Write it down: Keeping a journal can be a productive way to cope with uncertain times

From cbc.ca

Putting your thoughts, feelings and experiences down on paper could improve your health and memory

The past two years have had ups and downs for licensed practical nurse Stephanie Rimando, who works at a hospital in Metro Vancouver and at a long-term care facility.

But dealing with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic has been eased by a long-term habit she started as a teenager: writing in a journal.

Rimando, 29, started keeping a diary when she was 17 to cope with her mother being abroad.

"I just wrote all my thoughts, my emotions, all my experiences and it made me feel like someone is listening to me, so that was the start of my journalling," she said.

She's kept up with the practice, writing regularly at night before she goes to bed. She says it helps her sleep, helps her understand herself better, and helps her face the current uncertain times.

"I just write all my anxious thoughts in my diary and it really helped me process those thoughts and it really helped me prepare for the next day for my shift," she said.

Stephanie Rimando, a nurse in Metro Vancouver, writes each night in her journal before going to bed. (Stephanie Rimando)

Rimando and others like her say keeping a journal is an inexpensive habit with plenty of rewards, which scientific study seems to support.

There have been numerous studies over the past decades that have looked at how expressive writing can help people deal with traumatic experiences, cope with anxiety and depression, and also perform better on tests.

American author Julia Cameron has for decades written about the power of being creative and expressive. A book she wrote 30 years ago, called The Artist's Way, discussed the concept of "morning pages," a daily ritual of writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness ramblings.

"Writing daily pages gives us a witness to our lives and brings us optimism and generosity and encouragement and fulfilment and just a lot of positive things," she said from her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Julia Cameron wrote about the concept of making daily, stream-of-consciousness journals entries in her 1992 book The Artist's Way. (Robert Stivers)

She said that The Artist's Way has made it back to the top of some bestseller lists recently as she believes the pandemic has pushed many people to find ways to cope with the uncertain times.

"I think that the book's reputation is that it is supportive, so I think people in COVID, when they're casting about for, 'Gee what can I do to feel better about myself to feel less trapped,' they turn to the book," she said.

Social media as public diary

Cameron acknowledges technology has changed since 1992, when the book was first published, and that many people now like to share their thoughts and feelings over social media. But she encourages people to do private writing that no one will ever see.

"I think morning pages are so private and so personal and so naughty because people are putting down what they actually think and what they actually feel," she said. "I find the idea of going public with your pages to be counter-productive."

Back in B.C. another long-time journal-keeper, Laurie Anderson, who also began keeping a journal in high school and is still at it 40 years later, says there is also a practical side to having a box full of books that you wrote.

"It's absolutely fabulous to have a record of what was important to me at 17, 25, 33, 48," she wrote in an email.

Rimando and Cameron both encourage people to try doing private, expressive writing as a way to start the new year, whether daily or once in a while, trying to form it as a new habit.

"Try trusting that you will receive benefits," said Cameron. "Pages train you to expand."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/journal-keeping-during-tough-times-1.6287076 

5 Benefits Of Kids Keeping A Journal

From moms.com

From navigating emotions to reading and writing skills, there are many benefits to kids keeping a journal

Kids have a lot of big emotions that they need to sort through in order to successfully navigate through childhood. Not only does the processing of these feelings help them to understand some emotions that they may have never experienced before but doing this can also help with seeing the point of view of others in their lives. And while working through emotions is necessary to remain mentally healthy, some kids do not have the desire to verbalize how they feel with others. As such, these kids would benefit from keeping a journal to write down everything they think and feel, sharing optional bits as they deem necessary along the way.

Journaling is an open-ended way that helps kids to work through emotions on paper that perhaps feel too jumbled to work through in the mind alone. By doing this, according to Scholastic, kids are able to process their thoughts while sorting through negative feelings. This helps kids to understand why they feel the way they do and perhaps see other perspectives as well. And because they know that nothing will be shared from the journal unless they choose to do so, there is a safety in being able to say whatever they want on paper that kids may not feel comfortable with saying otherwise.

Here are some benefits of kids keeping a journal.

5 Kids Can Process Their Emotions Through Journaling

via Pexels/Polina Kovaleva

Kids are bombarded with emotions daily. Some of those emotions are bigger than others to sort through, especially if not sure where to begin sorting. That is why a journal is beneficial because kids can write down how they feel without feeling judged or teased in the process.

According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, journaling is a very effective way to maintain a mentally healthy lifestyle. This is important because even though on the surface it appears that kids are carefree, they still have stressors that they face, along with problems and fears that they need to work through to remain emotionally healthy.

The emotions that kids feel are not always something that they want to share with their friends or family initially because they need a moment to sit with them. Sometimes, they do not share them at all. And according to the publication, not all emotions need to be shared. But if they can be written down and sorted through, that is all part of the process of living a healthy lifestyle that if continued through childhood will reap benefits as kids age.

4 Helps Kids To Find A Voice When Reluctant To Speak

via Pexels/Content Pixie

While kids may be able to work through their emotions in their heads, sometimes it is necessary to get those feelings out and acknowledge them before sorting through them is truly done. And for those who are not able to effectively verbalize how they feel to others, writing in a journal allows them to do so.

According to the National AfterSchool Association when kids write down what they think and feel, they are able to get emotions, both positive and negative, out of their bodies and sort through them more effectively. When the feelings have nowhere to go because kids do not want to speak about them, they can fester if they are negative or continue to become more confusing for those never experienced before. As such, putting the pen to the paper helps to get thoughts organized, so that if kids decide they do want to speak with someone about how they feel, they have worked through emotions enough to be able to succinctly communicate those emotions to a trusted ear willing to listen.

