Mental Health: Journaling as a Recovery & Resilience Building Tool

Did you know that journaling can be a powerful tool in the process of recovery and resilience building? Journaling is the process of putting your thoughts, feelings and emotions into words or even drawings. Journals can be written or even typed. There are many ways to journal and the benefits to mental health can be tremendous. According to WebMD, some of the mental health benefits of journaling include:

• Reduction in anxiety. Journaling about your feelings is linked to decreased mental distress. In a study, researchers found that those with various medical conditions and anxiety who wrote online for 15 minutes three days a week over a 12-week period had increased feelings of well-being and fewer depressive symptoms after one month. Their mental well-being continued to improve during the 12 weeks of journaling.
• Help with brooding. Writing about an emotional event can help you break away from the nonstop cycle of obsessively thinking and brooding over what happened — but the timing matters. Some studies show that writing about a traumatic event immediately after it happens may actually make you feel worse.
• Regulation of emotions. Brain scans of people who wrote about their feelings showed that they were able to control their emotions better than those who wrote about a neutral experience. This study also found that writing about feelings in an abstract way was more calming than writing vividly.
• Accelerated physical healing. Journaling may also have an impact on physical health. A study on 49 adults in New Zealand found that those who wrote for 20 minutes about their feelings on upsetting events healed faster after a biopsy than those who wrote about daily activities. Similarly, college students who wrote about stressful events were less likely to get sick compared to those who wrote about neutral topics like their room.

Above are are just some of the ways in which journaling can be beneficial to mental health. Briana Isham, NAMI Georgia volunteer and advocate, also shares the following:

“I have written a journal to have a journey to recovery. I’m an advocate for healing in different ways for all ages. We are in an era where depression and suicide have reached an all time high. This journal is designed to help in the healing process to create a safe place for everyone to read and write down if unable to talk at that time. Until help is obtained, this is a gateway to help in the progression to healing. I dedicate this journal to everyone who has ever been told to suck it up and move on, to those who were told that their voice doesn’t matter, to those whose cries don’t get heard”

We encourage everyone to either use a personal journal or use a computer to collect your thoughts each day. If you would like a free journal, please contact Irene Barton at ibarton@cobbcollaborative.org. Additionally, you can purchase Briana’s book here.