The Benefits of Writing and Journaling!
The Therapeutic Benefits of Journaling
GUEST WRITER: Ted Zelenskyy
Chances are, you have kept a journal of some kind at some point in your life. Whether it was a cute diary in junior high, or a homework assignment in grade school where you were instructed to write and turn in your journals every week, keeping a journal is a popular medium for self-reflection and holding onto memories of the past. My name is Ted Zelenskyy and I am an undergraduate intern here at No Stress No Stigma and an avid journaler. I recently finished my second year-long journal project where I did my best to write every single day for a year. I previously kept a journal for an entire year during my junior year of high school and decided to do it again during my second year at the University of San Diego. Both years of journaling started with the same basic motive: to read them back sometime later for nostalgic purposes. But what I quickly learned while writing my first journal was that there was so much more to this self-reflective ritual than one may see at first glance. I figured it was about time I explored the elements of journaling that make it so therapeutic and impactful on one’s life. And of course, I wanted to learn more about journaling’s role in therapy, if any!
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Journaling and one’s journal can hold different meanings for different people. Everyone can choose to write how and about whatever they choose to and still call it a journal! However, there are some overarching themes that are present in nearly all types of self-reflective writing. Most people, and I did this too, begin their journal entries by recounting what they did that day or since they last wrote. I was someone who really enjoyed going into great detail about what happened during my day, again with the mindset of reading these entries back many years down the line. This manner of reflecting on one’s recent experiences has positive effects in the brain. Research has shown that journaling has the capacity to improve mental processing and keep your memory sharp. Moreover, daily recollection can increase the capacity of your short-term memory and make it easier for you to remember things day-to-day. In addition to reflecting on one’s day, people often use journals as a way to cope with daily challenges.. After a stressful day, I found writing out my thoughts quite relaxing and it allowed me to physically and mentally decompress. Research done on daily expressive writing had participants reporting lower blood pressure levels and improved liver functionality after journaling just three or four times during a four month period. There is a great satisfaction that comes from expressing ourselves, especially when we are feeling vulnerable emotions such as sadness or anger. Studies have shown that journaling allows one to convert the negative energy from these feelings into positive, proactive, and creative action that can foster meaningful personal growth. There are many more common aspects to journals, but even these two basic themes make it seem like a no-brainer that journaling would be used in conjunction with traditional therapy.
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That does turn out to be exactly the case! In fact, there is a whole theory of therapy centered around journal writing called, you guessed it: journal therapy. There are few clinical professionals who use solely journal therapy for their practice, and most psychotherapists use it in addition to their other manners of treatment. To describe journal therapy briefly, it is the use of journaling prompts and exercises to bring about self-awareness and develop one’s sense of self. Through expressive writing activities, a therapist will guide you toward your goals.
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Here is a list of the different kinds of prompts and reflective activities often seen in journal therapy:
Journaling with Photographs: Here, you would choose a personal photograph and spend time responding to questions about the photograph. Examples of questions could be, “What do you feel when you look at these photos?” or “What memories arise for you when you look at this photo?”
Lists of 100: In this activity, you would list 100 items (or close to that) that relate to a chosen theme or topic which you and your therapist will then discuss together. Examples of list prompts include 100 Things that Make Me Happy, 100 Reasons to Wake Up in the Morning, 100 Things that Make Me Tick.
Sentence Stems: This technique involves responding to a series of open-ended sentences for the person to complete. For example, an open-ended sentence can look like, “The thing I am most worried about is…” or “I have trouble sleeping when…”
Letter Writing: As the name suggests, this activity prompts the person in therapy to write a letter to someone about various issues he or she is experiencing. You can choose who to write to, even if it is someone you have lost or is not a person at all but a part of you.
Dialogue: This technique is quite similar to role playing in therapy and essentially involves the person in therapy to play two parts in a conversation. In doing so, it is hoped that they will gain a new perspective on an issue or situation by seeing it from both vantage points (the two roles in the conversation). -
Journal therapy and therapeutic journal writing have often been used in the treatment of a number of conditions including posttraumatic stress, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, and low self-esteem. Clinical trials have found that writing about emotions and stress can boost immune function in individuals with illnesses such as HIV/AIDs, asthma, and arthritis. It is important to note that the role of the therapist in therapeutic journaling is essential as they are the ones best suited to provide you with the necessary prompts and activities to keep you on the path to achieving your goals. Just as in traditional talk-therapy, the clinician is the one who will not be afraid to ask you those difficult and sometimes uncomfortable questions!
