the
POWER OF
journaling BY: LESLIE VIZCARRA-TIERNEY LEAD PATIENT NAVIGATOR
One of the best things about journaling is that you do not have to be a good writer to receive the benefits. There are several styles of journaling and you can utilize any of them depending on how you feel at the moment. Journaling has power behind it and there are several benefits to practicing this self-help skill. Four of the benefits you can receive are: 1. Provide Clarity By creating a journal it allows you to track patterns, trends, and make self-improvements over time. Purging your thoughts out of your mind onto physical paper through writing, helps to release stress and provide mental room to make better decisions. 2. Reduce Anxiety When you can take time to reflect on your feelings and emotions it will help you sort through the emotional stress you carry. Giving yourself a tool to manage stress will aid in reducing the pressure, ultimately leading you to reduced anxiety levels. Through journal20
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ing, you can identify emotional scars allowing you to reduce your anxiety by healing your negative thoughts. 3. Improve Problem-Solving When you reflect by reading past journal entries, it helps improve your problem-solving skills. Your reflection on different experiences can help you recognize which previous actions were successful and which were not. Perhaps in a past entry, you wrote about how much you enjoyed a brisk walk with a friend. This can prompt you to reach out and set up another walk date. Or perhaps you come across an entry where you were feeling low. Coming back to that entry reminds you of that time and your desire not to return to the emotional turmoil you once felt. 4. Strengthen Coping Skills We all have different experiences in life and how we react to situations determines their outcome. How we choose to cope with a problem can be helpful or harmful and build up to be a bigger issue.
Everything does not always go according to plan. Targeting positive coping skills will guide you to make better decisions. Journaling can help sort out the experience and provide your thoughts with a coping skill to recover from a difficult situation. How do you get started? If you have never tried journaling it can seem like a meaningless task. Or perhaps you have given it a try and have been meaning to give it another go. To start receiving the benefits, you have to give it some effort. Start by simply taking the time to just write. Journaling does not have to take long at all. You can start a routine and write three to five times a week for roughly 15 minutes. You will be surprised how these few moments can help improve your mental health. There are several styles you can utilize in a journal. • Use a good old fashion notebook and pen and start writing. Do not worry about penmanship,
