Task 2b: My Journal Writing Experience

Apparently keeping a journal can have an effect on your health.....

"Writing seems to help the brain regulate emotion unintentionally. Whether it's writing things down in a diary, writing bad poetry, or making up song lyrics that should never be played on the radio, it seems to help people emotionally," [1] (Dr Lieberman 2009)

There are many ways in which keeping some form of diary can help you;

• Clarify your thoughts and feelings
• Know yourself better
• Reduce stress
• Solve problems more effectively
• Resolve disagreements with others

This brings me onto how to keep a journal, turns out there are literally loads of different ways to process your thoughts into a diary. Mediums include pen and paper, blogging on the internet and even apps! Then there are many choice as to how you write those thoughts lists, reflection, diagrams, describing your day. So how to choose which suits you best? I decided to try a few out to see which felt most comfortable.

Simple old fashioned writing in a book about my day:
Really not for me, I found this way of evaluating and describing rather tedious and it didn't provide me with much closure on my day. It is hard to focus on specific moments or events if you are writing about your whole day.

Lists:
This I found much easier, it is a much simpler way of finding out how you felt about the day. I tried listing good things about my day or bad things about my day, listing the people i'd spoken to or the places I'd been. This gave me a much quicker idea of how I felt about my day and what had stood out.

Reflection:
I tried reflection in many different ways, whether it be picking out a specific event of the day and reflecting on how I felt about, what I could have improved or what I did well. I also tested several diagram methods such as using a pie diagram to divide up my emotions for the day.

In conclusion the journal writing experience was nowhere near as bad as I expected, i'm not sure that I would keep it up as a daily habit, but it could definitely be useful when working through difficult decisions or tough times. I can also see the benefits on our emotional health that diary keeping can have and how it could be used in a professional environment.



[1] Dr Leiberman 2009, as quoted in "keeping a Diary Makes You Happier" by Ian Sample, online. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/feb/15/psychology-usa