TL;DR version: There are plenty of health and wellbeing boosts when it comes to the benefits of journaling – many of which have proper scientific and medical backing – but if you give it a go you’ll probably find out that what you get out of it isn’t necessarily the same as the widely popularised checklist of useful side effects.
“Wellness” is one of those thorny topics that everyone (and their mum) seems to have an opinion on, and advice to offer, and some special secret sauce that will magically dispel all your woes and result in a life of sunshine and unicorns. The benefits of journaling is definitely one of those things that comes up a lot in such conversations. Big sites like Healthline and WebMD tout it as the best thing for mental health since sliced bread (not that sliced bread has particular mental health benefits, as far as I know) and it gets held up as some magical heal-all that will turn even the most gnarly and disorganised brain into the pinnacle of operational efficiency.
Does it work in the real world? Well, as with so many other things, the answer is often “it depends” and can be very subjective.
Journaling as a health benefit
The medical evidence is, to be fair, pretty darn sound, and we’re talking about proper studies here rather than some wiffly nonsense from popular psychology. Just a few of the health boosts commonly cited as benefits of journaling include
Reducing stress: it’s pretty common knowledge now that stress does a number on your body, but people who do some kind of journaling or expressive writing, even for as little as fifteen minutes three times over four months (hardly a heavy daily commitment!), have notably improved liver functionality and lower blood pressure. It was shown to reduce stress during the worst of COVID-19 lockdowns, and can even help with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Hard to argue with that.
Boosting immune system: say whaaat? But yep, journaling apparently strengthens immune cells which makes you less likely to get sick, and can even reduce the effects of ongoing conditions such as asthma and arthritis. As if that wasn’t enough, any form of expressive writing (writing specifically, that is) can improve liver and lung function or combat some diseases, and there are reports it can even help people with physical wounds actually heal faster.
Helping with memory: some kind of journaling helps keep your brain in much better shape, boosting both memory and general comprehension. Writing things down by hand changes and improves the way your mind processes things, and makes them easier to remember – plus of course if you’re focusing on something, be it a particular idea or a general thought, you’re more likely to remember it. It also benefits something called “working memory capacity” – think of it like your short term active memory for something you’re doing or have just done – which improves your overall ability to think. Neat, huh? It’s like a big brain workout!
Improving mood: sometimes called the “Bridget Jones effect,” for those who like their early 00s movie references, keeping a journal or diary not only improves your mood in the short term, but can also give a greater overall sense of happiness and wellbeing, as well as a better ability to overcome bad emotions and things that make you upset. Sounds like a nice bonus. And on the same note…
Having healthier emotions: if you do any kind of journaling over a prolonged period, turning it into a habit, you become more in tune with your general health and your inner needs and desires. This is more often called mindfulness, helping you be both more immediately present in your life while also aiding perspective by providing more opportunities for expressing yourself freely – aka emotional catharsis – which helps your brain to better regulate your emotions.
Improving confidence: right up there with healthier emotions and mood is confidence, often tied closely to stuff to do with self-identity. This sounds a bit fruity until you stop and think about it – while journaling a negative experience helps you move through it by rationalising it, journaling a positive experience is a form of reliving it, which affirms it in your brain. The next time self doubt appears, your brain can then point to that relived affirmation and be all “hey, you, actually you’re awesome!” which gives you a kick of dopamine and endorphins.
Increasing skills: there’s a growing body of evidence that baseline intelligence can be changed and improved with certain activities such as writing. Whenever you’re doing something creative, you’re exploring ideas and challenging yourself, which in turn boosts your raw intellectual capacity. Maybe you learn something accidentally because you boost your vocabulary by discovering new words to journal with, or maybe you discover a whole new art form when you’re scrapping up a magazine to add to your journal. Either way, you’re upskilling.
Achieving goals: dreams and ambitions are as much as part of many journaling types as wants and fears. You might think that the idea of writing stuff down helps you to achieve it seems nuts, but nobody would try to build a house without a blueprint, right? If you write stuff down, it’s a big flag to your brain that it’s important (that’s why it also boosts memory) which causes certain subconscious things to happen that will steer you towards that goal – for example you might notice an opportunity relevant to your goal that you’d ordinarily overlook, or realise something could be a tool to help you achieve things when you’d normally write it off. This is called your reticular activating system and it basically governs how you pay attention to things. Neat, huh?
What journaling does for me
I’m not in the habit of testing my liver function or taking IQ or memory tests on the regular, so I can’t honestly tell you if I get all those snazzy benefits of journaling that are outlined above, but from a real world perspective I can tell you what I do get out of it!
Relaxation: I find journaling relaxing. It lets me be alone with my thoughts and reflect while also doing something, which saves a lot of the usual “oh god I’m just sitting here” guilt spiralling that I get with other mindfulness-type techniques like meditating, while also getting me away from anything digital or otherwise “on a screen” (which is a problem for a lot of my other relaxation hobbies like writing or video games). The activities around junk journaling itself could be argued to be semi-meditative in and of themselves, like cutting things out or browsing magazines purely for pictures, which probably helps too!
Creativity: I do a lot of writing, but sometimes my brain decides that words are Not Going To Be A Thing today. This leaves me with a sort of pent-up creative urge that I can’t properly deal with – a kind of writer’s block style constipation – which severely impacts my mood and often sends me into a spiral of depression because I feel unproductive as well as blocked. With journaling, I can still do something creative to scratch that itch, and I often find that my writer’s block goes away much more easily when I’m not actively trying to write… so weirdly, by taking up a new hobby, my old one has become both easier and more productive!
Those two things may seem like small beans compared to all the amazing potential that journaling has according to science, but for me they’re honestly borderline life-changing in an everyday sense! I’ve tried more traditional written journaling before but could never really keep it up as simply sitting and writing about my day always felt too much like a chore, but expressing those similar principles of reflecting and thinking into the medium of junk journaling works much better for me. I can sum up my feelings and thoughts with imagery instead, I get the added magpie-style bonus of being able to collect and collate pretty things, and I can add words to my journal too, whether it’s a single line, a bit of a poem, a scribble in the margins, or something more in depth.
That flexibility and freedom to create with no real rules just feels wonderful. I hope it inspires you to create a junk journal of your own to see what benefits you get from it!
