Table of Contents
Can journaling make you feel worse?
Sometimes keeping a journal of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences helps, but often it makes things worse. In general, it is likely to hurt if it tries to help you “know yourself” in isolation and helps if it leads to greater understanding and behavior change in your interactions with others. Journaling forces me to articulate my internal experience. So, it may be the first time I put something sad or intense into words, and that brings up emotions. Often, it’s a relief. Sometimes it’s a realization of how upset I actually am. Daily Entries – Writing is not only creative but also therapeutic. Journaling can be cathartic by releasing pent-up feelings such as anger, depression, fear, guilt, jealousy, regret, resentment, sadness, shock, and yearning. Clients can record their symptoms in between sessions. Journaling can make you feel worse when you brood on the page, when writing is just a method of venting in which you constantly reinforce the story at the core of your reactions and emotions. In this case, indulging your anger only prolongs it — and your suffering. But journaling isn’t for everyone. Some people find that it doesn’t feel calming or fulfilling and the stress of finding the “perfect” words to put on paper can be overwhelming. As a child, I would get super excited every time I got a new diary or notebook—and then stress out if I missed writing for a few days.
Can journaling make you depressed?
Many mental health experts recommend journaling because it can improve your mood and manage symptoms of depression. Studies support this and suggest journaling is good for your mental health. It may also make therapy work better. Journaling helps keep your brain in tip-top shape. Not only does it boost memory and comprehension, it also increases working memory capacity, which may reflect improved cognitive processing. While some can write for hours at a time, researchers say that journaling for at least 15 minutes a day three to five times a week can significantly improve your physical and mental health. You can use social media, a curated practice, or even not writing at all to get some of the same benefits as people find through journaling. Finding your alternative to journaling will help you be more productive, motivated, and positive. You have a hard time concentrating on writing Another reason journaling doesn’t work for you could be that you have a hard time focusing or concentrating on the writing. Feeling spacey, having jumbled thoughts, or being in a rush could prohibit you from having a solid journaling experience. I found it to be true that the main difficulty people have with journaling is fear. Here, I will talk about some of the most common fears. Sometimes people are afraid that they are not doing it right, that they don’t know HOW to journal. There’s no right or wrong way to do it.
Can journaling affect your emotional behavior?
Journaling helps control your symptoms and improve your mood by: Helping you prioritize problems, fears, and concerns. Tracking any symptoms day-to-day so that you can recognize triggers and learn ways to better control them. Providing an opportunity for positive self-talk and identifying negative thoughts and … Journaling is something that either feels childish or intimidating to most of us, but the incredible benefits we get from it are well-documented. If you’re like most of us, you’ve probably started a journal at some point or kept a diary when you were a kid. Journaling can be a great self-care idea for introvert. It gives us a chance to reflect in solitude and channel our thoughts into words. If you have trouble sitting still for an hour every day, journaling can be a less intimidating alternative. So often, we let our minds slip through our jam-packed schedule. Studies show it’s better to journal at night because it gives you an outlet for emotions and thoughts that might otherwise keep you awake. Even though there is sound scientific research to support the idea that journaling at night is better, many people prefer to journal in the morning. Perhaps you needed an outlet for your thoughts, or maybe you were recording your experiences to revisit later in life. According to surveys, about half of us have written in a journal at some point in our lives, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 6 people are active journalers right now. The results suggest that keeping a journal led to more optimism and gratitude, both of which can boost well-being. A 2018 study suggests that writing about positive experiences for just 15 minutes a day three times a week may help ease feelings of anxiety and stress and boost resilience.
Can journaling cause stress?
Journaling can reduce stress by serving as an escape or emotional release of negative thoughts and feelings. A 2011 study highlighted the positive impact journaling had on adolescents who struggled with worry and self-doubt before test taking. Whether you’re dealing with stress from school, burnout from work, an illness, or anxiety, journaling can help in many ways: It can reduce your anxiety. Journaling about your feelings is linked to decreased mental distress. Journaling might just be the thing to help you rewire your brain, whether it’s a shift in attitude you seek or you’re trying to reach other life goals. Research even points to health benefits that can result from keeping a journal, such as increased immunity and reduced stress. Numerous studies have shown that journaling can reduce overall levels of depression. A 2006 study by Stice, Burton, Bearman, & Rohde showed that writing in a journal can be as effective as cognitive-behavioral therapy when it comes to reducing the risk of depression in young adults.