3 Ranting Through Writing Helps To Vent Frustrations

via Pexels/Jessica Lynn Lewis

Sometimes, kids just need to get their frustrations out. This could be with a situation, with friends, or even with family. And rather than take those frustrations out on others, journaling is a great way to ease those big emotions.

According to the Center for Child Counseling, journals are a fantastic outlet for letting kids work through the frustrations that they have with others be it through a first-hand account of an incident or through storytelling in which a character experiences the same frustrations as the writer. In both instances, kids are able to not only get the frustrations down on paper in front of them to read over, but they are also able to work through those frustrations as well. And by doing this, the hope is that a resolution can be found so that instead of venting face-to-face, emotions can be talked through in a calm and effective manner.

2 Kids Can See Different Perspectives Through Journaling

via Pexels/Dom J

Sometimes it takes writing things down to understand where others were coming from during an interaction. Journaling is very beneficial in this regard.

According to CHOC, when kids are able to see things from another person's perspective, not only do they gain insight about the other person but about themselves as well. By being able to see things in a new light can change the entire way that life is seen or lived.

It may take a while for the insight to come. But for those who review their writing, many times there is an "a-ha" moment had and clarity gained that allows a situation to be seen with fresh eyes.

1 Journaling Helps With Writing Skills

via Pexels/Anete Lusina

When kids pick up a pen to write in a journal, they know that they are not going to be judged on the content of their writing or how grammatically correct it is. Therefore, it does not matter how strong their writing skills are. Journaling consistently, however, has a way of improving writing skills without kids even realizing it.

According to Brain Balance, when kids are tasked with "meaningful writing" they do not feel it is a chore. They know that there are no wrong answers or judgments for what they write in their journals, so there is no longer a dread that comes with writing. When this happens, kids are open to writing more and with more writing comes more experience that can "springboard" into more "complex writing tasks," per the publication. This makes kids more comfortable with writing in general and therefore strengthens writing skills across the board, all thanks to journaling.

https://www.moms.com/kids-keeping-journal-benefits/

A question a day keeps the memories alive

From thesundaily.my

Keeping a daily journal is a great way to keep track of events and reflect on all the changes that happened through the years

HAVE you ever found an old diary you wrote when you were 14 years old, stowed away in a dusty cupboard? The emotions written by the past you might feel so raw, open, and real, but sometimes, the incident might feel distant, like a dream that happened a long time ago. The way memory works is that the more memorable the images accompanying an event are, the more likely it will become a long-term memory.

The appeal of a journal or a diary is the way it creates and recreates an experience by allowing the author to jot down a story to be read and remembered across time and space. Like a time capsule, it is memories materialised, and coming across it again allows you to unlock a core memory long forgotten. It is to remember that yes, you existed, before, now, and then.

The premise of a question a day journal is exactly what it sounds like. You have 365 (plus an extra for a leap year) question prompts for you to answer every day for as long as you like. The idea is to see candidly what has changed, how you’ve changed, and maybe even what you missed and would like to revisit.

The topics of the questions range from ordinary everyday events like what you had for lunch, to contemplative questions like ‘what would you do for free?’. The longer you keep the daily journal habit, the longer you’ll be able to look back upon the time span.

There isn’t any format that you have to strictly adhere to because you can make it entirely yours by modifying the questions to suit whatever you’re interested in knowing about yourself. This allows you to have something to look forward to every day.

Most questions will only take a few seconds to a few minutes for you to answer depending on the type of questions.

You don’t necessarily have to start the journal on the first of January or stress out about missing a day. Just take it as something enjoyable, a little bit of present (pun intended) for your future self.

Firstly, you’ll need a notebook with at least 365 pages in it for the days in a year, but if you’re a person that gets to the point fast, you can also have fewer pages. Personally, I’ve used two notebooks, separating the year into two parts, so it isn’t too bulky to carry around.

If you’d like, you can even do it online and answer everything on your phone, but if you’re more of a pen-to-paper type of person, having a physical book can allow more creative prompts like attaching things inside or drawing things.

For anybody who has ever given up journaling or has been intimidated by a blank page, a question a day journaling makes journaling effortless and the beauty of it is that it enables the author to track their emotional growth as well as keep track of memories, including presenting an interesting walk down memory lane a few years later.

The point is to see that living is not just about goals or mere achievements.

Maybe to live is to be present at every moment, to enjoy every sip of coffee or every conversation with a friend. Maybe to live is about the little things, the ones we tend to forget about or do it on autopilot.

When we are mindful and present, I suppose that’s when we’re really living.

Here are some journaling prompts you can start with for your first month:

1. What’s something unexpected, that happened to you last year?

2. When do you feel most in tune with yourself?

3. If someone described you, what would they say?

4. What was the most exciting thing that happened today?

5. What was the best meal you had today?

6. What was the worst meal you had today?

7. Draw something about today.

8. Write a poem about something that happened today.

9. Keep the receipts of everything you bought today and stick them on this page.

10. What was the most boring thing you had to do today?

11. What did you wear today?

12. What did you have inside your bag today?

13. Who did you meet today?

14. What are you looking forward to next week?

15. When and what was the last workout you did?

16. When was the last time you got sick?

17. What’s the funniest thing you heard all day?

18. What’s your favourite song at the moment?

19. Write down a list of things you’d like to accomplish by the end of this year and check back next year.

20. What made you angry today?

21. What TV shows are you watching?

22. What’s a song that would be the perfect background music for what happened today?

23. What’s the last book you read?

24. What’s something you’ve been obsessed with lately?

25. Take a picture of yourself with your instant camera and paste it on this page.

26. What’s the last advice you were given? What did you think about it?

27. Where did you go today?

28. Who did you talk to today?

29. Who did you text today?

30. What made you sad today?

https://www.thesundaily.my/style-life/a-question-a-day-keeps-the-memories-alive-KK8639862