6 Perks of Writing and Journaling for Mental Health and Overall Well-Being
When it comes to mental health, there is really not a lot we do in our everyday life to keep it at good levels. However, this is in vain.
According to stats, over 50 million adult citizens report experiencing various mental health issues in the US alone, representing 1 in 5 adult people. The situation with younger citizens is even worse. Stats show that as many as 1 in 3 college students are experiencing issues with their mental health.
Now, imagine how many people are in the whole world who suffer from stress, anxiety, and many other mental health issues on an everyday basis. These numbers can’t help but terrify. And, given the fact that the pace of life and levels of stress we are being exposed to in the modern world only keep going up, it becomes quite clear that each of us should undertake something to protect our mental health. And, believe it or not, writing could help a ton.
How Can Writing or Journaling Affect Your Mental Health?
From our high-school years, many of us got used to believing that writing is something extremely stressful, time-consuming, and boring. Having to deal with loads of academic papers and essays, many students soon start to hate writing and would prefer to get essay help online from domyessay.com rather than write even a few more sentences on their own. But, could you ever imagine that you could get real benefits from writing?
Though turning to a reliable essay writing service is always a good idea, especially when you lack time for doing the task on your own or need to boost your grades, there is no need to eliminate writing from your life completely.
On the contrary, you should learn to use it to your benefit. In fact, the process of writing and/or journaling has many proven positive effects on our mental health. Let’s look at the key ones below.
1. It Helps Eliminate Brooding
Pretty much every traumatic or overly emotional event leaves a significant footprint on one’s mental health. This often causes people to keep brooding over things that happened to them, which eventually leads to even more pain and ongoing mental issues. However, writing is proven to help with it.
Writing about your experiences can help you break away and let go of traumatic experiences. However, it is vital to start at the right time. Though writing can help overcome PTSD, it can actually make things worse if you start too soon.
2. It Helps Boost Understanding
A variety of mental health issues, such as anxiety, appear from a poor understanding of the problem or a difficult situation you get into. Journaling can help with this too.
It has been proven that writing down the specific situation or problem and your feelings concerning it can really help gain a better understanding of it. This trick is perfect for finding solutions and gaining new perceptions about various events.
3. It Helps Fight Stress and Anxiety
One more perk of writing and journaling, in particular, is that it helps reduce the feeling of stress and anxiety. Various studies confirm that journaling for a minimum of 10-15 minutes a day can help people reduce mental distress and boost the overall feeling of well-being. And the longer you journal, the more permanent and stable results you can get. Think of it as another form of meditation.
4. It Helps Become More Open
One of the biggest issues that can hold you back from healing your mental distress is the inability to open up about your worries and issues. Experts claim that starting to write openly about your feelings and problems can actually help you become more open about them in everyday life. Sometimes, journaling even encourages people to seek social support and professional help. So, this is one more benefit you can get.
5. It Helps Manage Your Emotions
In today’s fast-paced and busy world, managing one’s own emotions has gotten even more challenging. Being exposed to tons of stress every day, people often find it hard to retain a positive attitude and suppress negative emotions. However, if you start journaling, you can find a way to manage your emotions better.
6. It Can Aid Physical Healing
Believe it or not, but our physical health is closely interlinked with our mental health. Specialists claim that rising levels of stress and anxiety can even hold patients back from physical healing.
And this brings us to the last benefit of writing. Multiple studies around the world have found that people who wrote about their feelings every day actually healed faster from various diseases, from regular flu to biopsy and even breast cancer.
Yet, the main trick to physical healing is positivity. Other studies found that journaling about negative experiences or emotions eventually led to increasing levels of stress and slower physical healing.
The Bottom Line
Whether you are facing burnout from work, anxiety, increased stress from school or college, or any other mental health issue, now you know that there is an easy way to overcome it.
Now you know what real, science-backed benefits writing and journaling can have for your mental health. So, even if previously you had a tendency to avoid writing in your life, now might be the perfect time to re-evaluate its value and start journaling for the sake of your mental health. It only takes 10-20 minutes a day to get all the benefits.
