Key Takeaways
- Journaling can help you feel better by reducing stress and improving your mood.
- You can write in different ways—like free writing, gratitude journaling, or making lists—to reduce stress.
Journaling generally involves the practice of keeping a diary or journal that explores thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of your life. There are several different ways to do this. Journaling, as a stress management and self-exploration tool, works best when done consistently, but even occasional, sporadic journaling can be stress relieving when the practice is focused on gratitude or emotional processing.
Overview
One of the most effective ways to reduce stress with journaling is to write in detail about feelings and thoughts related to stressful events, as one would discuss topics in therapy, and brainstorm solutions, but there are several different ways to practice journaling.
The journaling method you choose can depend on your needs at the time, and your personality; just do what feels right.
Emotional and Physical Benefits of Journaling
Expressing your thoughts and feelings can help with your emotional and physical health.
Emotional Benefits
Similar to talking to your best friend after a bad day, writing can be a way of venting and getting things off your mind. You can pour your heart out, you can express your frustrations, you can even rage write. It can be a very cathartic and healing experience.
Journaling can help you clarify your thoughts and feelings because it is no longer all jumbled up in your mind. As a result, you may gain valuable self-knowledge and insight. It’s also a good problem-solving tool; oftentimes, one can hash out a problem and come up with solutions more easily on paper. This process helps us learn to manage our emotions in a healthy way.
Journaling can provide relief to feelings of depression by helping us to recognize and stop negative thought patterns and rumination (replaying negative events over and over in your mind and allowing your feelings to fester). When you are writing, you can intentionally reframe a distressing thought with a new perspective that helps reduce anxious feelings.
Writing about traumatic events helps one process them by fully exploring and releasing the emotions involved instead of waiting for them to pop up as intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and nightmares.
You can also practice acceptance of the negative emotions that come up in your writing. Allowing yourself to have a wide range of feelings without judging them or trying to change them can actually reduce the power they have over you.
Journaling can also help you to focus on areas of your life that you like to focus on more often, as is the case with gratitude journaling.
Physical Benefits
As stress activates the “fight or flight response” of the sympathetic nervous system, journaling will activate the “rest and digest” response of the parasympathetic nervous system. It promotes a calm physiological state and regulates your breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate, which helps you to think more clearly as well.
As for the health benefits of journaling, they’ve been scientifically proven over the past few decades. Research shows the following:
- Reduces the number of sick days
- Decreases experience of pain
- Decreases the symptoms of inflammatory conditions like asthma and rheumatoid arthritis
- Strengthens immune system response
- Improves ability to cope with illness
Drawbacks
Those with learning disabilities may find it difficult to deal with the act of writing itself. Perfectionists may be so concerned with the readability of their work, their penmanship, or other periphery factors that they can’t focus on the thoughts and emotions they’re trying to access. Others may get tired hands.
Some people are reluctant to relive negative experiences, and journaling only about your negative feelings without incorporating thoughts or plans may actually cause more stress. A simple way to counteract this is to be sure you end your journaling sessions with a few words about potential solutions to your problems, things you appreciate in your life, or things that give you hope in life.
Compared to Other Stress Management Practices
Unlike more physical stress management techniques, such as taking a walk, gardening, or some other form of exercise, journaling is a viable option for those who cannot engage in physical activity due to a disability or illness.
And, although some prefer to type with the use of a computer, or talk text into their smartphone, journaling typically only requires a pen and paper. This makes it less expensive than techniques that require special equipment or the aid of a class, book, teacher, or therapist.
Releasing some of those pent-up feelings may even relieve some tension from your body like a good massage, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, and other physical or meditative techniques.
Plus, like a good therapy session, it’s a great practice for overall stress reduction as well as self-knowledge and emotional healing.
Strategies to Try
Journaling is a highly effective tool for stress relief and can take several forms, so there are multiple options that can work for you. If you already have a favorite journaling habit, by all means, keep it up! But you may want to try something new in addition to it. And if you’re new to journaling, here are several practices to try. See what works best for you.
- Free Writing: If you don’t know where to start, just put the pen to paper and write anything that comes to mind and see where it takes you. This is for your eyes only, so don’t worry about organization, grammar, spelling, or punctuation. You are free to stick to a particular subject or let your writing wander along with your mind. If you feel stuck, find some creative writing prompts that are designed to give you a little inspiration. For example, “What was my biggest challenge today?”
