Journaling habit is a way that leads to transformative thinking. In this article, we will present to you why you should keep a journal by listing the most important benefits that would help each one of you in balancing your mental health.

 Whether you’re dealing with stress from school, burnout from work, facing an illness, or suffering from anxiety or any other mental issue, expressive writing can serve as a therapy for your mental health since keeping a journal can be a beneficial self-care practice. In fact, it can help you:

1. Identify your Emotions:

Expressive writing creates awareness. Writing down your feelings about a difficult situation can help you understand it better. The act of putting an experience into words and structure allows you to form new perceptions about events.

2. Accept your Emotions:

Journaling helps you accept your emotions by regulating them. A study undergone on a group of people showed the brain scans of people who wrote about their feelings were able to control their emotions better than those who wrote about a neutral experience. It also found that writing about feelings in an abstract way was more calming than writing vividly.

3. Manage the stress

Journaling helps with brooding. Writing about an emotional event can help you break away from the non-stop cycle of obsessively thinking and worrying about what happened — but the timing matters. Some studies show that writing about a traumatic event immediately after it happens may actually make you feel worse.

4.  Reduce Anxiety

Writing about your feelings reduces mental distress. In a study¹, a group of people had been asked to write online about their feelings for 15 minutes for three days a week over a 12-week period. After a month of following this habit, researchers found an increase in the feelings of well-being and fewer depressive symptoms for people with various medical conditions and anxiety. Their mental well-being continued to improve during the 12 weeks of journaling, and the symptoms of mental illness have been relieved.

5. Impact physical well-being

Journaling may also have an impact on physical health. Studies suggest it because it can strengthen the immune system, drop blood pressure², help you sleep better, and generally keep you healthier. It can also speed up physical healing.  A study³ on 49 adults in New Zealand found that those who wrote for 20 minutes about their feelings on upsetting events healed faster after a biopsy than those who wrote about daily activities.  Journaling helps in faster wound healing. For instance, women with breast cancer who wrote positively or expressively about their experience with the disease had fewer physical symptoms and fewer cancer-related medical appointments⁴.

Increases learning ability and mental/memory sharpness

A study done by Fritson to see the impact of journaling habit on the students’ self-efficacy scores showed that they were significantly higher at the end of the semester of journaling than at the beginning⁵. Journaling boosts memory and comprehension. It also increases working memory capacity and improves cognitive processing⁶.

6. Encourages opening up

If you privately write about a stressful event, it could encourage you to reach out for social support. This can help in emotional healing.

7. Journaling Helps Manage Depression

Expressive writing is said to be an effective way of managing depression, especially for those who suffer from severe depression; it gives them the opportunity to release pent-up negative emotions, keeps them more positive, and helps them build a buffer between their negative thoughts and their sense of well-being.
A study in 2013 showed that people who were diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder reported significantly lower depression scores after three days of expressive writing, 20 minutes per day⁷. 

   So, all these studies clearly show the benefits of journaling habit on your mental health, including managing anxiety, reducing stress, coping with depression, controlling its symptoms, improving your mood, and positively impacting your physical health.

So, stay tuned for our next article that we will talk about how to start journaling habit and use it as a writing therapy ‎tool.‎

1.Smyth JM, Johnson JA, Auer BJ, Lehman E, Talamo G, Sciamanna CN. Online Positive Affect Journaling in the Improvement of Mental Distress and Well-Being in General Medical Patients With Elevated Anxiety Symptoms: A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Ment Health. 2018;5(4):e11290. Published 2018 Dec 10. doi:10.2196/11290

2.McGuire KM, Greenberg MA, Gevirtz R. Autonomic effects of expressive writing in individuals with elevated blood pressure. J Health Psychol. 2005 Mar;10(2):197–209. doi: 10.1177/1359105305049767.

3.Koschwanez HE, Kerse N, Darragh M, Jarrett P, Booth RJ, Broadbent E. Expressive writing and wound healing in older adults: a randomized controlled trial. Psychosom Med. 2013 Jul-Aug;75(6):581-90. doi: 10.1097/PSY.0b013e31829b7b2e. Epub 2013 Jun 26. PMID: 23804013.

4. Psycho-Oncology: “THE EFFECTS OF JOURNALING FOR WOMEN WITH NEWLY DIAGNOSED BREAST CANCER.”

5.Students’ Perceptions of Journaling in Undergraduate Classes

Krista K. Fritson | Destinee A. Nelson | Hannah Vontz | Krista D. Forrest / Fritson, Nelson, Vontz & Forrest, Students’ Perceptions of Journaling in Undergraduate Classes, Journal of Instructional Research 2013

6. Baikie, K., & Wilhelm, K. (2005). Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 11(5), 338-346. doi:10.1192/apt.11.5.338

7. Krpan KM, Kross E, Berman MG, Deldin PJ, Askren MK, Jonides J. An everyday activity as a treatment for depression: the benefits of expressive writing for people diagnosed with major depressive disorder. J Affect Disord. 2013 Sep 25;150(3):1148–51. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2013.05.065.