Journaling is one of the best and most relaxing activities to promote mental health and reduce stress and anxiety. It helps you to go over things and analyse them from different perspectives. It gives you a safe outlet for your emotions, improves your memory, and enables you to keep your mind fresh and healthy.
Scientifically, the positive outcomes of journaling state that when you are writing, you are engaging the rational (left) side of your brain, which allows the creative (right) side of the brain to relax and wander. Below are some of the ways journaling can benefit your life.
1. Achieve Goals
Writing a journal allows you to determine what your goals are. These can be big goals to achieve over time, small milestones, or even daily to-do tasks. After you have established your goals, you can track your progress and keep a record of your achievements. This will help you improve your quality of life and help you lessen persistent mental health issues like anxiety, depression, or stress. The improvement in your memory and your emotional and cognitive capabilities will allow you to reach your full potential and accomplish your goals.
2. Have A Safe Outlet
Journalling can act as a safe emotional outlet for people dealing with depression or other mental health issues. Penning down how you feel about the events of the day can help you cope with any negative feelings you may have felt. In contrast, it can also make you recognise and feel good about the positive parts of your day, which are easy to over-look for someone going through depression or anxiety. Many people suffering from these issues have trouble trusting others, and a journal can be the perfect thing to confide in.
3. Learn to Communicate with Yourself
People experience anxiety or panic attacks when they are not listening to themselves. Many people in that state are surprised to find themselves in a position that they cannot figure out what is happening or why it is happening. By writing down what you are feeling, you can learn to listen to your inner self and give importance to all the thoughts you ignore. It will help improve your self-awareness, your memory, and your emotional intelligence. By understanding the reasons behind your anxiety, you will also be able to recognise triggers and possibly avoid or learn to manage them.
4. Overcome Fears
Many psychologists suggest that the best way to confront your fear is to write them down. Seeing your concerns on paper helps you cope with the stress related to them. By writing them down, you are confronting those possibilities. You can now determine solutions for these scenarios and rid yourself of all the ‘what-ifs’ that anxiety causes.
Fears of the future are often related to traumatic experiences from the past. You can help identify your triggers and the reasons behind your concerns through journaling and start the path towards recovery and self-growth.
5. Other Health Benefits
Journaling has been scientifically proven to strengthen the immune system and decrease the severity of many ailments such as asthma and arthritis. This is because alleviating stress and anxiety takes away the negative impact they cause on your physical wellbeing. As a result, better physical health can raise your serotonin levels and relieve depression, stress, and anxiety.
Counselling & Wellbeing Centre provides depression, anxiety and other mental health related counselling programs. You can call us at (07) 3891 2273 and find out more about our counselling sessions.
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