Journaling and stress relief

The Daily Caring article 6 Benefits of Journaling for Caregivers lists the following reasons to journal:

• Reduce caregiver stress
• Improve your health
• Find solutions to tough challenges
• Make caregiving easier
• Resolve arguments with other people
• Get in touch with yourself

Visit the following link for the complete Daily Caring article

6 Benefits of Journaling for Caregivers

During my caregiving experience I was active in a caregiver’s support group run by a local hospice. One of the group leaders suggested to me that I keep a journal. I found journaling to be a means to finally put an end to the incessant agonizing and scrolling (obsessive thinking) I was experiencing.  After my caregiving responsibilities came to an end I was pondering over my journal and other caregiving records when I thought, “I have all this stuff; what can I do with it?”  It was then that I decided to write a book about caregiving.  It was my hope that others could benefit from what I had learned. 

Another caregiver support technique is journaling, a method found to have a positive impact on physical well-being as well as emotional health. Writing about stressful events helps you to both face and deal with the situations that negatively impact your health. It knocks down the walls you have built so that you can gain understanding of yourself and your life circumstances. Writing about difficult problems and feelings (not only your own, but those expressed by the “others”)—rather than stewing over them (“scrolling”)—helps you gain understanding about other points of view. Writing about painful emotions helps decrease the power they have over you, so you feel more at ease, able to move beyond the past and stay in the present. Journaling is also an effective tool to help you resolve differences with others.

What to Do about Mama? p.183

“It’s good to do what my co-author did, and I didn’t—in spite of being a professional writer—keep a journal. This will help give you strength, put things in perspective, and help you remember.” Barbara Trainin Blank

---