I can’t imagine not keeping a journal. Daily journal writing regularly is something I have done for as long as I can remember. I have all manner of journals, notebooks, and diaries, going back years. Journaling has always played a part in my mental wellbeing, although that wasn’t the reason I started. It was only in later years that I came to realize the benefits that journaling has for mental health. In this blog, I will share some of the ways I feel that journaling benefits our mental health and wellbeing.
How Journaling Helps Mental Health and Wellbeing
There are many ways that journaling can help us to look after our mental health, the list is endless! However, I feel there are five key and powerful ways, that journaling helps support good mental health. Those are:
- Provides an opportunity to increase our self-awareness
- Can be used to distract us from low mood, anxiety, or unhelpful behaviors
- Provides an outlet to express feelings
- Helps us to become aware of our patterns and behaviors
- Records evidence of our achievements, successes, and good times
1. Journaling Benefits Mental Health By Developing Our Self Awareness
If we want to change and improve, we need to have an awareness of what isn’t working in our lives. As the saying goes, we must admit we have a problem, before we can start to change it. However, we can often not know what the problem is. If there are areas of our lives that are unfulfilling or make us unhappy, we need to first know why they make us unhappy. The way we do this is by developing self-awareness.
Developing self-awareness is one of the biggest benefits of a daily journaling practice. Self-awareness is like a muscle, the more we use it the stronger it gets. We can develop and strengthen our self-awareness by the daily practice of writing down our thoughts and feelings. Taking time each day to record the events of the day, and our response to it can help us to see things in a new way. Over time, as we write regularly, we get to know ourselves better. In turn, we get a clearer sense of what is working for us and what isn’t.
2. Journaling Can Help to Distract Us From Difficult Feelings and Problematic Behaviours
One of the most useful tools I have found in my mental health journey is learning to use distraction techniques. Distraction techniques are a healthy way to cope with difficult thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, rather than turning to unhelpful coping behaviors.
For example, when I was in early recovery from addiction, at times when the cravings for alcohol were overwhelming, I would write in my journal. Taking time out to vent my frustration on the page, would help me to put distance between the craving and the action, and maintain my sobriety
3. Journaling Benefits Our Mental Health By Providing a Safe Outlet For Difficult Feelings
Writing down our feelings is a great way to get them out and let them go. In the same way that writing serves as a distraction, it also provides a safe and healthy outlet. I found my journaling to be a great help when I was overcoming self-harming behaviors. Whenever I felt overwhelmed, upset, or angry, I would take out my pen and vent on the page, rather than hurting myself.
Being able to pour our heart out, somewhere that is safe and non-judgemental, helps a great deal. When we are overwhelmed with emotion, it can be hard to think and to know what to do and how to take care of ourselves. By getting these feelings out onto paper, it gives us room to breathe.
4. Journaling Benefits Mental Health By Helping Us to Identify Patterns and Behaviors.
Keeping a journal is a great way to notice things that you might not otherwise be aware of. By writing each day, we can see how we feel and notice what happened on days when we didn’t feel so great. Keeping a detailed journal each day, we can look back and notice events that affected us, or things that happened.
Reflecting like this helps us to identify paters and avoid triggers, and helps us to be more honest with ourselves. It is through self-reflection and self-honesty, that we are then able to change things and make life work for us.
5. Journaling Reminds Us of Our Achievements
I don’t know about you, but when my mood is low, I can easily convince myself that I haven’t had a good day for months and that I’m likely to never have a good day again! Low moods can be difficult to reason with unless you have evidence to show it! By keeping a journal, and writing every day, you can look back and see that you have had good days. You can also see that you had bad days and felt better. Seeing this written in black and white, helps me to trust that the low mood will pass and that I will be OK.
I also do the same with my anxiety. I can look back, at an event that made me anxious and see how I felt when I overcame it, and this spurs me on to repeat it. Having a record of my achievements and successes, helps me to more easily be able to acknowledge myself, increase my self-worth, and be more gentle with myself on days when I am doing the best I can. My favorite way to use a journal to track my moods is by using a bullet journal.
Do You Journal For Mental Health?
These are just a few of the ways that I feel journaling has benefited and continues to benefit my mental health. If this has inspired you to start your own I have a follow up to this blog on how to begin journaling.
Do you keep a journal? Have you noticed how it helps you or has this post helped you to realize things you might not have noticed? Please do let me know in the comment section below!
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