10 Journaling Benefits For Mental Health
Dear diary. That’s how we see journaling, isn’t it?
We conjure up an image of a teenager lounging on their bed, writing about their crush ignoring them in the cafeteria. We overlook its value as a tool.
Yet, repeatedly science tells us that journaling offers a host of benefits for the mind (https://www.uwhealth.org/news/the-benefits-of-journaling/48224).
Let’s take a look at 10 journaling benefits for mental health below…
• Embracing Mindfulness
When you journal about your frustrations, concerns, and anxieties you remove their power. When worry loses its edge you can move to a more mindful place.
• Stretches Your Vocabulary
As you write in your journal you will be exploring language. You will reach points where you wonder what word to use in the moment and you will search for new ones. This is going to stretch your vocabulary as well as encourage your imagination.
• Chasing Goals
Your journal is a place where you can write about your dreams, ambitions, and goals for life. Simply writing them can’t be enough to achieve those goals, can it? While it’s more complicated than that, you certainly can’t achieve your goals if you don’t know what they are and note them down.
By writing your dreams out you’re telling your brain it’s important. It encourages your brain to flag opportunities that will help you achieve your goal.
• Supporting Emotional Intelligence
A journal is an ideal place for you to process your feelings. As you do this, you will learn to manage and perceive emotions (yours and others). It’s this that will increase your self-awareness as well as your emotional intelligence.
• Increasing Comprehension & Improving Memory
Words represent ideas, and as you formulate those ideas by forming letters your brain retains that information. So, by journaling you are improving your memory and also increasing your comprehension.
• Increasing Self-Discipline
How can journaling support self-discipline? It requires you to set time aside to journal daily, and that in itself is an act of self-discipline. Discipline breeds discipline. Just like a muscle that becomes stronger the more you exercise it.
When you form a positive habit like journaling you are supporting your self-discipline and increasing your ability to spread good habits throughout your life. So, journaling will have a domino effect on healthy habits.
• Better Communication
The more you write, the better you can communicate with others. You put more thought into the words that you choose and how you communicate certain ideas. Journaling might not make you a better public speaker, but it will certain improve your overall communication skills.
• Promotes Healing
There is a healing power in the pen. We tend to overthink things and create unnecessary stress and anxiety for ourselves. Writing all of that out in a journal helps relieve those emotional blockages.
What you’re doing as you write it all out is processing it in a way that makes it easier for you to comprehend. By doing that, you are freeing your mind from the emotionally tangled web you have weaved for yourself.
• Triggers Creativity
We already touched on creativity, but it bears repeating. Allowing yourself to write freely without thinking is an excellent way to beat writer’s block, trigger new ideas and thoughts, and just allow yourself to let go.
• Boosts Self-Confidence
When you journal about the positive experiences you have had, your brain relives that joy and gets a healthy boost in self-confidence. It’s a great way to smother self-doubt when it rears its ugly head. It’s also a great mood booster.
