What You Need To Know About The Mental Health Benefits Of Journaling

Journaling is a way of recording your thoughts, feelings, habits, and gaining insights for your personal development. It can look different for each individual, some record digitally and some use paper, and it can be written or drawn. It takes work but it’s worth it for the good impact journaling has on mental health.

Journaling has helped me cope with my Mental Health issues since I became chronically ill with migraine disease and was traumatised by the lack of support and, what I now know was, gaslighting from my neurology team. 

The stress I was under as I tried for months to get a diagnosis, unable to work as a teacher, was immense. Even when I was diagnosed with IIH, a rare brain disease, I became depressed and had extreme anxiety as I had to wait for over a year for treatment so I had support from a mental health professional. 

Whilst facing these challenges I started journaling about my situation as a way of exploring the difficult feelings I had, for example, writing about grieving for the life and career I’d lost. 

This helped me work through this extremely emotional phase and I was able to rant without my loved ones being in the crossfire. Writing about my difficult emotions, whilst living with chronic illness, helped me so much that I’ve written about the benefits journaling has on our mental health when done safely. 

I have also created an epic coaching journal for mental health that is written to ensure you’re not isolated in the process. The Journey To Balance Journal will help you understand yourself and your mental health needs better. You can buy the journal by clicking here. 

Journaling is different for everyone, some use it to record parts of everyday life, whilst others use it as an exercise to process experiences, negative thoughts and feelings. Putting these things on the page helps you take back a sense of control. Psych centra says in this article that:

“journaling is a powerful, evidence-based strategy that you may find helpful for managing mental health conditions and stress.”

The mental health benefits of journaling can be powerful, helping you process stress, trauma, and difficult emotions. These are some of the ways that journaling can support you:

• Reduces stress and anxiety

Writing about your thoughts and feelings can help you reduce their intensity and therefore loosen their hold over you, reducing symptoms of stress and anxiety.

• Improves mood

Journaling can help you focus on the positive aspects of your life, which can improve your mood and increase feelings of gratitude.

• Enhances self-awareness

Journaling can help you become more self-aware as you reflect on your thoughts and behaviors. This can help you identify patterns that are causing stress or holding you back.

• Boosts creativity

Writing can stimulate the creative parts of your brain and help you come up with new ideas and solutions to problems.

• Increases mindfulness

Mindfulness is being present in the moment. Journaling can help you practice this by focusing on your thoughts and feelings in a non-judgmental way.

These mental health benefits of journaling show that it’s simple and effective to use journaling to improve your mental health. Regularly taking time out to reflect on your thoughts and emotions helps you develop strategies for coping with stress.

What Should A Mental Health Journal Feature?

Here are some elements that can are often utilised for each individual's needs in a mental health journal:

1. Mood tracking is one of the most important features, involving recording your mood each day so that you can analyse patterns and look at what may affect your mood. By identifying triggers, you can evolve strategies to manage them.

   This is a key feature in the Journey To Balance Journal, based on the theme of the journal and the emotion coaching in the self-help section of the journal. Over a month you record your daily mood on this graphic, colouring in using the key. There’s also space to document how triggers impact your mood.

2. Daily gratitude log allows you to practice gratitude, which is important in promoting mental wellbeing. This exercise helps you beat negative self-talk which can stifle your personal development and impact your mood. Learn more about how to overcome this by reading my blog about beating toxic self-talk.

I set out to ensure that the ‘Journey To Balance’ mental health journal encourages positive self-talk by having a segment where you write down what you are grateful for each day. It’s a quick and easy way to help you maintain good mental health. 

3. Self-care habits are one of the mental health benefits of journaling, building self worth by tracking your self-care activities. Using a habit tracker can help you set goals for things that make you feel good and improve your well being. You can adopt and keep up habits such as exercise, meditation or any other activities that promote self-care.

Recording your self-care activities on the habit tracker in the Journey To Balance Journal will help you feel motivated and committed to doing self-care. In the long run, achieving your goal to make these activities habits will improve your whole life.

“In a nutshell, your health. wealth, happiness, fitness, and success depend on your habits.” - Joanna Jast

4. Thought records, according to this NHS information, is a common cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) exercise. It is explained in full here as the practice of recording and studying your thoughts and feelings about a situation so you can understand the link between your thoughts and behaviours. 

As explained in the daily gratitude section this is a helpful tool that allows you to identify and challenge negative thought patterns. The gratitude log is part of this section of the Journey To Balance Journal for mental health. Record the thoughts and feelings you have throughout the day, so that you can process your emotions and reframe negative thoughts and feelings.

5. Regular Reflections is a core self care activity. I discuss how this activity and others lead to emotional development in this blog (link). I explain how self reflection is vital for meeting our goals and improving ourselves through regular self care.

In the Journey To Balance Journal for mental health, I’ve ensured that there are activities in the prompts section and space for deep work in the monthly reflection area. This is what makes it a powerful self awareness book as it helps you gain real insight into your thoughts and feelings. 

These features should be personalised to your specific needs and goals in a mental health journal. They can be a powerful tool for promoting self-awareness, identifying patterns, and working towards positive mental health outcomes.

Quick Guide: How Is Journaling Good For Mental Health? 

From my own experiences with chronic conditions, I have found journaling a helpful tool for balancing my mental health. I used it as an opportunity to explore the difficult feelings I was experiencing as I grieved the life I’d known pre chronic illness. 

Journaling helped my mental health during this difficult time period and has continued to do so as I manage the challenges of chronic illness. Journaling gives me space to shout about it without aiming my negative emotions at my loved ones. 

It isn’t just me using journaling to process big emotions, in fact it’s well documented that journaling is good for mental health. I found research, such as this WebMD article, that explains that the mental health benefits of journaling include reducing stress, building self-awareness, regulating emotions, and breaking the cycle of obsessing over negative experiences. 


In Conclusion…

Journaling is good for your mental health. Recording your thoughts and feelings can be therapeutic, helping you process difficult emotions and experiences. Writing about stressful events can help you make sense of them. 

Journaling helps you gain a deeper understanding of yourself, your values, and your priorities. It can help you explore new ideas and perspectives and can be a helpful tool for tracking progress towards goals and reflecting on personal growth.

I know that writing about my difficult emotions whilst living with chronic illness helped me, so I have written the Journey To Balance Journal to include the 5 key features of a good mental health journal: Mood tracking, gratitude journaling, self care habits, thought records and reflections. 

This journal for improving mental health puts emotional development front and centre, so that it has a positive impact on your mental health. Chronic illness life comes with many difficult feelings so the Balance Journal allows you to: 

• Write freely to help you understand yourself better

• Rant about difficult situations without it being aimed at loved ones

• Use the coaching aspect of the journal to create a safe space to explore your emotions

Overall, journaling can be a valuable tool for improving mental health and well-being. It's a simple and accessible practice that can be tailored to meet your unique needs and preferences.

✋ Hey there! I hope you’re feeling stronger now. If so, sharing the love will help me help other mums with chronic invisible illnesses.⬆  Hit one of those sharing buttons or save these images to Pinterest and I will do a bed-bound happy dance - there's an image for you!