Contributed by: Rachna Arya
You may be surprised to learn that journaling is good for you — physically, mentally, and emotionally. There’s a growing body of research suggesting that it not only helps you record your personal thoughts, feelings, insights, and memories, but it is one of your best wellness tools.
In this blog, we will talk about some of the short and long-term health benefits of putting pen to paper.
Read on to find out some good-for-you virtues of journaling:
The Positive Effects Of Journaling
Reduces Stress
Journaling is a highly effective tool for stress management. It decreases the release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline and lessens the impact of physical stressors on your health. It has become increasingly clear that chronic stress can be damaging to your physical, mental, and emotional health. In fact, a study showed that writing about stressful experiences helps to lower blood pressure and improve liver functionality. Plus, it can have a protective effect against negative thoughts and feelings. Expressive writing is associated with enhanced coping with stressful or traumatic events.
Improves Immune Function
Scientific studies have demonstrated a compelling connection between journaling and improved immune response. Studies indicate that journaling may be an effective, relaxing exercise that can strengthen your immunity and decrease your risk of illness. It boasts of improved immune system functioning as well as lessened symptoms of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. Writing about deepest thoughts and feelings has been shown to improve liver and lung function and combat certain diseases; it has even been reported to help the wounded heal faster.
Keeps Memory Sharp
Journaling has been shown in clinical studies to have many positive effects on your mental health and functioning. Brain scans of people who wrote about their feelings showed that not only does it boost memory of events and comprehension, it also leads to improved cognitive processing and enhances your ability to see patterns in life. What’s more, journaling unlocks the creativity of right brain, which gives you access to your full brainpower.
Boosts Mood
A unique social and behaviour outcome of journaling is that by logging your mood, you can recognize trends, triggers, and patterns of your emotions. This presents an opportunity for improvement of your mood and gives you a greater sense of overall emotional well-being and happiness.
Helps Heal from Traumatic Experiences
Various studies have found that journaling helps unpack deep, emotional and traumatic experiences of their lives, like divorce, death, accident, illness, abuse etc. The people who journaled saw the biggest enhancement in the acceptance of mental experiences. Indeed, the experience of writing can be a meaningful and, ultimately, valuable part of the acceptance process.
Strengthens Physical Healing
Studies have demonstrated that creative writing is effective in improving a number of physical health outcomes. Women with breast cancer who wrote privately or expressively about their experience with the disease were able to adjust psychologically to a cancer diagnosis and treatment. It empowered them to monitor their adverse symptoms. In fact, various studies revealed that the practice of structured journaling led to fewer physical symptoms and fewer cancer-related medical appointments.
Go ahead and set aside a dedicated space and time for journaling. And don’t forget to put aside the screens when journaling. Remember, capturing our thoughts and feelings on paper offers wide-ranging benefits. It fosters confidence and well-being brain in a way digital communication doesn’t.
Our recommendation to reap the benefits of journaling is? If you’re looking to do something good for your mind and body, the best way is to engage in journaling consistently.
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Source: HEALTHIANS
