Apart from practicing yoga and meditation, journaling can help calm anxiety, improve mood levels, and just support overall wellbeing. Below are three mental health benefits of journaling.
1. Journaling helps you articulate your feelings.
If you struggle with verbalizing how you feel, then writing it down can help. And if you’re not confident with your writing skills either, rest assured that there are many ways you can express your feelings via journaling. You can draw, sketch, color, or create a mind map.
Articulating your feelings helps you become aware of your triggers, physiological symptoms, and bodily responses. This way, you can recognize when an anxiety or depressive episode is on the rise and use your resources to help support you.
According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, “your journal doesn’t need to follow any structure.” Simply let your words, ideas, and images flow!
2. Journaling can improve your memory.
Journaling can help keep your memory sharp! Studies show that taking time to journal each day can help improve functions like memory, comprehension, and cognitive processing.
Journaling helps retain the accuracy of information too. Think of it like recording your own personal history. From jotting down your to-do list to writing down how you felt after a first date, journaling can help you recall memories, events, and information with as much clarity as possible. You can also try bullet journaling too!
3. Journaling helps build resilience.
In the toughest times, journaling can help you be aware of your emotions but also keep them in perspective and process them mindfully. Because journaling is a reflective practice, it can help you contemplate on what has happened and grow from it.
You can also follow journaling prompts that help build resilience. In your journal, you can also include affirmations and anecdotes that resonate with you. Whenever you need them, you can go back to those quotes and keep them as uplifting daily reminders.
The mental health benefits of journaling can go on and on, but these top three can help you jumpstart your journaling practice. Why not pair five minutes of meditation with another five minutes of journaling? Remember that you can personalize your wellness practices and make them your own. Have fun with it!