Can journaling increase anxiety?
Whether you’re dealing with stress from school, burnout from work, an illness, or anxiety, journaling can help in many ways: It can reduce your anxiety. Journaling about your feelings is linked to decreased mental distress. Studies have shown that the emotional release that comes from keeping a journal helps to lower anxiety and stress, and even helps you achieve a better night’s sleep. Journaling boosts my creativity. Writing without a censor frees me from overthinking and limiting my imagination. It helps my brain make connections it might not otherwise. Most importantly for ADHD, it allows me to capture my great ideas before I forget them two minutes later. Jim Rohn said, “A life worth living is a life worth recording.” Most successful people keep journals and there are many reasons why. A journal not only gives you a place to record your thoughts, but it also allows you to analyze where you are, where you are going and where you have been.
Does journaling make you overthink?
Even scientific evidence backs this technique—researchers have found journaling can help reduce intrusive thoughts, organize scattered memories and improve your overall mental and physical health. Journaling also helps people hone their focus so that they think about only one thing at a time. This technique involves you writing down your thoughts and feelings, along with when and where you experienced these feelings. The goal of keeping a thought diary is to increase your awareness of your thought patterns and how they change over time. But journaling isn’t for everyone. Some people find that it doesn’t feel calming or fulfilling and the stress of finding the “perfect” words to put on paper can be overwhelming. As a child, I would get super excited every time I got a new diary or notebook—and then stress out if I missed writing for a few days. Enhance Your Intelligence Writing has long been connected with the ability to increase your own intelligence and even to improve your IQ. By writing through a journal, you’re actively stimulating your brain, putting thoughts into written form and expanding your vocabulary. If you’re struggling to journal, you need to maintain some sort of consistency. Set a specific time each day or once a week to journal. You can journal for 20 minutes every Sunday at 9 pm or opt for 5 minutes a day every morning at 8 am. Be specific!
What happens when you journal everyday?
Improve writing and communication skills Writing, like anything, improves with practice. When you journal every day, you’re practicing the art of writing. And if you use a journal to express your thoughts and ideas, it can help improve your communication skills. Since journaling lends itself to putting some of those thoughts on paper, letting someone read your journal can give them a glimpse of how you approach things, which in turn could lead to better understanding you. Once kids can pick up a pencil or crayon, they can start writing a journal. It doesn’t have to actually be words, it can be pictures, letters, stickers, or cut-and-pasted memorabilia. The goal of writing a journal is to express yourself on paper. This goal doesn’t change whether a child is four or ten. How often you write in your journal is unique to the individual and will vary based on your preferences and goals. Writing in a journal a few times a week, such as every other day or 3-4 times per week, is often an ideal amount for most people. Journals are very personal and done entirely for oneself. The simple act of expressing thoughts and feelings on paper about challenging and upsetting events can allow us to move forward by expressing and letting go of the feelings involved. Expressive writing also provides an opportunity to construct a meaningful personal narrative about what happened.
Is journaling helpful or harmful?
It might also help your physical health. Letting your emotions out can reduce stress, which can boost your immune system — as long as you then process your emotions. Studies have shown that the emotional release that comes from keeping a journal helps to lower anxiety and stress, and even helps you achieve a better night’s sleep. Sometimes keeping a journal of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences helps, but often it makes things worse. In general, it is likely to hurt if it tries to help you “know yourself” in isolation and helps if it leads to greater understanding and behavior change in your interactions with others. Whether you’re dealing with stress from school, burnout from work, an illness, or anxiety, journaling can help in many ways: It can reduce your anxiety. Journaling about your feelings is linked to decreased mental distress. It allows the brain to slow down, especially when you’re feeling high intensity emotions like anxiety, fear, nervousness, anger, frustration (Ackerman, 2020). Seeing your thoughts broken down into words or images builds clarity of thought and forces your brain to make structural sense to them (Ackerman, 2020).