Nobody can escape the mental mayhem of the holidays. Regardless of how you celebrate or what your relationship to family obligation is, prioritizing your mental health around this time of year is especially important because it’s too easy to get overwhelmed. If anything, you can be sure the holidays will test your patience. Being around family who we don’t normally see throughout the rest of the year can bring up lots of emotions – tension, frustration, defensiveness, disgust – which we tend to grit our teeth to muscle through until we can put it behind us for another year.

I talk about brain dumps often but have yet to outline exactly how to do one. If you’re new to journaling, I recommend doing trying your first few brain dumps in bullet-point format to reach the full effect without it feeling too daunting.

Basically, the idea is to get whatever is on your mind out onto a page so you can release those thoughts and make space for other, more productive ones. As the year closes and the focus switches to goals and new year resolutions, brain dumps can be especially helpful.

Use this prompt to kick-start any brain dump:

One thing I need to get off my chest right now is…

Let me know in the comments below, how did this feel for you?

Happy brain dumping!