Journaling improves health and well-being

Journaling is an ancient and universal habit. The first known personal journals were called bedside books in eighth-century Japan. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that psychologists realized how the habit of recording experiences could help in therapy and lead people to have a richer, healthier and more fulfilling life.

Psychologist Rosemeire Zago (SP) advises patients to maintain a diary of your emotions🇧🇷 Not everyone writes down what they feel, but, she says, “they are the ones who get the most control over their emotional aspects”. In addition to working as a vent, the transformation of feelings into written words makes us organize our thoughts, determine priorities, recognize mood swings and follow the process of personal maturation in detail.

In general, it is in pre-adolescence (between 8 and 12 years old) that diaries are started. But the resource can be adopted in any age or stage of life, with positive results for the mind and body. A study carried out at the University of California (USA) proved that an area of ​​the brain hidden just behind the eyes (called the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex) is activated when we talk and write about emotions, producing a therapeutic effect. This reduces the discomfort that negative feelings cause in the tonsils – the famous lump in the throat.

health appreciates

Research conducted at the University of Texas (USA) revealed: people who have adopted the habit of journaling go to the doctor less and become healthier in general🇧🇷 Lower blood pressure and greater power of concentration, memory and decision making are other benefits. Specific studies with patients suffering from arthritis have shown that those who wrote about traumatic events in their lives now need less pain medication, and with AIDS sufferers, the result has been a significant improvement in the immune system.

Who explains the reason for such extensive benefits is the psychologist James Pennebaker, responsible for several of these studies. “You have to understand that inhibiting emotions has a negative impact on the body. The effort made not to think about something unpleasant or not to feel a certain emotion becomes a source of psychological stress, capable of causing illness”, explains the professor. “Writing helps people to psychologically understand and organize the events they experience. From then on, they sleep better, the stress level goes down and social interaction with friends and relatives becomes easier. All these things improve physical health,” concludes the head of psychology at the University of Texas.

A little bit of everything

It’s not just everyday experiences that make a diary. The idea of ​​keeping a record of everything you eat helps many people to be successful on a diet or to discover the relationship between certain foods and a malaise.

Regardless of the initial motivation, the truth is that the many benefits that come from the habit of keeping a diary justify the decision to invest a few minutes every day in this activity. As Rosemeire Zago says: “It’s a way of committing to yourself.transforming reasoning into words that can be reread, analyzed, without defenses or escapes, which often happen when they are limited only to thoughts”.

It is the internet

In times of blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like, how does writing a diary compare to online entries? There is a fundamental difference between the two forms of expression: the first is made to share with friends and/or acquaintances; the second is intimate. And that changes everything. Online, you have to think about selecting the extent to which you are willing to expose yourself, that is, it does not replace the intimate diary.