The Benefits of Journaling: Expressing Your Thoughts and Emotions

Journaling is something that we all tend to associate with children who run home from school and write down the stories of their families and classmates. However, journaling has picked up steam as an adult hobby and it’s now estimated that one out of every six people keeps a journal where they write about what they did and the interactions they had.

Those people tend to see a lot of benefits from journaling, too. If you’ve ever thought of keeping a journal (no matter your age) here are some of the benefits to expressing your thoughts and emotions in a journal.

Organized thoughts 

Journaling is a beneficial practice used by loads of people from all walks of life. It’s often suggested to patients partaking in therapy as a method of unloading emotions in an attempt to process them more efficiently. Journaling can be useful to anyone wanting to organize the jumbled thoughts inside their head. Organizing your thoughts through journaling will clear up space in your head for more valuable and positive thoughts. 

Helps recognize patterns

One of the great things about journaling is that it leaves us with a paper trail of our thought processes. Journaling is pretty much a multi-beneficial way to log our changes in mood. Changes in our emotional patterns may be difficult to recognize from a first-person view. That’s where journaling comes in handy. If you journal for an extended period of time, maybe a few weeks to months, you should be able to recognize particular patterns of behavior, triggers, and habits you possess that you didn’t notice prior to journaling. This newfound information about yourself can lead you to tackle your mental health troubles in a more efficient way. 

Showing your therapist 

Part of why journaling is so beneficial is that it shines a light on patterns, habits, and triggers that can go unseen otherwise. Therapists often suggest journaling to patients as a way to get their thoughts out productively, in a more straightforward way. Emotion plays a huge part in opening up during a therapy session. Sometimes those emotions cloud your brain and make it difficult to really get your point across. With journaling, your therapist can then take the time to look over your entries to get a better sense of how you’re feeling, what issues you face, and how to help overcome them. 

Release 

Journaling has many benefits, but perhaps the most rewarding is the release you experience through getting your thoughts and emotions out of your head and onto paper. Holding on to overwhelming thoughts and feelings can turn your mind into a prison and have a very negative effect on your mental health. Journaling may not solve all of your problems, but releasing the tension from your mind is a healthy start. Journaling regularly will help you to feel renewed and have a fresh mental canvas to work with when you’re done. 

Better communication 

With regular journaling, your communication skills will greatly improve. Unchecked emotions can crowd our minds and make it difficult to convey how we’re feeling and what our needs are. Writing down your thoughts helps to organize them and makes it all that much easier to communicate your needs. You and those around you will better understand your inner monologue and be able to offer a helping hand. 

Creative outlet 

Creativity is closely linked to mental health and writing is a wonderful way to get those creative juices flowing. Journaling may ignite a spark within you and convince you to use writing as, not only a mental health outlet but a creative outlet as well.