The Mental Health Ritual That Doesn't Feel Like Homework

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and I want to tell you about the feature in Lake I personally like the most: the Coloring Journal.

As a psychologist, I kept noticing the same gap between what helps people with their mental wellbeing and what people actually do. Most of us know what we should do, but knowing and doing are completely different things, and the friction between them is where good intentions go to die.

The Coloring Journal is our attempt to close that gap. And I haven't seen anything like it on the App Store.

Feelings Need Somewhere to Go

The first part of taking care of your mental health is understanding what you feel, but the hardest part is knowing what to do with it once you've named it.

Some mornings you wake up anxious for no clear reason. Other days you finish work and just feel ... flat. Most of us push these feelings aside and scroll past them, but they don't disappear - they accumulate.

The Coloring Journal gives those feelings a space and a place. You start with a quick check-in - a mood, then the more specific feelings underneath it. And from there, you can simply color. That helps you sit with what you're feeling and move through it.

You can do this once a day, or more, or whenever you need to. There's no streak to keep and no perfect way to do it.

Over time you end up with a private record of your inner world - in colors. A visual archive of how you've actually been.

Your Daily Mood Palette

This is the part I think people will love most.

After you check in with your feelings, the Coloring Journal generates a mood palette based on what you've shared - a small set of colors meant to meet you where you are that day. The palettes are built to resonate with the texture of how you're feeling.

There's something quietly powerful about being handed a palette instead of choosing one. On a hard day, when even small decisions feel exhausting, the palette removes a layer of friction. On a good day, it can surprise you and push you out of your comfort zone. Coloring with that palette becomes its own form of emotional acknowledgment.

We designed it this way because in therapy, one of the most underrated skills is attunement. Attunement is the practice of meeting your own emotional state without judgment, instead of immediately trying to fix it. The mood palette is attunement made visual.

How Coloring Can Help You Process Feelings

Here's where the science earns its place in this post.

Coloring as a mental health practice has been studied many times. A randomized controlled study published in BioMed Research International found that mandala coloring significantly reduced anxiety compared to a control group, with participants reporting feeling more calm, safe, at ease, rested, and satisfied after the activity. You can read the full study here.

The leading theory is that focused, structured coloring nudges you into a mild flow state. Rumination quiets down, your nervous system gets a chance to downshift, and the thinking part of your brain finally stops looping.

What I like about the Coloring Journal is that the coloring isn't happening in a vacuum. You've already named what you're feeling, and you're holding a color palette that reflects it. The coloring can become a way of being with the feeling rather than just stepping away from it. And for me, that's a meaningful difference.

When you're done, there's also space to write, but only if you feel like it. By the time you get there, your nervous system is already a little softer, and the words tend to come more easily because you're not trying to perform them.

Coloring Journal vs. Traditional Journal

I love traditional journaling. I do it, and I recommend it constantly. But in practice, I see a lot of people open a blank notebook, freeze, write "today was fine" or something similarly generic, and close it. The blank page can be intimidating, and finding the words can be hard.

The Coloring Journal removes that pressure. You start by choosing a color, filling a shape, and letting your hands work while your mind catches up. The reflection happens through the activity rather than in spite of it.

I live in Slovenia, where the seasons swing dramatically and the long, dark winters can flatten anyone's mood. Coloring before bed has become my own ritual. Slower than scrolling, gentler than forcing myself to write, and it's left me with a record of my year that I genuinely treasure. (I wrote more about my bedtime routine here, if you're curious.)

Try It For Yourself

If you've been wanting to start a mental health practice but everything else has felt like too much, this might be the one that fits. The Coloring Journal is built into Lake, free to try, and designed to take less time than your morning coffee.

Mental Health Awareness Month is a good excuse to start something. But honestly? Any month is.

Color how you feel. Then feel a little better.