Several years ago, I was feeling stuck and unsure of what the next steps in my life would be. A good friend of mine suggested I start to journal and later my counselor had the suggestion as well to help me work through the emotions and blocks I was experiencing.
I have continued journaling almost everyday since I began. Most days it isn’t much more than a few sentences about what I am thinking about that morning but there are still times when I feel anxious, worried, angry, and/or stressed that I carve out that time for myself to leave it all on the page. Just releasing it out of my mind gives me a sense of calmness and makes me feel a little lighter. I usually do it after I meditate. I set a timer, listen to calming or binaural music, and free write stream of consciousness style.
Benefits of Journaling
Mental Health Benefits
In a study by James Pennebaker, he found that students who wrote about their emotional disturbances for 20 minutes a day for 4 consecutive days needed fewer health services than students who didn’t write or students who wrote about unemotional topics.
Helps Process and Release Emotions
Journaling gives you a physical place to go and help move the emotions out of your body. It combines the physical act with acknowledging the feeling. As you put journaling into practice, you can uncover buried feelings, see repetitive patterns, and get out of thought loops of old experiences and emotions that may no longer be serving you.
Reduces Stress and Anxiety
A study that focused on Positive Affect Journaling (PAJ), emotion focused self-regulation intervention, used expressive writing as a tool for patients. The study found 40% of people diagnosed with major depressive disorder who wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings related to an emotional event had significant reductions in depression immediately after writing and over 1 month after. The conclusion of the study showed PAJ:
- Improved psychological well-being among patients with mild to moderate anxiety.
- Associated with higher perceived resilience.
- Associated with better mental health, including anxiety, mental distress, and perceived stress after only 1 month of PAJ.
Sometimes just allowing yourself to acknowledge the feeling by writing it down provides relief. It helps to relieve overwhelming and repetitive thoughts.
Safety while Processing
Journaling provides a safe space to vent, discharge negative feelings, or write about your goals and dreams that you may not be ready to share. Writing things down in a journal won’t cause harm to others as you move through any negative thoughts and feelings. There is an exercise that Gabby Bernstein calls, “rage on a page” where you free write negative, angry, frustrating thoughts or maybe painful hurts then rip it up, shred it, or burn it to release it. It’s cathartic.
In a 2000 Smyth and Greenberg study, a major benefit of journaling is for people to experience trauma in a safe space. They can control the intensity of the reexperience because they can stop it when they want. Writing can change traumatic memories from chaotic impressions into an organized framework. This helps to lessen the number of flashbacks of trauma for the survivor.
Gain Emotional Awareness
Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, coined the use of “morning pages” where you write continuously first thing in the morning everyday for a set amount of time or pages. This “brain dump” or stream of consciousness writing provides an emotional release and an opportunity to gain emotional awareness and insight. Your thoughts aren’t planned, judged, edited, and you don’t stop until the timer goes off. The more you do this type of journaling the easier it becomes. You just let whatever comes up in your head and heart pour onto the page without worrying about grammar or spelling.
Perspective
Journaling gives you the snapshot of a particular moment and feeling. It allows you to come back to the emotion when it isn’t so intense and reevaluate the situation and feeling. When you are in the feeling your perception may be skewed by your emotional state. Journaling helps you become the witness of those thoughts or to take a bird’s eye view of the situation. Maybe what was true in that moment isn’t necessarily what is true when you have some distance. It can also provide you with evidence of change over time that you might not notice.
“You can be trapped in patterns of beliefs or biochemical tendencies, but not your feelings. Feelings are organic processes that run a course.”
Beth Jacobs, Ph.D., Writing for Emotional Balance
Physical Health Benefits
Studies have shown physical health benefits to journaling too. Participants experienced improvements in sleep, immune functioning, pain levels, and blood pressure. In the PAJ study mentioned above, they found writing helped with effects on blood pressure. It reduced the number of post care visits and medications along with improved cardiac symptoms and quality of life in post heart attack patients.
