How Writing Can Improve Your Health

Our health is very important to us. Many people think of health in terms of physical ailments. To maintain good health, they will exercise and eat healthily. Mental health is often overlooked. It is widely acknowledged that there is a mind-body connection and certainly exercise and good nutrition can have a beneficial impact on the mind. There are tools to help improve mental health; hypnotherapy, counselling, cognitive behavioral therapy and coaching. However, one often overlooked method is writing.

Writing can improve your mental health. It can also improve your physical health and general well-being. There are studies currently being undertaken to discover how and why this is.

Writing is therapeutic. It's a way to self-observe. Through writing you can identify your thoughts and feelings at a given point in time and regarding specific circumstances and situations.

You can track changes in your thoughts, feelings and situations. This will allow you to achieve insight into them and into yourself.

Writing down your thoughts and feelings helps you to organise them. You can identify patterns and triggers.

With respect to the mind-body connection you are taking inner emotions and thoughts and making them external by putting them on paper. Negative emotions such as stress and anxiety are elements of inner turmoil. By keeping them bottled up inside you can cause physical symptoms to occur such as loss of appetite, headaches or palpitations.

By writing down your thoughts, feelings and worries you are taking a conscious positive action. You are writing in the moment and this can relieve the internal pressure and help you regain calmness.

James Pennebaker, Psychologist and Researcher at the University of Texas at Austin has found that regular journaling can help improve the immune system by strengthening the T-lymphocyte immune cells. His studies also suggest that symptoms in sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis and asthma can also be lessened.

This happens because by writing about difficult issues and emotions it helps develop understanding. Emotions such as pain, anger, stress and sorrow can be released through the act of writing. This, in turn, reduces the impact of them as you develop understanding, adapt and come to terms with them. Finally, this allows stress levels to lessen.

If you want to use writing to improve your health, then you could consider journaling for 20 minutes a day. All you need is a private space to allow you to write honestly and without censoring yourself, a pen or pencil and book or pad to write in. This small routine has the possibility to create positive change in your physical and mental health.

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