my craving to produce content. It’s also a great focus…

I think that everyone needs to have a focus whether it changes over time or not. Blogging or owning your own property online is a great focus because it’s a continuous journey of learning and implementing.

The more you learn, the more you do and the more you put in, the more you get out. This long term process gives you a way of focusing your mind on something you’re creating, one ‘brick’ at a time.

As you produce more and more content, you end up with a digital journal of your work which can be a great tool for how far you’ve come.

4. Connecting With Like-Minded People

Blogging can be a great way to connect with other people who believe in the same things as you or have been on the same journey as you. These can be people who own other blogs in your space or people who visit and leave comments.

Connecting with others from across the world is a luxury we now have at the end of our finger tips any time we want. You can talk to someone from malaysia about their experience with anxiety for example in a matter of minutes.

When we connect with others that we wouldn’t normally come into contact with in our everyday lives it can put things into perspective. Knowing that someone across the globe is dealing with what you’re dealing with can make the world feel a little less intimidating.

This was the case for me. When we can understand the scale of the issues we have, we can start to work through them.

Blogging For Anxiety – Conclusion

So as I’ve mentioned above, the benefits of having a creative outlet like blogging are many. Blogging has helped me to express how I’m feeling and allowed me to spread my pent-up thoughts across a page but most importantly, it’s allowed me to help others.

If you’re suffering and feeling low, starting your own blog can have a huge impact on how you feel. It’s made me realise that anything is possible and given me a platform to inspire and help others along their journey.

Here’s to you success – Sean

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This post was previously published on ProjectEnergise.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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