Benefits of Journaling for Mental Health
Journaling is one of the oldest self-help practices in the world and is used by millions of people of all ages.
Journaling can help improve every aspect of your life. You can use it to better yourself in every possible way. If you wanted to lose weight for example. A journal can help you to set goals and track your progress. It will also help you to identify unhealthy patterns and triggers so you can identify what’s blocking your weight loss progress.
You can use daily journaling to improve your relationships, get better sleep, become healthier and reduce stress. There really is no limit to what journaling can help you to achieve.
One of the biggest benefits of journalling for mental health is how it helps shift you from a negative mindset to a positive mindset by reflecting on your life experiences and current situations.
You have the time and space to see the situation differently and brainstorm solutions or ways you can react better in the future.
I like to call journaling “writing for the soul” because when you’re an overthinker or an introvert (like me) sometimes you don’t even know what you’re thinking or feeling until you see it written on paper. (Don’t judge me!)
Journaling is popular in both men and women because it ticks so many boxes. Yes it helps with mental health but it also helps with clarifying your purpose and direction in life. This allows you to reflect on what you want to achieve in life and monitor your progress and track your results. It will help keep you on track and help lift you up when you feel you’re falling.
Below are 7 Benefits of Journaling for Mental Health.
Journaling Relieves Anxiety, Stress & PTSD Symptoms
Journaling is a great tool for relieving stress in men and women, depression, anxiety and PTSD symptoms. Getting your thoughts and emotions down onto paper can help clear them from the mind. This automatically leaves you feeling calmer and more relaxed.
It gives you awareness. You can process a traumatic event and identify the triggers so that you can start finding solutions to those triggers. Just by identifying them takes away a lot of stress of the unknown. It gives you back your power because you have a better understanding of what’s really going on for you.
Journalling for trauma and PTSD enhances your mental health by guiding you slowly towards negative emotions that once held great power over you. It helps you by exposing you gradually and that in itself can reduce the power of PTSD. It’s a very mild form of Exposure therapy.
It helps you identify your thought patterns and sequences that lead you down that dark hole of depression. When you’re feeling down or stuck writing about it helps take the weight off your shoulders. It improves your mood because you’re letting out built up emotions in a controlled way and you can start allowing more positive thoughts through.
Journaling can also be used to analyze your problems. When you can clearly work out solutions to the issues you are facing, it can help you to feel more in control. This in turn will help to reduce stress, helping you to feel happier and more relaxed.
Journaling Improves Communication in Relationships
When situations happen in your relationship sometimes they get blown out of proportion. If you’re not good at expressing your emotions or your thoughts then you’re going to tend to bottle everything up.
This leads to resentment and hurt feelings. Things left unsaid are not helpful towards personal growth or the growth of a relationship. Other than learning how to resolve an argument and ground rules on how to fight fair in your relationship, journalling is a tool you can use on your own to help resolve conflict.
Journaling can help you tell the story from your perspective. What happened. How it made you feel. What you should have said or did.
Journaling is private. You don’t need to share it with your partner but you can use it to learn how you’re really feeling and you can brainstorm how you can speak up in the future.
Better communication will also help you create a deeper connection with your partner. It will help you show love to your partner instead of bottled up emotion. And that’s a much nicer outcome.
Journaling Boost Mental Health
Journaling is scientifically proven to benefit mental health. It can be used to relieve the symptoms of depression, reduce anxiety, and improve overall wellbeing.
It’s easy to get lost inside your own head. We all have an inner critic, but for some it can prove to be overpowering. If you have trouble switching off your inner critic, journaling can help. You’ll be able to address negative thinking, helping to switch to a more positive mindset.
The longer you journal for, the more mental health benefits you’ll experience. After just a month of journaling, you’ll notice a drastic improvement in your mood.
The benefits of journaling for mental health include better self-confidence, communication skills, conflict resolution skills, identifying your thoughts, patterns, habits and behaviours, letting go of build up emotions, clearing your mind, dealing with anxiety, working thought PTSD and depression, anger management just to name a few!
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Health Benefits of Journaling
As well as helping to boost mental health, journaling can also be great for physical health too. There have been a lot of studies which have shown that journaling on a regular basis can:
- Boost your immune system.
- Improve your memory.
- Help you recover from trauma.
- Improve cardiovascular health.
- Sleep better
The health benefits are largely down to an increase in stress and negativity. You might just be surprised how much a positive outlook can improve your physical health.
Journaling improves your sleep by offloading your thoughts. A busy mind takes a long time to slow down. You can simply write a list before you go to sleep of the things you need. todo the next day to put your mind at ease.
This one small thing can have a massive impact on your quality of sleep. There’s nothing you need to “remember.” Your mind is relaxed and you can sleep easier.
Creativity Improves With Journaling
A journal is a great way to express your creativity. You can use it to brainstorm ideas, draw, you can use it as a vision board for inspiration.
Creative energy is another outlet for self expression. It can recharge your energy and give you joy. You say what you want without anyone else’s feedback or opinions.
Use it to dream, to visualise a future you want to bring into your reality. Use your journal to manifest your desires. It’s not for problem solving but yes problem solving and brainstorming are great ways to express your creativity.
When you allow yourself to dream and imagine a future where you’re reaching your potential, living the life you want it massively increases your self-esteem and confidence. It gives you hope. and something to work towards.
Journaling Clarifies Your Direction in Life
A journal helps you clarify your goals. Once you have identified your goals you can thne start breaking them down into smaller chunk sizes until they become daily tasks. Then all you need to do to achieve the original goal is to work through your daily task list. Sounds simple right?
First you need to have the goal. The goal gives your direction. Journaling gives you clarity on what you want and then how to get it. Your journal will serve as your commitment to yourself to see things through.
You can use your journal to track your progress and break through any roadblocks by being self aware of any limiting beliefs or negative self talk. They will only hold you back from living the life you want. You can keep track of your success and keep planing for the future.
Tips on How To Journal
- Think about what you want to write about. Maybe it's about the future, the past or the present. What is the goal you want to achieve by journaling about it? Do you want to express yourself? Do you want to brainstorm solutions? Do you want to reflect on it and see someone elses perspective?
- When you're writing make sure you're writing in first person. Afterall it all about you. eg. I want, I feel etc. And always go deeper, what else, what else, what else? And then have an exit point. Remember what the goal was and once you've achieved it, it's pencils down.
- Journaling is a daily exercise. Write in your journal every day or night. Which ever feels right for you.
- Keep it Close By. Make it accessible so it's easy to get to. If it's close you will use it. If it's hard to get to you will more than likely be put off and not follow through.
- Write in a way that works for you. I like to write everything that's in my head at that moment. It gives me a feeling of release and lifts the weight off my shoulders. I also use it as a to-do-list where I just write what I need to do the next day. Write in the way that gives you the best results.
- Keep it private. If you think someone else is going to read it you're not going to express yourself genuinely. You want to be raw with your journaling. That's how you get the best results and really understand what's going on for you.
- You can write or draw. The point is to be able to express yourself so do it in a way that you enjoy. At my best I can draw a stick man so I'll stick to writing.
Conclusion
As you’ve know learned journaling for mental health and well-being is a great tool. It can help you achieve so much, help you feel so much better and will give you clarity. You can use a notebook, buy a super cute journal from Dymocks or you can even buy a digital journal (visit our shop to see some awesome ones).
You can write with a pen or do it on the computer. To be honest I do both. Whatever is easier at the time. It’s about consistency. I hope you give it a go so you can fully experience the benefit of journaling for yourself.
