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Sharing Personal Stories through Fascinating and Effective Ways

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Let me take you back to 7th grade, a year that most can agree wasn’t all too great in their adolescent lives. Wether it was your friendships, your crush, or your slew of emotions, I know I am not the only one who found themselves having no clue how I felt or what direction I wanted to go in when I was 13 years old. While home this semester, I was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to stumble upon a “diary” of mine that had but only one entry in it. It was common of me to start up something, like a journal, vent in it only a few times, then completely forget about it. The actual diary entry reads as follows: “10/15/2006 Dear Diary, I don’t know if you know who I am, but I’m Sarah Marie, and I am now your owner. I’ve decided to …show more content…

It has been proven that just the act of journaling or documenting is a stress reducer, which is a deep trigger for unwanted emotions and physical ailments. It basically repairs one’s body from the inside out, increasing happiness, lowering cholesterol (an indicator of stress), strengthens our minds by using both left and right brain attributes, all while helping to increase our own personal awareness of our surroundings and develop an authentic relationship with ourselves. (NOTATION) One interesting study was conducted using online bloggers, but before the social media outburst of the last few years. At the University of Iowa, the diaries of 1,084 users of an online journaling service were examined two months prior, and two months after the September 11th, 2001 attacks. Linguistic analysis came to the conclusion that journal entries of those who wrote in response to the attacks, as well as those who didn’t, showed notable psychological changes. What is significant is although both subjects expressed negative emotions immediately after the attacks, those who wrote about the event were able to increase their moods and social referencing to their baseline activity after two weeks, whereas those who were less or non vocal took an average of six weeks to maintain stability. NOTATION. How does one make sure journaling is used in this positive

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