The Tremendous Benefits of Journaling
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Journaling has been done for thousands of years, but oddly enough we’ve only started to discover the benefits of it during the past century. Journaling can literally free your mind and bring clarity to jumbled thoughts.
This post is made up of a culmination of good things I found about the positive benefits of journaling while researching the topic a few days ago.
University of Texas at Austin psychologist and researcher James Pennebaker contends that regular journaling strengthens immune cells, called T-lymphocytes. Other research indicates that journaling decreases the symptoms of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. Pennebaker believes that writing about stressful events helps you come to terms with them, thus reducing the impact of these stressors on your physical health.
Scientific evidence supports that journaling provides other unexpected benefits. The act of writing accesses your left brain, which is analytical and rational. While your left brain is occupied, your right brain is free to create, intuit and feel. In sum, writing removes mental blocks and allows you to use all of your brainpower to better understand yourself, others and the world around you. Begin journaling and begin experiencing these benefits:
- Clarify your thoughts and feelings. Do you ever seem all jumbled up inside, unsure of what you want or feel? Taking a few minutes to jot down your thoughts and emotions (no editing!) will quickly get you in touch with your internal world.
- Know yourself better. By writing routinely you will get to know what makes you feel happy and confident. You will also become clear about situations and people who are toxic for you — important information for your emotional well-being.
- Reduce stress. Writing about anger, sadness and other painful emotions helps to release the intensity of these feelings. By doing so you will feel calmer and better able to stay in the present.
- Solve problems more effectively. Typically we problem solve from a left-brained, analytical perspective. But sometimes the answer can only be found by engaging right-brained creativity and intuition. Writing unlocks these other capabilities, and affords the opportunity for unexpected solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems.
- Resolve disagreements with others. Writing about misunderstandings rather than stewing over them will help you to understand another’s point of view. And you just may come up with a sensible resolution to the conflict.
Now scientists are beginning to prove that people with illnesses benefit from journaling, too. Joshua M. Smyth, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at North Dakota State University, published a study in the April issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that 47% of patients with asthma and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) improved after writing about the most traumatic event in their lives. In the control group, who wrote about everyday topics, only 24% improved. Smyth and Pennebaker had cooperated on studies of healthy subjects, but with this study Smyth was the first to look at journaling and its effects on patients with chronic illness.
While many people who journal on a regular basis do so because it makes them feel better, until recently there hasn’t been any scientific evidence to prove it. “It would be interesting to know the science of how journaling is connected to the body,” said Nancy Linnin, who lectures on writing and health at the Canyon Ranch Resort and Spa in Tucson, Ariz. “I haven’t found one person who said it [journaling] didn’t help them.”
Findings in Pennebaker and Smyth’s studies show participants who simply spent their time whining about their lot in life had little or no health benefits. In contrast, those who used the writing time to examine the event and put it in perspective had the best results. In one study, Pennebaker cites a woman who was molested when she was 9 years old. At first, her writing concentrated on her embarrassment and guilt, then moved to anger at the boy who had molested her. By the last day, the woman had begun to put the event in perspective: “Before, when I thought about it, I’d lie to myself. . .Now, I don’t feel like I even have to think about it because I got it off my chest. I finally admitted that it happened. . .I really know the truth and won’t have to lie to myself anymore.”
Smyth observes the same thing with those who submit letters to her journal. “people have to stick with it,” she says. “I get the first page and it’s pure anger or frustration. They need to get beyond the emotion and discover a better understanding. They need to find the ending of the process.”
Sources: psychcentral.com healthylivingonline.org