Mama June Shannon Says Destroying Her Journals Improves Her Mental Health: 'So Much Stress Off Your Body' (Exclusive)
The 'Mama June: Family Crisis' star says if you don’t destroy your journal entries, “you're just going to go back in the same mindset”
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Mama June ShannonMama June Shannon says that writing down her problems — and then destroying her journal entries — is good for her mental health
The Mama June: Family Crisis star says if you don't destroy the journal, "you're just going to go back in the same mindset"
This season of her reality show chronicles the illness and death of her oldest daughter, Anna "Chickadee" Cardwell
Mama June Shannon says that she’s found journaling to be a boost to her mental health.
But while she notes that writing things down can be helpful, what comes afterward has been the real stress reliever.
“I type out in my notes [on my phone] what was bothering me for the day. Some days I would cry about it, and then I would just erase it,” she tells PEOPLE.
“If you want to journal, fine, but every day you have to tear it up,” the reality star, 44, advises. “Because if you look back at that journal, you're just going to go back in the same mindset that you were [in] during that time.”
The Mama June: Family Crisis star says she began journaling “a few years ago when I learned who June Shannon was for the first time.”
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Mama June ShannonAlthough she doesn’t write in her journal every day anymore, she says she will “do it [every] so often.”
“If yesterday's problems bother you tomorrow, still write about them until they don't bother you anymore,” Shannon explains. “I really wrote about stuff for a month if they bothered me before, but I don't do it as much. I used to [do] it every night.”
Now, the Here Comes Honey Boo Boo alum maintains, “I do it every once in a while now, but I promise you it lets so much stress just off your body, but you have to either tear it up and throw it away, or you have to delete it off your phone when you're done.”
But Shannon advises, deleting digital entries, or tearing up physical ones, is the key to moving past a problem.
“A lot of people journal and they keep it to look back and I'm like, ‘No, that's why you're still where you're at,’ ” she says.
“You don't have to tell nobody your problem. You don't have to tell if you don't want to tell nobody. You just tell yourself, but you have to delete it. You have to rip it up every single day.”
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The Shannon family is chronicling an especially hard year on this season of Mama June: Family Crisis, which will cover the illness of her oldest daughter Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell, who died in December at age 29 after being diagnosed with stage 4 adrenal carcinoma.
As her widower Eldridge Toney told PEOPLE, “I have joy in the sense of I get to rewatch the special moment between us two,” he says of their wedding, “And it’s also going to be heartbreaking in the same sense because you know like seeing how happy and healthy she was then opposed to her final days.”
“Hearing her voice again, and seeing her facial expressions. Obviously, I’ve seen pictures and stuff from our wedding but it’s not the same as watching that moment happen,” he told PEOPLE.
Mama June: Family Crisis airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on WE tv.
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