Another form of journaling present in therapy comes in the form of cognitive behavioral therapy journals. As a reminder, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a therapy theory which focuses on changing unhealthy thought processes and patterns of thinking to foster positive emotional and mental growth. Key benefits of CBT include improved emotional regulation, thought control, and the development of coping strategies. We learned earlier how common it is for personal journals to become a coping mechanism for many people. CBT journals are quite structured in the sense that they involve specific prompts and questions for the person in therapy to answer. It is most similar to the sentence stem technique in journal therapy that we learned about in the previous paragraph on journal therapy.
Far different from the journaling we talked about earlier, CBT thought formation forms put great focus on your reactions to the situations that you experience. By completing forms such as this, you and your therapist will be able to discuss the ways in which events trigger certain emotions and how you can work together to transform these negative reactions into more positive and proactive responses. Unlike a traditional journal, CBT worksheets may not be assigned every single week or every session. There are many types of CBT worksheets that are most effective in different situations and they are often accompanied by other CBT interventions and techniques. However, because of the prevalence of CBT therapy, I figured it was good to touch on these worksheets for you to see the similarities between casual journaling, journal therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy worksheets. Looking at it now, it almost works like a hierarchy wherein casual diaries could be described as the least clinical of tools, and CBT worksheets are the most strategic intervention with their goals to reconfigure one’s thought processes. Note that the recollection of past experiences is present in both casual journals and here in the CBT worksheet. Another similarity is the acknowledgement of one’s emotions during these experiences. To summarize, casual journaling will inherently carry elements of therapeutic interventions such as acknowledging negative thoughts and reflecting on one’s experiences, but they may not provide you with the same level of clinical interpretation and guidance that CBT worksheets can offer. And they most certainly are not a replacement for a trained, professional psychotherapist!
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Throughout this blog post, I touched on the different ways that journaling can benefit you both physiologically and psychologically. I wanted to share some other personal takeaways from my experience of journaling before I leave you with some guides and tips to starting your own journal, which I highly recommend you try sometime! When I wrote every single day, I found myself becoming more aware of my surroundings. I began noticing little things on my walk to school, at my desk at home, and quirks about myself I had no idea existed before I began writing. My thinking is that when I had gotten into the habit of journaling every day, I carried a mindset of knowing I would be writing each evening so I made sure to take note of every little detail as I went about my day. It made me appreciate the vast size of our world and the itty bitty parts that combine to make it what it is. It made me appreciate the everyday. Additionally, journaling served as a way to validate my feelings. Seeing my thoughts and internal emotions typed out on a computer screen seemed foreign and strange at first, but over time, I began to find it comforting. Almost as if I was having a dialogue with my inner self who was doing the typing and I was the one simply reading. It is a powerful experience to see myself spill out thoughts onto a computer text document and have them projected back to me on a screen for reflection and reprocessing. I sort of think of it as making visible the hidden feelings and emotions that I was experiencing, setting myself up for a time to be vulnerable and to just sit with those thoughts.
At the end of the day, however, your journal will mean what it means for you. And you will take away from it what you find meaningful and yours. I think that is the true beauty of journaling. It serves as a space and an external part of you that is unlike anyone else’s. It allows us to be vulnerable and share that vulnerability with others if we choose to do so. As a final disclaimer, a journal is not a replacement for a therapist. I would instead recommend you talk to your therapist about starting a journal and how you could utilize it as a tool to enhance your mental health journey. -
Below are several links to articles I used to write this post as well as a guide to starting your own journal!
● 83 Benefits of Journaling for Depression, Anxiety, and Stress
● The Psychology of Journaling
● What’s All This About Journaling?
● Journal Therapy
● Five Powerful Health Benefits of Journaling
● A New Reason for Keeping a Diary
● The Good and the Bad of Journaling
● Therapeutic Journaling: An Introduction & Guide to Writing for Your Mental Health