Journaling is a way to express thoughts, ideas, and feelings without fear or judgment. Recovering from eating disorders takes diving into the self – exploring, validating, and identifying emotions. This makes journal writing an integral and helpful part of eating disorder treatment and recovery. And, journaling is an easy thing to incorporate into your lifestyle. So, you can start experiencing the benefits of journaling on your eating disorder healing journey for yourself today.

Journal Writing for Mental Health – What Are the Benefits?

Journaling is the practice of writing down one’s thoughts, experiences, opinions, and emotions on paper. Certainly, journaling promotes many positive benefits like boosting creativity and exercising certain brain functions. But, there are also a number of benefits that journaling can promote to be used in a treatment application as well. Specifically, offering benefits for individuals recovering from mental health issues like eating disorders.

Some of the mental health benefits of journaling include:

• allowing for the time and space to problem-solve
• reduction of stress and anxiety
• helping to identify thoughts and feelings
• aiding in identifying and coming to terms with issues in relationships
• helping to boost self-confidence and self-awareness

Surely, allowing yourself to dive into your own thoughts and feelings while journaling promotes a number of mental health benefits. But, along with this, journaling also helps to record thought and behavioral patterns during eating disorder treatment. This can be helpful in identifying negative behaviors and thoughts, addressing these patterns, and adjusting them accordingly to aid in recovery.

Getting Started with Journaling

Journaling is a simple, easy exercise because there is no wrong way to journal. It’s a way to lay out all of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions – whether that means you want to draw, write poetry, or jot down your daily activities. Simply allowing yourself to have the time to journal provides care to yourself, allowing for the self-love and acceptance that’s so vital throughout the eating disorder recovery process.

While journaling is a rather simple activity, there are a few helpful tips that can aid you in getting started:

• jot down a story, poem, or song you already know
• doodle or scribble
• write a letter to someone, whether you know them or not
• choose a time of day to practice journaling daily – like with your morning cup of coffee

Of course, while these are helpful methods of getting started with journaling, you’ll also need a means of doing so. There are a few different ways to practice journaling, from writing in a notebook with a pen and paper to typing on a notepad from a computer. Whichever means you choose, make sure you’re most comfortable so you continue with your journaling efforts!

Willow Place for Women and Holistic Support for Women Living with Eating Disorders

Willow Place for Women is an eating disorder treatment facility for women that utilizes both traditional and supportive services. This includes holistic therapies that use both education and exercise of supportive techniques like journal writing for mental health.

Learn more about how our outpatient treatment facility in Asheville, North Carolina gives women the tools they need to overcome eating disorders on our website. And, give us a call today for a confidential consultation with one of our specialists at 1-888-651-4212.