To Journal or Not to Journal: Part II The Benefits
 
If you find yourself ready to open the door to journaling for wellness or to assist your mental health healing protocol, you are also opening the door to some incredibly positive outcomes. Amazing what a pen, paper, and a few minutes each day (or week) can do.
 
15 benefits of using a wellness journal:

1. Create a safe personal space
2. Quiet ruminations
3. Reduce anxiety and stress
4. Build mindfulness
5. Grow gratitude
6. Improve sleep
7. Identify patterns and triggers
8. Regulate and process emotions
9. Prepare for counseling
10. Record notes from a counseling session
11. Track physical and emotional health symptoms
12. Build confidence
13. Outline challenges and problems
14. Craft potential solutions to the challenges and problems
15. Re-read your entries to reflect and find advances or continued stumbling blocks

​To Journal or Not to Journal: Part I The Barriers
 
Benefits of a journaling habit for wellness are frequently cited. But great outcomes are not always enough to conquer the personal barriers to opening a journal. A general research scour offered repetitive themes that turned into a list of ten common reasons people offer that keep them from journaling—for wellness or mental health.
 
10 Common Reasons People Chose Not to Journal:

1. Think they cannot journal “right” or worried they will journal “wrong”
2. Think they need writing skills to journal
3. Intimated by a blank page
4. Find a journal stressful (with prompts or without prompts)
5. Think someone will read it and learn their innermost thoughts
6. Cannot make time or find time to do it
7. Think journaling is a diary of events
8. Not inspired to journal
9. Do not want to focus on negative situations
10. Do not know the benefits of journaling – why even do this?

 
Maybe learning the benefits, giving it a trial run, and feeling the outcomes can chip away at the barriers. See Part II to decide if any benefits might improve your world a tiny bit. (Or a big bit…)