The Health Benefits of Journaling

All my life, the leaders of my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) have counseled us to keep a journal (LeAnn, 2011) . Their reason of doing this was to preserve your life history for your posterity. If you want to know more about the LDS (Mormon) perspective on journaling you can go to: http://mormonwoman.org/2011/06/06/the-purpose-of-a-journal/

Recently, while studying stress for my Exercise Fitness class in college, I was reminded of the other benefits of keeping a journal. Journaling in general is a great way to get your feeling out and an excellent mental health strategy. Sometimes writing things down helps you identify your problems and get your feelings out. We sometimes don't recognize that we are under stress until we get our feelings on paper. One great thing to do in a journal is look for the positive things in your life.

In an article I found entitled “The Health Benefits of Journaling”, the scientific benefits of journaling are discussed (Purcell, 2006).

These benefits include:

• Clarifying your thoughts and feelings. Taking a few minutes to jot down your thoughts and emotions will quickly help you get in touch with them.
• Help you get to know yourself better. Writing routinely will help you get to know what makes you feel the way you do and become more clear about situations and people who are toxic.
• Reduce stress. Writing about anger, sadness and painful emotions helps you feel release some of the intensity of the emotions and feel calmer.
• Solve problems more effectively. Writing unlocks your creatively, which engages your right-brain and gives you another prospective on them.
• Resolve disagreements with others. Writing about misunderstandings helps clarify your feelings thus releasing some of the emotions so that you are better able to understand the other persons point of view (Purcell, 2006).

In addition to all the benefits previously mentioned, journaling helps you look back and see patterns, trends, improvement and growth over time. Reading your journal enables you to look back at past problems and see how you have resolved them (Purcell, 2006).

References:
LeAnn. (2011, June 6). The purpose of a journal. Retrieved from http://mormonwoman.org/2011/06/06/the-purpose-of-a-journal/

Purcell, M. (2006). The Health Benefits of Journaling. Psych Central. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/the-health-benefits-of-journaling/