How Journaling Can Improve Your Mental Health

Everyone’s mental health journey is unique based on their individual struggles and strengths. However, one tool that is helpful for most people struggling with their mental health is creating a journaling practice. Some people prefer structuring their journaling, whereas others enjoy using journaling to get their thoughts out of their heads. Regardless of the method of journaling, there are universal benefits to adding journaling into your life.

Ways Journaling Helps Mental Health

Journaling is often suggested to people struggling with their mental health because it can help them express themselves differently.

Journaling can help people reflect on their life and current struggles. When we get stressed or overwhelmed, our thoughts start to become unhelpful. Through journaling, a person can reflect on their approach towards a specific problem and track progress on their feelings. Sometimes, when a person is struggling with their mental health, it may be helpful to track their symptoms to help their treatment team understand what they are going through. It’s hard to remember all of your thoughts and feelings over a period of time. Journaling can be a record that shows the progress a person might be experiencing.
Journaling can provide some people with an emotional release. If someone is struggling with expressing their emotions, they might find that writing them down can help them feel their emotions and process them. For example, if a person is struggling with anxiety, they may choose to write down their anxious thoughts to release them from their minds. When a person separates themselves from their anxiety, they can start to work through different ways to respond to it.
Journaling can help people discover new things about themselves. Through journaling prompts and workbooks, people can discover revelations that they wouldn’t be able to discover otherwise.
Journaling can help people challenge their negative thoughts. Through journaling, a person can try to figure out where their negative thoughts are coming from and strategies to create more positive thoughts.
Journaling can be used as a positive coping skill. When someone is struggling with their mental health, it can be helpful to develop positive coping skills. Coping skills are any tools that a person uses to deal with difficult emotions and life circumstances.
Journaling can be used to improve your mood through gratitude. Gratitude journaling is the practice of writing down things daily that a person is thankful for. This helps train the person’s brain to see the positive in life. This can lead to an increased positive mindset, which will improve a person’s entire life.

If someone is struggling to start a journaling practice on their own, they may seek a therapist to help them. Therapists can help guide their patients through different journaling methods depending on their specific mental health struggles. Therapy can also serve as a safe place to share journaling thoughts or revelations. If you are interested in working with a therapist to help start reaping the benefits of journaling, you can reach out to us here.

References

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content?ContentID=4552&ContentTypeID=1

https://toolkit.lifeline.org.au/articles/techniques/journaling-your-thoughts-and-feelings

https://www.verywellmind.com/forty-healthy-coping-skills-4586742

https://namica.org/blog/the-impact-of-gratitude-on-mental-health/

Keywords: anxiety, journaling, mental health, coping skills