- The Ultimate Guide to Journaling: How To Teach Expressive Writing - June 13, 2022
- Journaling: How To Use Writing To Support Your Mental Health - May 27, 2022
- How To Honor National Mental Illness Awareness Month With Action - October 3, 2021
Last Updated on October 23, 2024
As an editor, blogger, and co-author with Terri Lyon of the book Make a Difference with Mental Health Activism, I wondered how best to merge my profession and my many years as a volunteer with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to become an activist—merging my advocacy for those with mental health disorders and my skill with words.
As a freelance editor and writing coach, I chose to specialize in memoir. I am drawn to working with writers who are ready to explore some aspect of their lives that had profoundly impacted them, either positively or negatively. Memoirs are often journey stories about difficult times in a person’s life. From the death of a loved one to the end of a marriage, from displacement to abuse, authors write memoirs at the point they are ready to share their story and subsequent transcendence.
But not everyone with a story to tell or experiences they need to share is ready or willing to produce a memoir.
And that’s OK. Because there is a process that is cathartic and cleansing that everyone can try if memoir writing is too great a task to attempt—journaling.
The Ultimate Guide to Journaling as Mental Health Activism
Journaling is one of the least expensive and most helpful forms of mental health self-care. While I am a strong proponent of medication treatment and talk therapy, journal writing bolsters that regimen. Research has shown that journaling reduces stress and anxiety, boosts resilience and gratitude, and helps to process uncomfortable emotions. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) medical research findings on the benefits of journaling can be found here. A less technical, more instructive discussion can be found at PsychCentral.
Whether you are an educator, business owner or manager, or a volunteer for a local mental health association in your community, such as NAMI or Mental Health America, you no doubt have people skills that could transfer to teaching a journal writing class or leading a journaling support group.
If you have a strong writing background, you fit the bill for this type of activism also. Are you a journalist, creative writer, English teacher, content writer, or an editor like me? You can use your strengths to facilitate journal writing classes.
Benefits of Journaling
Journalist and therapist Kara Mayer Robinson, in an article for WebMD, summarized the many benefits of journaling.
- Promotes self-awareness. You will get to know yourself better.
- Lets you take charge of your emotions and worries. See them. Name them. Take control of them.
- Shifts your viewpoint about yourself and those around you. You will gain a broader perspective.
- Creates a positive opportunity for healing and recovering self-worth. Whether you write in a journal about problems or gratitude, a healing process happens.
Your Obligations as a Leader or Teacher
If you are teaching journaling or leading a journal writing support group, pay attention to whether the practice seems to be helping or hindering a writer. While the benefits of journaling are without question, there can be pitfalls if the practice is taken to extremes or the writer dwells on the negative and gets stuck. Make sure to help them avoid these pitfalls:
- Don’t let journaling cause the writer to live in their head too much;
- Don’t let journaling turn the writer into a passive observer of their life; in other words, excessive journaling in placed of living.
- Don’t let the writer get self-obsessed by writing about themselves to the exclusion of all else;
- Don’t let journaling become an exercise in self-blame or self-pity rather than one of finding solutions and moving forward;
For more information on the dos and don’ts of journaling, see this May 2022 article from Positive Psychology.
The Ultimate Guide to Journaling: How to Analyze Journal Writing
The following guidance for analyzing and facilitating journaling is based upon research findings, including the work of Martin Seligman on positive psychology and learned helplessness and the work of James Pennebaker.
Avoid Negative Language
Try to avoid the use of negative emotions language. This initially might sound either impossible or counterproductive to the point of expressive writing, designed to allow the writer to open up and share past experiences. But research tells us otherwise. Journaling that heavily uses words related to hate, despair, anger, anxiety, fear, depression, revenge, and guilt (to name a few) has been proven to be less beneficial for the writer. Why? Studies have shown that the most beneficial journaling does not relive and dwell on negative or traumatic past experiences, but openly discusses the trauma. Writers strive to recognize lessons learned, personal growth, goals, and a new path forward. Consistently negative language creates a whirlpool of self-pity that keeps the writer stuck in the trauma.
Focus on Positive Language
As the flip side to the above, journal writers who use more positive emotions language see more benefit from their writing. Words related to love, support, growth, joy, beauty, revelation, redemption, self-actualization, and self-esteem experience better mental health, boosted mood, confidence, and a positive attitude about life.
The language a journal writer chooses reflects the ways in which they perceive, comprehend, and make sense of life. The ability to make meaning from a negative or traumatic event is crucial to the cognitive processing needed to move beyond a negative event. Positive language is an indication that the writer is forging a path toward clarity and healing.
Use First Person Pronouns
To review some elementary school grammar, singular first person pronouns are I, me, my, mine, and myself. Second person pronouns are you, your, yours, yourself, and yourselves. Third person pronouns are he, him, his, himself, she, her, hers, herself, it, its, itself, they, them, their, theirs, and themselves.
Help journal writers pay attention to how often they use first person pronouns versus second or third person pronouns. Why does this matter?
Heavier use of second and third person indicates the writer is still primarily focused on others—what others said or did. When journaling focuses on the past words and deeds of others, progress cannot be made. For a writer to move forward, they must see themselves clearly in the present and visualize themselves in the future.
Additionally, the use of insight words, such as understand, realize, know, acknowledge, recognize, and admit is further proof that the writer is coming to terms with their own situation, demonstrating acceptance and objectivity.
In Conclusion
Even if you are not a therapist, psychologist, LCSW, or the like, it is still possible to facilitate a journal writing group that is truly beneficial to its attendees. Psychoanalysis is not necessary.
The ultimate guide to journaling—when, how, and where to journal, negative vs. positive language, and an I-centered approach—is sufficient to make you a journaling group leader. Use it to offer direction and advice that helps writers move past trauma and pain, see themselves clearly, and plot a path toward mental health and overall wellness.
If, like me, you are a lover of words and writing, and you want to make a difference for mental health, teaching journaling as a form of mental health self-care could be your ideal mental health activism opportunity. Go for it.
READ NEXT
If you enjoyed The Ultimate Guide to Journaling, be sure to read Journaling: How To Use Writing To Support Your Mental Health.
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