When it comes to improving your emotional wellbeing and making your emotional health a priority, there are many tools at your disposal. But among them, using a journal is probably one of the very best. It is easy to use, inexpensive, and extremely versatile.
Here are some different ways to use a journal on your own emotional wellness journey.
You Can Acknowledge and Process Your Emotions
One of the biggest emotional well-being benefits you get from using a journal is not only being able to become more aware of your emotions but actually learning how to start processing them. Before you can process your emotions, you do need to acknowledge them. If you have a tendency to hide away from your emotions out of fear, then the journal can feel much safer and more private for you.
You Work Through Traumas and Other Challenges
Any time you have an emotional trauma in your life, no matter how mild or severe it may seem, your emotions will be put through the wringer. It can often feel like you aren’t able to process it and deal with it on your own, but with a journal, you have a little extra help.
You have a safe space where you can write down how you feel or think about that traumatic event, what challenges you faced, and how you are feeling about it now. Nobody ever has to read what you write in your journal, so it is easier to be honest with yourself and use it as a tool for your road to emotional healing.
It Provides You With Self-Reflection and Clarity
Journaling is a wonderful tool when it comes to self-reflection and gaining more clarity into your life, your thoughts and feelings, and your emotions. Not just for your emotional well-being, but to improve your life and mindset as a whole.
Even when you don’t intend to, you find a lot of clarity from writing in a journal. This is especially true when you choose a stream of consciousness style of journaling, where you write down anything that is on your mind, with no rules or prompts to use.
Journaling is a Safe and Healthy Distraction Activity
Sometimes what you really need is simply something to distract your mind and not focus so much on one thing that is weighing heavily on you. This doesn’t mean you try to hide away your emotions and never deal with them, but just to give yourself some time to relax until you’re ready to deal with them.
It is a healthy way to distract your mind as you work through how you are feeling until you can come back to those emotions and get to the root of what is actually going on inside your head.
You Can Sit With Your Emotions Instead of Reacting
With a journal, you can also start learning how to sit with your emotions instead of immediately reacting. By writing down how you feel and getting to the bottom of WHY you feel that way, this exercise alone helps you to take a pause before immediately reacting and going down a negative thoughts spiral.
When you immediately react to how you feel, it is often based on your fears or limiting beliefs and not realistically on what is happening. This can lead to a lot of regret, guilt, and shame. It is much healthier for your emotional well-being to sit with your emotions by just writing them down and considering where they are coming from.
Journaling Helps to Reduce Stress and Anxiety
Stress and anxiety are both very common and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you. But there is no denying that it can make having a healthy emotional wellbeing a little more difficult. Using a journal every day to process those emotions helps tremendously when you struggle with stress, anxiety, or other mental health disorders.
Many people find that just writing about their day or what is going through their minds at the time can help with their anxiety. You can use the journal to figure out your own anxiety triggers and discover what in your life might be making your stress worse. Even if it doesn’t resolve these issues, having an outlet to express what you are going through is never a bad thing.
