This post was developed via a partnership with BetterHelp.
Writing or journaling is a relaxing activity that many people enjoy. It’s a healthy outlet for releasing pent-up emotions and figuring out what they mean to you. It can help one deliberate on life choices and the alterations they seek to make. Consequently, many therapists and mental health specialists advocate journaling as a treatment method for their clients. Even those who struggle with eating disorders could benefit from keeping a notebook.
When keeping a journal, it’s common for the writer to just express whatever emotions and thoughts they’re experiencing at the time. However, focusing on narrower concerns or breaking through a block by writing about anything like those listed here.
The Benefits of Keeping a Journal
Writing in a diary can assist in many ways whether you’re experiencing stress from school, burnout at work, illness, or worry.
It can help you feel less anxious
Keeping a journal has been linked to a reduction in psychological distress. After 12 weeks of writing blogs for 15 minutes three times per week, people with a variety of medical problems and anxiety reported improved mood and fewer depressed symptoms. Throughout the 12 weeks of writing, their mental health only improved further.
It aids in brooding
However, the timing of your writing about an emotional experience is crucial if you want to avoid getting stuck in an endless loop of dwelling on the event. Writing about a traumatic experience soon after it occurs has been shown in certain studies to increase feelings of distress.
It raises awareness
To gain perspective on a challenging issue, it can be helpful to write out your thoughts and feelings about it. The very process of giving your thoughts and feelings about an experience a form helps you see things in a different light.
It improves emotional control
People who wrote about their emotions had more emotional regulation than those who wrote about an impartial experience, as measured by brain scans. Writing abstractly about sentiments was shown to be more relaxing than writing vividly about emotions in this study.
It’s a great way to open up
Some people may find it easier to reach out to friends and family after writing in private about a traumatic experience. To some extent, this can aid in the process of emotional recovery.
It can speed up recovery
Physical health may also be affected by journaling. After undergoing a biopsy, people in a New Zealand study of 49 adults who wrote for 20 minutes about their reactions to traumatic situations recovered more quickly than those who wrote about their normal lives. The same was true for college students: those who wrote about stressful occurrences were less likely to get sick than those who wrote about more neutral themes like their rooms.
Less physical symptoms and fewer medical appointments were reported by women with breast cancer who wrote positively or expressively about their experience with the disease. Writing about negative feelings, however, has been linked by some studies to an increase in both anxiety and sadness. Visit https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/eating-disorders/ to learn more about how healing your mind can have positive effects on your body.
Recovery-Related Writing Prompts
Send your eating disorder a “goodbye letter.”
Many therapists recommend that their patients write a “goodbye letter” to their eating disorder as part of their treatment plan.
There may be positive and negative aspects of your eating disorder that you detail in such a letter. Possible inclusions include a description of the desired outcomes of treatment and the steps that will be taken to realize those aims.
Create a list of the benefits and drawbacks of your eating disorder.
When someone you care about struggles with an eating disorder, making the decision to seek treatment and make a commitment to recovery can be a daunting and challenging process. Sometimes those who are afflicted have trouble even deciding if they wish to make any changes. The benefits of recovery from an eating problem should be weighed against the costs of maintaining the disorder. Think about the positives and negatives of your eating disorder. Put your whole heart into both lists. If it’s tough to come up with ideas, you can always add to the lists at a later time.
Describe what your life would be like if you didn’t have an eating disorder.
Thinking about how your life would be different without the eating problem is another strategy to combat anxieties about recovery. What modifications would be made to the food? Would you feel happier and less depressed and/or anxious? The way we relate to one another might change in what ways? Have you ever wished you had more time to devote to the things you enjoy doing in life? Suppose you were physically better off. Let yourself fantasize about a future without EDs.
List the misconceptions and the truths you tell yourself about your eating disorder.
Individuals who suffer from eating disorders often hold flawed beliefs about their value, their weight, and their relationship to food.
Admitting that one is having “eating disorder ideas” and writing them down next to the facts can help to alter these beliefs. The truth is that our value as human beings has nothing to do with our size.
You may want to keep writing about this until you reach a point where you can quickly and readily identify distorted thoughts and replace them with more accurate ones.