Journals: The Benefits of Writing Down Your Thoughts and Feelings
Journals and guided journals are all the rage these days. But what are the benefits of having a journal?
At some point in your adolescent or teen years, you may have kept a diary to recount the highs and lows of your day. I did for a short while, and used it for an even lesser period; it definitely wasn’t my forte. And I am sure I am not the only one who stopped keeping a diary. But there are also individuals who take some time out of their day to still update their diaries. Except now it is referred to as journaling and for the sake of uniformity, we will be referring to it as journaling throughout the article.
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What Is the History of Journaling?
What Are the Benefits of Journaling?
a. Journaling and Mental Health
b. Journaling and Physical Health
c. Journaling and Self-Growth
What Is the History of Journaling?
Journaling can be traced back to as early as the 15th century primarily being used for accounting. Later on, journaling became a way to keep a record of public events, gradually shifting focus and being used to reflect on our private lives. As of today, journaling is defined as the process of “writing down your thoughts and feelings to understand them clearly”.
Having spanned for centuries it has been the go-to medium for many prominent minds across eras have journaled. Be it Da Vinci’s 5000-page manuscript of ideas about his inventions or Anne Frank’s account of her experiences hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during the Second World War, many creative individuals use journaling as a key tool to document their journey.
However, the therapeutic effects of journaling were not understood until the 1960s, when the psychotherapist Dr Ira Progoff developed the Intensive Journal Method as a tool to aid personal growth. By the 1980s, journaling was integrated into the syllabus of English lessons in many public schools. They were used as a tool to help students nurture independent thinking skills thereby allowing teachers to provide students with more individualized feedback regarding their performance.
Now that we have understood the roots of journaling, let us have a look at how journaling can benefit us.
What Are the Benefits of Journaling?
Journaling is considered to be one of the most effective tools to improve our overall well-being. This is because it requires an individual to be physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually involved. It has been observed to have many benefits like improving our immunity, improving our mental well-being and our journey of self-discovery.
a. Journaling and Mental Health
Like Dr Progoff, many therapists integrate journaling into their client sessions. Journaling can be used as a tool for story-telling and can be used during the process of recovery from traumatic events. In their book, Kids’ Club Letters, Georgia Degangi and Marc Nemiroff state that expressive forms of journaling have a lasting effect on adolescents in particular as it helps them effectively express their thoughts and feelings; helping them gain a better understanding of themselves.
Journaling has been shown to reduce levels of stress and anxiety in individuals. Research findings have shown that journaling can be used as a tool to help young adults heal emotionally from major life-changing events such as divorce or the bereavement of a family member. Linda Dimitroff and colleagues found that journaling helped nurses manage stressors better, decreasing burnout symptoms and trauma/compassion fatigue while increasing their overall compassion satisfaction.
b. Journaling and Physical Health
Journaling not only has a positive effect on our mental health but also has been shown to improve our physical health to a certain degree. There has been an increasing focus on positive psychological attributes such as gratitude and the effect it has on clinical outcomes. Gratitude is strongly correlated to our well-being (i.e., mood, life satisfaction and quality of life).
Individuals diagnosed with HIV, who journaled, were observed to have improved immunity similar to individuals who only received anti-HIV drugs. Similarly, individuals with cystic fibrosis showed a decrease in the number of days at the hospital over 3 months and women with chronic pelvic pains reported lower pain intensities once they started journaling. Ultimately journaling not just improves our mental health but also our physical health. But that does not mean you have a clean bill of health if you journal. Research exploring the relationship between journaling and physical health is quite limited and thus these findings should be considered with a pinch of salt.
c. Journaling and Self-Growth
The effects of journaling extend beyond our physical and mental well-being. It also helps us reflect on our experiences as well as express gratitude. The process of journaling helps us better articulate our thoughts and organize our experiences. Thus, allowing us to better process the information we have without feeling overwhelmed.
Research analysis of journals of nursing students has found that the process of journaling made them more aware, experience vulnerability, reflect on their learnings and acknowledge their growth potential. Mariah Snyder, in the book Complementary & Alternative Therapies in Nursing, suggests that journaling helps us become aware of our unconscious thoughts and feelings which may have a significant impact on our actions and/or lives. This allows us to link our past, present and future; reflecting on the emotions and ideas of the past to be able to consider the significance it has over our present and future.
Despite the literature on the topic still growing, we can see that journaling has a lot of positive influences on our lives. Whether it is our well-being or our journey in self-growth, journaling allows us to organise our thoughts and feelings, at the same time allowing us to look at specific events from a different perspective.
References Petrie, K., Fontanilla, I., Thomas, M., Booth, R. and Pennebaker, J., 2004. Effect of Written Emotional Expression on Immune Function in Patients With Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection: A Randomized Trial. Psychosomatic Medicine, 66(2), pp.272-275. Smith, S., Anderson-Hanley, C., Langrock, A. and Compas, B., 2005. The effects of journaling for women with newly diagnosed breast cancer. Psycho-Oncology, 14(12), pp.1075-1082. Taylor, L., Wallander, J., Anderson, D., Beasley, P. and Brown, R., 2003. Improving Knowledge About, Access to, and Utilization of Long-Acting Reversible Contraception Among Adolescents and Young Adults. Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 10(1), pp.9-16. Ullrich, P. and Lutgendorf, S., 2002. Journaling about stressful events: Effects of cognitive processing and emotional expression. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24(3), pp.244-250. |