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What is thought journaling?
It’s simply writing down your thoughts and feelings to understand them more clearly. And if you struggle with stress, depression, or anxiety, keeping a journal can be a great idea. It can help you gain control of your emotions and improve your mental health. Journaling also helps people hone their focus so that they think about only one thing at a time. When you write your thoughts by hand, you can only write one word at a time. Your thoughts slow down to match your writing speed and you’ll find that it’s easier to slip out of your overthinking mindset. The aim of cognitive journaling is to: Describe mental and external events as they appear in your consciousness, using an objective, experiential, falsifiable method. Observe and highlight the empiric links between circumstances, thoughts/beliefs, and emotions. Therapeutic journaling is the process of writing down our thoughts and feelings about our personal experiences. This kind of private reflection allows us to sort through events that have occurred and problems that we may be struggling with. Of course, you don’t have to bring your journal with you or read from it in session. But writing things down allows you to look for patterns in your feelings and behaviors that you might want to address with your therapist, Small says. Journaling is one self-care method counselors can recommend to their clients. Clients can use this tool on their own and incorporate these entries into a therapy session. Counselors refer to journaling in therapy as writing therapy, journal therapy or expressive art therapy.
Is journaling good for intrusive thoughts?
Journaling can help reduce intrusive thoughts which lessens your stress level. By reducing your stress level, you are increasing your cognitive energy that can be used towards forming memories. Journaling improves your mood Writing clears your mind of intrusive thoughts and problems that you can’t stop thinking about. It also helps you identify your triggers and learn how to handle them. Writing about your emotions in an abstract, impersonal perspective is also calming and makes you happier, a study found. Benefits of therapeutic journaling Keeping a record of ideas and concepts, or things you learn in therapy. Tracking your progress. Helping to make sense of thoughts and experiences, and organizing them in a meaningful way. Helping you to recognize patterns in thoughts, feelings or behavior. Just like talking, writing things down, getting them out of your head and down on paper, can be both freeing and healing. Venting in this way helps you make sense of things. Thoughts lose their power when we release them, so the intensity of difficult emotions is often reduced.