Start Journaling to Improve Your Mental Health

Have you ever used to have a diary in which you used to jolt down your thoughts, feelings or whatever came to your mind? If you do this practice regularly for just 10 to 15 minutes daily, it is called journaling. Journaling is even used as an adjunct therapeutic method in treating mental health problems.

Let’s have a look at how the simple practice of journaling can improve your mental health for the better.

Lower Your Stress Levels

Stress is inevitable in life. But how you react to the stress is the real game changer. Journaling can help you lower your stress levels. You can journal about what you can and cannot control. You can also journal about your uncomfortable emotions resulting from stress; thus, you can efficiently process those troublesome emotions.

Writing about your negative emotions also helps in reducing mental distress. Overall, journaling can decrease your stress levels dramatically.

Manage Your Anxiety

Do you worry endlessly about different matters in life? Do you live in future by continuously worrying? It is a pattern of anxiety, and it can negatively influence the quality of your life. However, anxiety symptoms can be effectively reduced with the help of regular journaling.

You can journal about your anxious thoughts and feelings. You can also journal to identify the triggers of your anxiety. This kind of journaling can help decrease your anxiety, make you understand why you are anxious, and help you face your baseless fears.

Effectively Deal with Your Depression

If you generally have a negative outlook on the future, people and yourself, you might be suffering from depression. You are in the habit of viewing everything happening in a negative outlook. But the good news is that journaling can help in reducing these symptoms.

You can keep a gratitude journal to deal with these negative feelings and emotions. You can also journal to identify your negative thought patterns. Keeping a record of these negative thought patterns can help you refocus your viewpoint from negative to positive. This can overall reduce the symptoms of depression.

Process Your Emotions in a Safe Place

We usually do not know about how to process our emotions. Adaptively processing our feelings is crucial to mental health. But we usually learn this emotional processing from our elders, and these are primarily maladaptive ways.

Suppose you journal about your uncomfortable feelings and emotions in a relatively safe and private space instead of avoiding or suppressing them. In that case, it can significantly help process those emotions because expressing the feelings is the first step in dealing with them. It can increase the quality of your mental health.

Bottom Line

Whether you journal to reduce your stress levels, deal with your negative thoughts or write to express yourself, journaling can prove to be one of your best companions for coping with stress, anxiety, depression and negative emotions. However, if you feel that you cannot tackle your symptoms on your own, seek professional help.