August 20, 2024

How Journaling Helps Your Mental Health

More benefits to mental health from journaling are being discovered as research continues. Journaling is a simple practice that can truly improve quality of life and well-being.

Engaging in journaling on a regular basis is helpful for managing symptoms of depression and anxiety, along with reducing stress and strengthening resilience. This article explores the many benefits of journaling on mental health, and gets you started on the practice.

How can you benefit from journaling?

Journaling is a vital practice that helps you in processing negative emotions in a way that is healthy for you. What benefits can you expect?

• It can help you develop or enhance self-awareness.

Self-awareness is a crucial tool for maintaining better mental health. Writing down feelings, thoughts and actions is an excellent way to foster your own self-awareness. When you reflect on your experiences, you can identify triggers or patterns for your feelings and thoughts, both positive and negative.

• It can reduce the power of negative events.

Writing about negative events doesn’t mean hanging on to them or letting them drag you down. Journaling actually helps you to be less likely to continue fixating on negative events. Moreover, the activity of journaling helps you to acknowledge the feelings and then let them go.

Living through traumatic or stressful events can anchor those thoughts in your mind and reduce your innate ability to focus on the “now” instead. When you journal negative feelings, you can develop new coping skills and strategies for problems that prevent you from moving on.

• It can help control worry and anxiety.

When you list your worries through journaling, it actually can aid you in minimizing them, which benefits your mental health. You can leave those fears behind after you write them down.

Having a “worry time” designated, where you can focus on your concerns and fears, can bring you relief. You’ll likely notice that things that worry you the most are often more what might happen, rather than what is happening.

• It can help you manage depression.

Writing through your emotions can significantly decrease depression symptoms. Engaging in journaling helps you focus on deeper thoughts and feelings which brings you a myriad of benefits, including an overall improvement in your mental health.

You can also keep a gratitude journal to track all the things and people you have for which you can be thankful. Practicing gratitude has positive effects on your mental health and is helpful in counteracting depression’s negative patterns of thought.

https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-health-benefits-of-journaling#depression

https://www.talkiatry.com/blog/journaling-for-mental-health

• How can you start journaling?

If you’ve never kept a journal before, you’ll want to start on a small scale. If you spend hours suddenly writing down feelings and thoughts, that may intimidate you. Remember, you don’t have to write everything down when you journal in order to reap the benefits. You can write down just one worry or thought per day while you develop the habit of journaling.

If you’d prefer to hand-write your thoughts in a book-type journal, you can go that route. Or perhaps you’d rather use Google docs or the notes app on your phone. You can journal in a stream of consciousness manner, meaning you write down all the thoughts that enter your head without any editing.

Or you can use bullet lists. Do whatever is easiest for you; the journaling type you use isn’t important, as long as you get started and feel good afterward.

Conclusion

There isn’t one right method of journaling, nor are there any wrong ones. Lists on your phone are fine, or pictures of favorite moments. And writing about your deepest thoughts is a good way to start.

Journaling is an easy habit to make your own. It’s not necessary to buy expensive books or apps. All you really need is a little time, a writing method and the willingness to give journaling a try.

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If you liked this article, check out my Substack Newsletter on the profound yet simple benefits of walking at: https://theunreliablemind.substack.com/p/fitness-friday-601