Journaling Prompts for Living with Depression
Depression makes everything smaller—motivation, pleasure, hope, the sense that anything will ever feel different. And one of the cruelest things it does is make it feel permanent, like the flatness is just reality finally showing its face. Writing when you're depressed is genuinely hard. It takes more than it takes when you're okay. So please don't add this to a list of things you're failing at. Instead, if you can write even one thing today—one honest line about what's here—that's enough. This space isn't about generating insights. It's about staying in contact with yourself.
Journaling Prompts
What does your depression actually feel like today—not the clinical description, but the lived texture of it? Heavy, hollow, irritable, numb, exhausted? Try to describe it as precisely as you can.
What has been genuinely hard about today, or this week? Write it without minimizing it or defending yourself against it. You're allowed to say this is hard.
Is there one small thing—genuinely small—that you could do today that might make your body feel slightly less terrible? Not a cure, not a treatment plan. Just one small kind thing.
What do people around you not understand about what depression actually costs you, day to day? Write what you wish they knew, without having to manage their reaction.
What has helped before, even a little? Not fixed—just helped. A person, a place, a practice, a small thing. Can you get any version of that today?