Talking to a counsellor or a therapist can help you work through all sorts of confusing thoughts and feelings, and even though this is a wonderful way to help you resolve problems and find solutions, it’s not always possible to speak to someone right when you most need to. So, there are a few ideas that counsellors and therapists suggest are helpful ways to explore your feelings in moments when you haven’t got anyone to talk to; one of those ideas is journalling.
Journalling is one really simple way to express emotions and to say what is really on your mind; you can write about your feelings or explore what you are thinking or the situation you are currently experiencing. Journalling is an excellent way to help you catch your thoughts and track your moods, and it’s also great to help identify triggers or patterns in everyday situations. It can certainly help decrease feelings associated with anxiety and stress, and is also a very effective way to help you gain a deeper understanding and a clearer perspective of what you are going through and the presenting challenges.
Journalling has, for many years, been shown to improve physical health, lower blood pressure, improve the function of the immune system, and even improve liver function.
Writing down what is going on inside can help you get to know and understand yourself better. Another way to think about this is making the implicit explicit or making the unclear clear. Journalling has been shown to lift mood and help to fight off depressive thinking.
Journalling is often used to help people process and work through trauma, and studies have shown that writing about your challenges and the stress you experience helps physical ailments such as asthma and inflammatory diseases, such as arthritis.
So, taking 10-15 minutes every day to write about how you’re feeling can really help your mental, emotional and physical health.
