6 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Journaling for Mental Health

Written by: The Story of Sprout

|

|

Time to read 4 min

Introduction

Have you ever suffered from traumas you cannot share with others? If yes, the best way is to pen down those emotional traumas and experiences. That’s where the benefits of journaling come in. 


According to research, 65% of the people who do journaling have improved their mental health and depression. This indicates the vast benefits of journaling specifically for mental health improvement. 
However, you might wonder how putting a pen to paper can increase your mental well-being. So, let’s find out the answer to this query in today’s blog. 

6 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Journaling for Mental Health

What is the Importance of Journaling?

When we talk about journaling, a secret diary or an extensive notebook comes to mind. But it is not all about a diary or a keyboard. Journaling is about writing down your deep emotions and feelings you fear sharing. This is because the goal is to get control over your emotions and understand them more clearly. Studies have shown how jotting down your thoughts can help your mental wellness. Here are some of the popular facts about journaling that show its importance: 

  • Psychologists claim that daily journaling can lessen your stress level and depression. 
  • It can strengthen your immune cells, thus boosting your health. 
  • Harvard research shows that Jotting down your feelings and daily experiences will make you feel more relaxed and calm. 

Moreover, neuroscience research shows that a person with a daily habit of journaling has a calmer and more relaxed amygdala compared to others. This is because our thoughts become more organized and the intensity of negative feelings reduces drastically.

Benefits of Journaling for Mental Health

Moving further, let’s jump straight to the question: does journaling help? If yes, then how? To prove how it helps maintain your brain or mental well-being, let’s discuss some of its benefits individually. 

1. Organize Your Thoughts

On top of all the other benefits, the first one is the role of journaling in organizing your thought process. Journaling statistics have shown that writing our feelings indirectly reduces our chance of becoming stressed. This means it increases our center of focus. Thus, we focus on one thought at a time and feel relaxed. Moreover, our thoughts get more clarity instead of cluttering our minds.  

2. Enhance Decision-making Skills

You might have observed that you make the best decisions alone, calmly, and in a stress-free environment. Similarly, when journaling, you get maximum time to understand your emotions and gut feelings and, hence, can make better decisions. This also leads to self-awareness as you learn more about your life motives and goals. Besides this, here are some crucial points that show the importance of journaling in decision-making: 

  • It increases your thinking and creative abilities 
  • Your problem-solving skills are enhanced to a greater extent 
  • It boosts your emotional intelligence and brain capacity 
     

3. Gives Confidence

Another invaluable benefit of journaling is its coping and healing ability. When writing things down, you ultimately share your life traumas and complex daily challenges. This, in turn, gives you the confidence to handle complex situations better and handle them wisely. 


The best thing is when you journal regularly, you can memorize your previous life experiences. Doing so will boost your mind to cope with pain, anxiety, and other incoming sufferings. 

4. Reduces Stress

When you take 15-20 minutes of journaling daily, you’re significantly reducing your stress levels. How? This is because you get time for positive self-talk and can easily track down your fears or problems. By writing your fears down, you can not only find solutions to control them but also get rid of your negative thoughts. 


Moreover, it is scientifically proven that journaling significantly reduces stress by providing an escape from your emotional thoughts. Thus, it holds great importance in managing your stress levels and keeping your mind relaxed and calm. 

5. Self-reflection

Indeed, one of the essential benefits of journaling is self-awareness. You can understand yourself more clearly when you write down your negative thoughts and situations. It makes you self-conscious so that you can identify your life patterns and behaviors. For instance, journaling forces you to think about your present and future. 
 

This includes self-reflection questions like who you are, your life goals, and where you want to see yourself in the coming years. Collectively, it improves your self-expression so you can inspect yourself better. 

6. Boost Your Intuition

Our life depends on incisive thinking and quick decision-making. Disorganized and cluttered thoughts often render us inefficient at taking any sound measure. When we write down our fears, happiness, and lost dreams, we find a way to nourish our imagination and, in the process, strengthen it. So, next time you sit on your couch to journal, remember it has far-reaching benefits.

Conclusion

Final Verdict

Journaling has multiple other benefits for mental health and overall improvement. All you have to do is take a pen or a keyboard and take everything in your mind to a blank page. This will ultimately reduce your anxiety and make you feel more mentally relaxed and peaceful. However, if you find it difficult to follow a daily journaling routine, start by making a reading habit. Reading books and other materials will increase your communication and writing skills so you can easily articulate your thoughts. 
 

When it comes to reading books, nothing is more perfect than Sprout. For those interested in inspirational story books, Sprout is undoubtedly the best piece of content. It is a modern fairy tale of a young boy who sets on a philosophical adventure. In his journey of self-discovery, he got the lessons of knowledge, truth, and goodness. Thus, you can get the meaning of life from the story of Sprout and relate it to your life. Now, what are you waiting for? Get your copy of the book today by ordering from Amazon, Noble, or Barnes.