This is One of the Best Tools for Mental Health Wellness
Successful people of our past have been using this amazing technique to get through many different situations in time. Journaling goes all the way back to as far as 10th century Japan. They used journaling as a tool for strategy and growth. Some of the most famous you can find (here.) Just knowing that many successful people in history journal, makes me excited to keep doing it myself.
Journaling has many benefits to add to your daily life and general wellbeing. I have personally seen the effects of consistently doing this in all areas of my life. I believe journaling matters and you should definitely pay attention to the great impact it will make. When you don’t have your thoughts and days organized, you will have more issues with mental health. You will start to forget and avoid things until your back is up against the wall...and no one enjoys that.
I’m here to help you with your mental health wellness. I want to share with you through my personal experience and years of studying into this. You should be able to find some key takeaways throughout this post to help you on your journaling journey. If you’re struggling with some mental health decline, and want to seek some real clarity to grow, then I’d read, comment, and share this post with like minds.
To me, Journaling is a small, but valuable escape...even if for a few minutes. The feelings of depression and anxiety make everything ten times worse when I don’t practice journaling or happen to skip a few days. I start to feel unorganized, less disciplined, broken, and then sadness strengthens due to the self esteem drop. Luckily, I have found my superhero judgement free therapy. The best part? Journaling is cheap, simple, and flexible. It will help you solve your problems more efficiently. When you write, you use the left part of your brain, which focuses on analytical and rational functions. Read more about those studies (here.) Fascinating studies to dive into. I love learning about our brain and the weirdness of it all.
Journaling & Mental Health: The Correlation
Journaling has been proven to make positive change in your mental health. It will give you the ability to identify negative
Some people relieve stress by journaling. Journaling allows people to clarify their thoughts and feelings, thereby gaining valuable self-knowledge. It’s also a good problem-solving tool; oftentimes, one can hash out a problem and come up with solutions more easily on paper. Journaling about traumatic events helps one process them by fully exploring and releasing the emotions involved, and by engaging both hemispheres of the brain in the process, allowing the experience to become fully integrated in one’s mind (Scott, 2009).
According to The Huffington Post, you’re emotionally intelligent when you can perceive and manage your own emotions and perceive the emotions of others. However, as I’ve already mentioned above, emotions can be tricky for the addict. It’s probably fair to say that we don’t often know how we feel. Or we’ve learned that it isn’t safe to express our emotions, even if we do know how we feel. Journaling can help this by helping us manage our emotions. Here’s how.
A self-reflective journal is a good way to keep records and reflect upon what happened during a lesson. I plan to, at the end of each day, jot down a few comments about what worked in my lessons, what didn’t work, and how I would modify the lesson to better support my students’ development. As this information will be recorded, I can always come back to it for reference when preparing future lessons. I also plan to often read the information on this journal so I can constantly remind myself of what strategies worked and what strategies didn’t work.
keeping a diary for recording my daily life because it is a good way to practice my
I never stopped journaling, even when I was dependent on heroin. The people I was surrounded by were not my friends, by any means, and frankly could not be trusted. So, when I felt I had no one to talk to, I would write in my journal. Now that I am in drug treatment, I am spending more and more time journaling and writing letters to the people I have hurt over the years. I find that some things are best communicated in that way.
Reflection and Transition, I hypothesize would be beneficial because during those times when Jason is experiencing flashbacks, trouble sleeping, difficulty handling loud noise, etc. Journaling his emotions could help in the processing aspect during the therapeutic process with his counselor. I hypothesize it would also be beneficial in helping Jason just clear his mind during those times by relieving
I’ve also read that journaling, as an added bonus, can improve your health; I could certainly benefit from that. Apparently, studies have shown that people who write about their feelings whether good ones or even bad can experience less stress and even increase stronger immune systems. We all know how keeping it all bottled up inside can be a recipe for disaster. Who knew journaling could increase wellbeing and
At a young age, my skills were limited, I had little knowledge about writing. While in elementary school, writing was introduced to allow us as a way to express what was on our minds. Our assignments consisted of writing in our journals daily. In the beginning, writing didn't really appeal to me. I found it to be boring and time consuming. However, journaling is a tool to help you become a better writer. It’s a way to help you express yourself.
It is recommended that you make a brief entry in your journal everyday in which you record events, situations, information and your insights related to counselling. Ensure that
The type journaling I used was the A-B-C structured diary to recognize my antecedents. I believe the A-B-C is a great way to keep record of the antecedents and find what behaviors and consequences occur. Journaling the different contingencies that effect my target behavior will help me learn and be aware of the five W’s (who, what, where, and why) that resulted in my self-discouragement (L.Watson & Tharp, 2014, p. 79). The journaling of how I structured it was put into an excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet contained three columns that were titled Antecedents; Behaviors; and Consequences respectively. Under Antecedents, I would explain the preceding events that would follow my reactions or behavior and its consequences. Examples included: walking
Journaling is a crucial aspect of Nursing by reflecting and incorporating personal experience, clinical experience, and theoretical approaches. It requires nurses to make links between thought and action, concept and practice. Not only will nurses improve their performance but they will also become more competent nurses upon graduation.
I wish what I know now about keeping a diary from when I was little was not to write about which boy I had a crush on, or what cool backpack someone brought in on the first day of school. At the same time, I like to reread about how I was as a child and what my insights were on everything I was writing about. Now that I am older, keeping a diary is somewhat unheard of now. As Joan says in her writings, “Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether…” I interpret that with current events and how the surge of electronics devices has made diarizing almost obsolete.
Writing allows me to express my views as a student. I have always enjoyed writing well as speaking. By writing first, then preparing and reciting notes, I am able to push through the nervous jitters when I have to speak at work. Writing first, then speaking will help you get a clear message across (Young, 2006). For me, being able to write has been healing. As I am sure most families experience issues of some kind, my family had many issues while I was a child. So, writing was and still is a tool for me to get things out and off of mind. A few friends of mine say they do not like to write and would not do it unless they had to. I encourage them to find something they want to learn about, then read about it and the writing will come. We can become passionate in writing about what we are interested in learning about (Quinn, 2015). Well, I do have to write for this class and for school in general. But, I choose to view it as an extension of what I already like to do, which is express my thoughts and understandings about what I read or study. The only difference with school is that someone is telling me what I have to read or study. This can make the learning less passionate, but if I can find one little thing that I can grab on to, it seems to provide me with a purpose to write.
Did the journal change my life or the way I lived it, not particularly. Before this project started I would write almost every night anyway, not necessarily in a journal because I prefer typing to writing as it feels less permanent and certainly more changeable, but the journal I used for the project was my actual one, with entries in it long before the project was assigned. Carrying the book around your neck was a bit overkill, but I have always carried a notebook with me. Over the summer I went to Philly almost every day and I filled up about 3 notebooks full of random thoughts because everyday on the train I would have to wait 20 minutes to get to my stop at 12th, 13th and locust so I could go to work and during that time I didn't really
Through journaling you can find insight about yourself. Finish a daily or weekly journal and then look back. I'm sure there are topics, ideas, and inspirations that keep coming up. When you will find them you will realize they are important to you.