Having a journal at an age when everything suddenly becomes overwhelming to handle can help someone navigate their feelings, manage their stress, and understand their emotions.
Noting that journaling has become a new hobby for many, here are some mental health benefits that journaling can provide an individual when it comes to empowering and redirecting oneself.
1. Identifying stressors
Being able to recognize the key causes of stress in your day-to-day life is a primary step to managing and overcoming them with ease.
As you write in your journal, make sure to include all the details about how your day went, especially when you had unpleasant encounters that seemed to negatively affect your mood.
By going through some of your entries that highlight your bad days, you’d be able to identify why you felt stressed or terribly triggered during particular moments.
Remember, in listing down your entries, don’t be hesitant to be open to yourself so that you can truly evaluate your stressors.
2. Deflects negative thoughts for self-empowerment
Journaling significantly promotes a sense of self-empowerment as it encourages you to see yourself and your life from a new perspective.
When you are writing about your daily experiences, it will always be a combination of your happy, sad, and disappointing encounters with the world and other people who surround you.
But regardless of these experiences, you are able to release all your emotions instead of just keeping them inside. In fact, recording these things helps you process what you are feeling and perhaps even explore more positive reframing options.
Also, writing about positive experiences will let you learn how to shift your focus to the things that truly matter rather than boxing yourself into the negatives.
3. Helps you feel in control of your stress
It was said that writing in a journal can help in creating the space and distance needed to reflect on what has happened, where we are, and what lies ahead.
Through this, you can become more self-aware of your own emotions, sentiments, and inner struggles that seem to hinder you from achieving peace of mind.
When journaling for stress management, it becomes easier to process and make sense of the stress that you are feeling because you get to know the reason behind it through the captured thoughts and emotions written in your journal. Hence, you can work on a self-care plan to feel much better.
It helps you temporarily eliminate heavy feelings that are creeping within yourself, leading to decreased mental distress, improved resilience to stress, and overall emotional healing.
4. Reminds you to be grateful
There is what we call the “gratitude journal.” As said, some people keep a daily gratitude journal where they list three or more aspects of each day for which they are grateful.
This is a highly effective technique to relieve stress and see life in a brighter sense because it helps to focus more on the beautiful things, be they small or big, instead of the stressful ones.
You can try listing the opportunities you got at work, the praises you received from other people, the resources you have to live a quality life, that great cup of coffee you had, family or friends you want to thank, and many other things that are inspiring you to keep on moving forward.
A bonus benefit is that you are left with a record of the many nice things that have happened throughout your days.
5. An organized and balanced lifestyle
There are also people who simply write journal entries in order to keep track of what they need to do each day, important goals they have, memories they create, and other things they do not ever want to forget. This helps people keep their minds uncluttered and at peace.
Having a balanced grasp of these life events encourages you to accept your feelings and commit to the changes that you have to make.
As a matter of fact, journaling helps people achieve meaningful goals they only used to write about before, experience a sense of optimism and pride in their accomplishments, and live a life where they feel more in control and in power.
Remember, it is easier to live your life when you acknowledge your own feelings and struggles.
When you write in your journal, you can gain a better understanding of what you are struggling with at that moment, which makes you aware of how you can conquer them throughout your journey to a stress-free life.