- Gratitude Journal: Some people keep a daily gratitude journal where they list three or more aspects of each day for which they are grateful. This is a highly effective strategy for relieving stress because it helps you to focus on the resources you have in your life already and create a more positive mood at the moment, both of which have been shown to build long-term resilience. A bonus benefit is that you are left with a record of the many nice things that have happened throughout your days, so if you’re feeling down in the future, you can cheer yourself up with a few pages of reminders for the things you have to appreciate in life.
- Emotional Release: You may also write about your emotional responses to events that have happened throughout the day as a way of coping with the stress. This can help you to process negative emotions and perhaps explore acceptance or positive reframing options. When writing about positive experiences, this allows you the ability to maximize and savor the positive feelings you may have for the good things that have happened in your day. This is also a great way to expand on the positive and manage the negative things that happen in your life, increasing your positivity ratio, which is an important aspect of stress management.
- Bullet Journal or Personal Planning Journal: Some people simply keep journals to track what they need to do each day, the goals they have, memories they create, and other things they don’t want to forget. This can literally be a journal full of bullet point lists. Because writing things down can help keep your mind uncluttered and help you to remember what’s important to you, this can relieve stress as well. Being more organized and balanced is a great way to feel less stressed.
And remember, if you find yourself not keeping a regular schedule with journaling, it’s a habit you can resume at any time. You don’t have to journal every day in order for it to work for you—a few times a week is still highly beneficial, and even journaling on an as-needed basis brings benefits.
If you had a journaling habit and stopped because life got in the way, remember—any day is a good day to get back into the habit.
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Baikie KA, Wilhelm K. Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment. 2005;11(5):338-346. doi:10.1192/apt.11.5.338
Gortner EM, Rude SS, Pennebaker JW. Benefits of expressive writing in lowering rumination and depressive symptoms. Behavior Therapy. 2006;37(3):292-303. doi:10.1016/j.beth.2006.01.004
American Psychological Association. 5 steps of cognitive restructuring instructions.
Hoyt T, Yeater EA. The effects of negative emotion and expressive writing on posttraumatic stress symptoms. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. 2011;30(6):549-569. doi:10.1521/jscp.2011.30.6.549
Ford BQ, Lam P, John OP, Mauss IB. The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2018;115(6):1075–1092. doi:10.1037/pspp0000157
Sohal M, Singh P, Dhillon BS, Gill HS. Efficacy of journaling in the management of mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Fam Med Com Health. 2022;10(1):e001154. doi:10.1136/fmch-2021-001154
Garland EL, Howard MO. Mindfulness-oriented recovery enhancement reduces pain attentional bias in chronic pain patients. Psychother Psychosom. 2013;82(5):311-318. doi:10.1159/000348868
Smith HE, Jones CJ, Hankins M, et al. The effects of expressive writing on lung function, quality of life, medication use, and symptoms in adults with asthma: A randomized controlled trial. Psychosomatic Medicine. 2015;77(4):429-437. doi:10.1097/psy.0000000000000166
Smyth JM, Stone AA, Hurewitz A, Kaell A. Effects of writing about stressful experiences on symptom reduction in patients with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis: A randomized trial. JAMA. 1999;281(14):1304-1309. doi:10.1001/jama.281.14.1304
Booth RJ, Petrie KJ, Pennebaker JW. Changes In circulating lymphocyte numbers following emotional disclosure: Evidence of buffering? Stress Medicine. 1997;13(1):23-29. doi:10.1002/(sici)1099-1700(199701)13:1<23::aid-smi714>3.0.co;2-e
Laccetti M. Expressive writing in women with advanced breast cancer. Oncology Nursing Forum. 2007;34(5):1019-1024. doi:10.1188/07.onf.1019-1024
Additional Reading
Ullrich PM, Lutgendorf SK. Journaling about stressful events: Effects of cognitive processing and emotional expression. Ann Behav Med. 2002;24(3):244-250. doi:10.1207/s15324796abm2403_10
Thanks for your feedback!
What is your feedback?
Helpful
Report an Error
Other