Benefits of Pen to Paper
In this modern age, most of us are typing on digital devices instead of taking pen to paper but there are benefits to the physical act of writing things down. Paper contains more one-of-a-kind information over electronic documents for better memory recall. Writing things down on paper gives you a visual cue and you can look at it anytime to help ingrain that recall.
In a study of Japanese University students and recent graduates, Professor Kuniyoshi L. Sakai, a neuroscientist at the University of Tokyo found that volunteers who used paper had more brain activity in areas associated with language, imaginary visualization, and in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is important for memory and navigation. Professor Sakai explains, “Digital tools have uniform scrolling up and down and standardized arrangement of text and picture size, like on a webpage. But if you remember a physical textbook printed on paper, you can close your eyes and visualize the photo one-third of the way down on the left-side page, as well as the notes you added in the bottom margin.”
When you physically write things down you improve your understanding because you are processing the information into your own words and shorthand and not transcribing it word for word. The brain analyzes the information and breaks it into understandable chunks. The more you interact with the information, the more it gets locked into memory.
Journal in Happy Times Too
It is important to journal during times of happiness as well. Writing happy memories reinforces them. If you become anxious or down, you can look back to these happy memories to help anchor you. These entries can help lift you out of negative feelings or thought patterns to realize that everything isn’t falling apart as much as it may feel like it in the moment. Plus revisiting these happy thoughts and memories can increase your vibrational frequency. It feels good to feel good (or a little better than before you read that happy memory).
How to Make it a Practice
- Set the Mood (or don’t): Grab a comfy seat, cup of tea or coffee (adult beverage), light a candle, find a quiet place, or whatever feels right for you. Or don’t. Sometimes you just need to let out some frustration and stress quickly so you don’t release it on someone else. If that’s the case, then grab a scrap piece of paper or bring up a blank note or page on your computer and release it out.
- Write whatever comes up for you: There are no right or wrongs here. This is an exercise for you and your mental health.
- No judgement: This is for your eyes only so say whatever you want. Vent, complain, celebrate, speak your truth, write down your deepest hopes and dreams…you get the idea.
- Don’t pressure yourself: Take a few deep breaths and just start. Sometimes the hardest part is to get started so just start writing and let it flow.
- Use journaling prompts: There are so many wonderful and insightful journaling prompts that can help you focus on a certain topic that you may want to explore within yourself. I used the book Writing for Emotional Balance by Beth Jacobs, PH.D. during my hard time and it was so helpful.
- Stay open and curious: Coming into self-awareness isn’t always easy. It takes courage and vulnerability to explore the dark and light sides of yourself.
Happy writing!
Much love & health,
Carrie
If the concept of journaling to reconnect deeper with yourself and to help release stress and anxiety resonated with you, be sure to check out my upcoming 21 day online course-Release, Reconnect, & Renew. I created this course to provide you with different ‘yogic tools’ and journaling prompts to help to release stress and anxiety, reconnect back to yourself, and bring you back into a more balanced life. You will explore asana (physical yoga sequences), pranayama (breathing techniques), journaling, and meditation practices throughout the 21 days. These practices helped me through a hard time when I was feeling stuck and not sure of where to go next in my life. I continue to use them to help me relieve overwhelm and feel empowered in my mind, body, and spirt. I want you to have to tools to feel that too. Click here to learn more and be sure to sign up to be the first to hear when it is released for PRESALE!
Resources:
Jacobs PhD, B. 2004. Writing for Emotional Balance. New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
Saleo, C. (2022). 8 Incredible reasons to write things down (Blog post). Retrieved from https://www.tckpublishing.com/benefits-of-writing-things-down/
Smyth JM, Johnson JA, Auer BJ, Lehman E, Talamo G, Sciamanna CN. Online Positive Affect Journaling in the Improvement of Mental Distress and Well-Being in General Medical Patients With Elevated Anxiety Symptoms: A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Ment Health. 2018 Dec 10;5(4):e11290. doi: 10.2196/11290. PMID: 30530460; PMCID: PMC6305886.
University of Tokyo. (2021, March 19). Study shows stronger brain activity after writing on paper than on tablet or smartphone: Unique, complex information in analog methods likely gives brain more details to trigger memory. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 23, 2023 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210319080820.htm