What’s All This About Journaling?
One of the more effective acts of self-care is also, happily, one of the cheapest.
By: Hayley Phelan
The New York Times
25 October 2018

It was my ex-husband who got me journaling again. Our marriage was falling apart, and, on the advice of his friend, he had started to do “morning pages,” a daily journaling practice from the seminal self-help book “The Artist’s Way.”

Though I had kept a diary throughout my teen years and early 20s, somewhere along the way I’d fallen out of the habit. At 29, though, I was deeply unhappy and looking for answers wherever — anywhere — I could find them. It helped.

Once the domain of teenage girls and the literati, journaling has become a hallmark of the so-called self-care movement, right up there with meditation. And for good reason: Scientific studies have shown it to be essentially a panacea for modern life.

There are the obvious benefits, like a boost in mindfulness, memory and communication skills. But studies have also found that writing in a journal can lead to better sleep, a stronger immune system, more self-confidence and a higher I.Q. Research out of New Zealand suggests that the practice may even help wounds heal faster.

How is this possible? James W. Pennebaker, a social psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin who is considered the pioneer of writing therapy, said there isn’t one answer. “It’s a whole cascade of things that occur,” he said. Labeling emotions and acknowledging traumatic events — both natural outcomes of journaling — have a known positive effect on people.

Writing is also fundamentally an organizational system. Keeping a journal, helps to organize an event in our mind, and make sense of trauma. When we do that, our working memory improves, since our brains are freed from the enormously taxing job of processing that experience and we sleep better. This in turn improves our immune system and our moods...