The Research Behind Journaling & 5 Practices You Can Start Using Today
Whether working in healthcare or caring for a little one, family member or friends, caregivers often lack attention to their own personal needs, which can result in burnout, compassion fatigue, or general exhaustion. It’s so important to adopt strategies that help caregivers process their emotions, articulate their feelings, and let go of their stress to avoid burnout or compassion fatigue.
This 2016 study tested the effects of journaling on compassion satisfaction, burnout, and trauma/compassion fatigue in registered nurses. This is what they found:
66 nurses took a 6 week journaling course and reported statistically significant increases in compassion satisfaction, and reductions in burnout and compassion fatigue.
The three key takeaways from the journaling program were:
“Journaling allowed me to release my inner most thoughts” one nurse described it as a “pressure valve” for their feelings and stresses
“Journaling helped me to articulate and understand my feelings better.”
“Journaling helped me make more reasonable decisions.” It gave the power to step away from an emotional situation and gain a better perspective to make better decisions. One patient stated “it helped me take better care of myself and therefore better care of others.”
According to the study, journaling increases self-awareness, emotional literacy, and self-compassion, all of which are important aspects of a healthy caregiver or just a healthy human being. We put so much pressure on ourselves to perform well or be there for others whether in our careers, social lives, or familial roles, so we have to establish practices that release some of this pressure. As scientifically and anecdotally proven, journaling is a very effective way to do just that.
Here are 5 journaling practices that can make your journaling more intentional, effective or manageable:
This lays out simple prompts each day to help you start and end your day with a little more gratitude. It’s a great way to approach the day because it also asks three things you’d like to accomplish or do that day. In just 5 or ten minutes, you practice gratitude and set your intentions for the day. Very efficient and easy to stick to overtime!
No rules, just setting a time and writing
The best way to start journaling is to set a timer, find a quiet, private space where you feel comfortable and write anything that comes to mind until the timer goes off. This helps you work through any self-judgment or pressure to say the “right” thing. Your journal is your source of therapy, which means it is a safe space for any thought or emotion you have. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are not important, but sometimes we have to practice free writing in order to tap into the deeper thoughts and feelings we need to work through. It’s like brushing off cobwebs or warming up for a workout: you’d never judge someone’s performance on their warmup! The key is to just do it.
Visual Journaling
According to art therapists Susan Fox and Barbara Ganim, visual journaling can express what words simply cannot. In their book, they describe the benefits of drawing to reach any blocked feelings or traumas you might be harboring. The practice is rooted in Jungian psychology, when Carl Jung would draw circles over and over until his subconscious so to speak manifested images or patterns in his scribbles. This study found that visual journaling has promising effects on stress reduction in a medical environment. Basically, visual journaling removes all rules and lets your inner thoughts and feelings surface through symbols and visual representations. No artistic abilities needed!
Couples Journaling
We’ve all heard it before: communication is key in relationships. According to The Family Journal, couples journaling can break down barriers in communication to increase intimacy and relationship satisfaction. The outlined instructions are for both partners to privately journal about their feelings in their relationship daily, and then come together either in therapy or on their own and read each other their entries. The reflections usually include how they feel about the other, how they believe the other feels about them, and how they would like their partner to feel about them. Patients who have done this in therapy reported that the exercise felt like “rewriting love stories” to each other, and helped them work through unspoken conflicts.
Journaling in the third person
The goal of this exercise is to speak about yourself the way you would speak about your friends, either objectively or with love and kindness. You know the phrase: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything”? That applies to ourselves as well!
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Bailey Pellissier (she/her) is a recent Wake Forest graduate with degrees in Health and Exercise science and Psychology. Passionate about helping people heal and understand their bodies better, Bailey has worked as a personal trainer for 3 years and received her 200Hr Yoga Teacher Training in the summer of 2022. As an athlete and a dancer growing up, Bailey has learned to use mindful movement and breath work as tools to strengthen the mind-body connection and increase wellbeing in all aspects of life, and hopes to help others learn this as well.