By Rachael Teelander
While writing in a journal has many benefits, the positive impact it can have regarding mental health is something not many are aware of. Writing in a journal helps to clarify your thoughts and feelings in a way that keeping it inside cannot. Keeping a journal can also help reduce stress by letting out any internal feelings you may keep inside, without the possibility of hurting others by speaking them aloud.
For those with anxiety, keeping a journal (on top of medication or therapy) can help you take control of how you react to your symptoms. While there is no cure for anxiety, being able to help yourself through a panic attack, or simply a bad anxiety day, is a great way to take back your life. Some describe the simple feeling of their hand on the page to be enough to slow their thoughts enough to think themselves through what’s going on in their head. Some use journals to hold all of their negative thoughts instead of keeping them bottled up inside their own heads.
However, another suggestion is to end every entry with a “silver lining” so that perhaps this will move its way from your journal writing to your day-to-day thinking. Being able to have something as simple and portable as a journal to use as an anxiety coping mechanism could help many people get themselves out of the house when they weren’t able to before.
Edited by Emily Chance