“Whether you’re keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it’s the same thing. What’s important is you’re having a relationship with your mind”. - Natalie Goldberg
How many times have you decided to finally maintain a journal? How many days did that last? Most often we are inclined to give in to the trends around us. Journaling has become a trend among today’s generation, but there is a deeper side to that. We often think of journaling as a practice done by young children; however, journaling is not exclusively for them, but for anyone and everyone.
What is Journaling?
Journaling is the habit of maintaining a diary, or journal that creates a safe space for you to jot down your daily life, thoughts, emotions, feelings, and ideas. It can take different perspectives, some creative some personal.
Why make journaling a daily habit?
In today’s time, especially during the pandemic, we find ourselves overwhelmed with waves of emotions, thoughts, feelings, etc. It is our mental health that bears the treacherous consequences of the unpleasant phenomenon in our daily lives. Numerous researches have shown the effect of journaling on personality development, self-identification, stress, and emotion management, and alleviate mental illness symptoms. Michael Grothaus, an ardent journalist and journal writer, found studies that established the positive effect of journaling on physical well-being, immune system, blood pressure, sleep, and general health. Journaling proves to be beneficial and applicable to individuals struggling with an array of issues. While journaling the left hemisphere of your brain involved in cognitive and analytical functions is kept busy, this allows the creative right hemisphere to open up (Grothaus, 2015), enabling your creative side to thrive which can make a big impact on your well-being.
Depression, Anxiety and Stress Management
Among the uncountable benefits, journaling is significant in helping with issues such as depression, anxiety, and stress.
Depression
Depressive symptoms have been shown to improve with the practice of journaling. Writing about thoughts and feelings associated with a particularly stressful event or a traumatic experience can help with managing mild depression and depressive symptoms. While journaling may not reduce the prevalence and occurrence of negative and destructive thoughts, it can help in managing the impacts of these thoughts. People with major depressive disorder reported low depression scores after just three days of writing and journaling (Krpan, Kross, Berman, Deldin, Askren, & Jonides, 2013). Writing helps those who suffer from depressive symptoms and mild depression to clear out built-up emotions and thoughts, make a shift from a negative mindset to a positive mindset and safeguard their sense of well-being. However, it is wrong to assume that journaling can replace professional assistance, and help in cases of depression.
Anxiety
As Barbara Markway said, “There’s simply no better way to learn about your thought processes than to write them down.” To understand our faulty thoughts and emotions it is first necessary to identify and recognize what they are. Journaling is significant in helping us identify the negative self-talk we unconsciously create, and get hold of the cause of anxiety. It can help raise self-awareness, discover different circumstances and situations associated with anxiety, clear our thoughts, release built-up stress and emotions, discard negative thoughts, etc.
Stress
Journaling is highly effective when it comes to dealing with stress. Stress can lead to depression and anxiety. Journaling helps in letting go of negative emotions and frustrations, delve into your mind, and manage tension. There are several changes which take place in our body due to a stressful event such as mental fatigue, difficult in learning new things, weak memory, unable to concentrate, different types of pain in the body such as headache, back pain, jaw pain, ligament problems and various other. Journaling will be helping in lowering down the stress and ultimately eliminating these problems.
Make it Effective!
While most of us are simply putting pen to paper, and writing a bunch of words in a free flow, this may not be the best way to extract the full benefits of journaling. Make your practice effective! This will yield better and positive outcomes in your life, not only in achieving your goals, but also in increasing your quality of life. It will enable you to have a clear train of thoughts, align the communication between your thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and most importantly benefit your mental health.
Pen to Paper- Crack the code
Writing helps you delve deeper into your thoughts. It allows you to dig into emotions and thoughts your conscious mind usually isn’t aware of. In this way, writing acts as a guide through these repressed emotions, and facing these emotions allow us to clear our heads and process our thoughts effectively. Sometimes these repressed emotions are created due to unpleasant memories or experiences of the past, affecting our present behaviours. Being exposed to these memories repeatedly through writing can help in developing a coherent understanding of our experiences. In general, writing is beneficial in helping you recognize faulty patterns of behaviours and thoughts that may be impacting you negatively in your daily life. Blake and Wilhelm (2005) provide effective ways of writing to gain the most from journaling:
It is important to write the journal in a safe and comfortable space.
Journaling has better impacts when done on a regular basis as a routine.
Make time to contemplate, and think about what you have written.
Do not restrict yourself to a particular event, let your thoughts and words flow freely while you journal.
Journaling is about you, and it is a safe space only for you to see, and reflect upon.
Write what feels best for you, and structure your writing according to your comfort.
Your journal is private property. It is only for you, your eyes and mind.
How to get started?
If you broke the practice of journaling for a while, or want to start here are a few tips to get started with. Keep in mind the acronym; WRITE
W - What is it that you want to write about? Consider, figure out and contemplate upon your current life events, thoughts, feelings, your goals, or what you want to avoid. Take your journal and go wild!
R - Review. Take a moment, breathe, and reflect. You can meditate or practice mindfulness for this. When writing, attempt to construct your sentences with “I”. For example, “I want..”, “I feel…”. Along with this, it is best to write in the present tense. Such as “Today…”, “Presently..”.
I - Investigate. Check into your thoughts, emotions, and feelings thoroughly as you go on writing. Write freely and if at any point you feel like stuck or you have run out of things to write about, you stop. Stop, realign, focus, practice mindfulness or meditate, read through what you have already written, and then return to writing.
T - Time. Dedicate at least 5-10 minutes of your day to writing. This is an essential step to making this a daily habit. You can also time yourself when you write. After thinking about what you want to write, time yourself for a minimum of 5 minutes and write until the last second.
E - Exit. End your writing purposively, and with contemplation. Review what you have written and reflect upon it. Conclude the gist of your writing, and what you took away from it in few sentences such as “After reading this, I feel…”, “While reading this, I was made aware of…”.
References
Adams, K. (n.d.). It’s easy to W.R.I.T.E. Center for Journal Therapy. Retrieved from https://journaltherapy.com/journal-cafe-3/journal-course/
Grothaus, M. (2015). Why journaling is good for your health (and 8 tips to get better). Fast Company. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/3041487/8-tips-to-more-effective-journaling-for-health.
Krpan, K. M., Kross, E., Berman, M. G., Deldin, P. J., Askren, M. K., & Jonides, J. (2013). An everyday activity as a treatment for depression: The benefits of expressive writing for people diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 150, 1148-1151.
Comments