By Trafalgar’s Editorial Team
This Content is Created By Kinga Burjan, M.A., R.P.
Did You Know: The Benefits of Journaling
There are many ways to cope with stress and overwhelming emotions. Journaling is just one way for a person to express their innermost thoughts and emotions in a healthy way. The following parapgraphs will provide an overview of the many benefits of journaling.
Journaling is shown to help manage and reduce symptoms of anxiety, stress and depression. Journaling can help a person bring the feeling of order in their lives, especially when they’re outside life, feels uncertain or unstable.
Journaling allows us to create a coherent story of our lives to have a better understanding of what’s going on and why it can help us prioritize our concerns, reflect on what’s really important to us, as well as explore solutions to our problems rather than ruminating on them.
Our mood has an opportunity to improve when we identify and process our emotions, and journaling gives us an outlet for that. So by giving yourself permission, to be honest, with your innermost private thoughts and feelings, you get to know yourself better. The better you know yourself, the better decisions you can make.
This includes having more awareness of any triggers that might lead to increased anxiety, depression or stress, as well as noticing how your thoughts, feelings, behaviours and physical responses are connected, especially those negative ones that seem to keep coming up over and over.
The more awareness you have about yourself, the less helpless you will feel, and the easier it is to take a step forward in your life rather than feeling stuck.
Journaling provides many opportunities for increasing your self-esteem. It provides an opportunity for you to reflect on and acknowledge any challenges that you’ve overcome, as well as any achievements you’ve achieved, no matter how small they are to the outside world.
Journaling provides an opportunity to confront challenging thoughts and emotions and actually let ourselves experience them rather than avoid them. Journaling provides an opportunity to change the way we talk to ourselves, from negative self-talk to a more balanced or positive way of communicating with ourselves.
There are long-term physical benefits to journaling. Did you know that some research studies show that journaling can improve functioning immune functioning, reduce blood pressure, decrease stress-related hospital visits and improve our working memory? Well, now, you know.
There are warnings out there, however, that journaling can make you feel worse if you stay stuck in your negative emotions or negative thoughts. So if you notice that this is happening to you and you aren’t able to work through the negative thoughts or emotions, then please reach out to a health professional to prevent further amplifying these negative thoughts and emotions.
Thank you so much for joining me today, if you’re interested in learning more about journaling. Please check out our “How to Journal” video and our “Journaling Tips” video. Thanks, and I hope to see you again.
