Journaling can be a very effective tool for anyone dealing with any overwhelming emotion. However, simply putting words on a page will most likely not give the writer all the benefits of journaling, but effective journaling can result in many positive outcomes and improvements to one’s quality of life. Effective journaling can help reduce stress, manage anxiety, cope with depression, and improve your overall mood. It also helps the writer to prioritize problems, fears, and concerns, as well as track any day-to-day symptoms, so the writer can recognize triggers and develop ways to better control them. When utilizing effective journaling, it can also provide an opportunity for positive self-talk, and personal expression.
Effective journaling includes:
Gratitude Journaling – The writer would focus on thoughts or feelings of gratitude towards their life, family, friends, etc. This method will help boost long-term well-being, increase optimism, reduce symptoms of depression, and help facilitate progress towards goals.
Free Journaling – The writer is free to focus on any topic of their desire. This method promotes and enhances creativity, offers the writer an opportunity to recover from daily stressors, and helps the writer discover their “voice”.
Prompts – The writer focuses on a specific question. This method can help someone who just decided to start journaling but is not sure what to write. Prompts would include suggestions or ideas to help the writer focus their thoughts or emotions.
Utilizing these methods of journaling can help guide the writer to make important connections between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and even buffer or reduce the effects of mental illness (Ackerman, 2018). Per Ackerman (2018), its suggested that writing in a journal works to enhance our mental health by guiding the writer towards confronting unconscious feelings, helping us process difficult events, and even repeated exposure to negative emotions associated with traumatic memories.
It is important to remember that a journal is to be kept private and keeping this in mind can make anyone feel impossibly free to pour their most authentic self onto the page. Give it a try!
Examples of Journaling Prompts:
Ackerman, C. (2018, May 14). 83 benefits of journaling for depression, anxiety, and stress.
Positive Psychology.
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