The therapeutic benefits of journaling

When we process our feelings, clear them and move on, we feel free.

Let me start by explaining how journaling works to reduce stress and thereby improve our mental health and then I’ll talk you through the practicalities and how to introduce it to your child or teen.

Our body is a reflection of our mind; when we feel sad, it hunches up, folding in on itself as a protection, almost like a baby in the womb or a hedgehog curling into a ball. We want to shut the world out and keep ourselves safe. It’s a natural response to perceived external threat which creates internal anxiety. By contrast when we feel happy, our body opens up, our face lights up, we expose our core because we feel safe. What if we could release that stress on a daily basis, allowing our pent up anxiety to flow onto the page and out of us, leaving us free and released from that pressure, like a tap flowing from us?

That is how journaling works. It offers us that unique opportunity to flow from our heart, our head, our soul, whatever you call your subconscious mind, through our hand and on…