Five powerful reasons to journal during COVID-19

Covid-19 has presented challenging times. Those who know how to convert challenges into productive and profitable opportunities are at an advantage over those who have always struggled. Anxiety and extremely stressful situations can, at times, be overwhelming enough to deter us from thinking, feeling, and functioning, leaving us feeling hopeless, helpless, and sometimes useless. Let’s look at five reasons, journal writing may be more helpful than we think.

Pennywise

Journal writing is underrated, yet it is the simplest, most cost-effective way of finding solutions to the challenges that we have. After all, it requires tools that we may already have. We need a pen and book and if we prefer, we can use our laptops or mobile phones. Decorating our journals to personalize it, helps us to channel our energy into something creative and enjoyable which in itself, is a fantastic stressbuster.

Anywhere, anytime, anyhow

We can journal anywhere, any time and anyhow. The beauty of journal writing is that we can express ourselves freely, in as poor a handwriting set as we like, in as grammatically inaccurate a style as we please and in as imperfect away as we want. It requires simple, raw writing about what and how we are feeling. The aim is to “get what’s bothering us off our chest.”

It remains our secret

This is our secret. No one else is privy to the information in it, except by our express permission. Writing when we are emotional helps us to unleash raw, honest thoughts. We can write the letter we have been meaning to write to our estranged friends, husbands, fathers, or abusers. We can even cry healing tears while we express our thoughts, and no one has to know it. We could even talk about things we never dared to reveal to anyone ever in our lives. It’s between us and our journals.

From challenges to solutions

When we suppress our feelings and emotions, we can drive ourselves into anxiety which can lead to bigger health problems. Remaining in the state of anxiety and indecision means that we can either remain in a state of numb anxiety or be driven to take drastic, harmful action. Journal writing helps to release the answers we may already have but are too afraid to voice. Sometimes this is because we are pre-occupied with the fear of being judged or for fear of the unknown. But writing our options down brings us some clarity, lightens the burden in our chests, and helps us to get to a place of calm. All that is left, is for us to set a problem-solving plan into action.

Bury the baggage- become a bestselling author

A lot of us carry historical negativity with us because we did not deal with it in our pasts. Thoughts about those incidents sometimes come to visit from time to time, reminding us about people, places, and incidents that we would rather forget. We may succeed at suppressing what we feel again but will never move past it.

We can’t erase past events from our memories, but we can change the way we look at them by exploring how they make us feel and why. Journal writing can help us do that and can help us make peace with it.

Finally, it can help turn our journals into books that will help others who identify with our journey to healing, take lessons from, and move forth with the business of living. It is far more powerful and fulfilling becoming the helper than forever remaining helpless.

The next time we feel helpless, need to talk to someone, feel like no one understands what we are passing through and feel unheard, unwanted and unvalidated, let’s turn to our pens and journals to help us get through it, not because there aren’t other ways of finding solutions to challenges but because the feeling and power of resolving our own challenges is priceless.