Benefits of Journaling for Teenagers
- Nicholas Larios
- Apr 8
- 5 min read
Updated: May 10
Have you ever felt yourself looking for ways to express your emotions freely through moments of isolation? Journaling might be the outlet for you. Journaling is one of the most popular tools for self-expression for individuals by creating a healthy outlet to cope with emotions. There are many different forms of journaling; whether it’s through creating bullet points of your feelings or writing whatever thoughts come to mind, journaling is beneficial to the overall mental and physical health of teenagers.
On a day-to-day basis, we experience struggles, whether it may be through school, family, or friends. Being able to write your feelings allows you to identify the patterns of stressors. Through journaling, these problems can be prioritized by carving out time to understand these negative thoughts created due to these stressors. By tracking any specific symptoms on a daily basis, anxiety and stress can be managed by providing a consistent, healthy space for yourself to express your emotions. This allows actions to be done by learning different ways to resolve the challenges causing stress and the planning that can be done to minimize this stress (Stanford Medicine, n.d.).
Moreover, not only can journaling help the mental aspects of your body, it can also lead to a noticeable change in your physical self, which can lead to an overall healthier self. As the process of journaling allows you to freely write about your feelings around significant challenges, this can regulate blood pressure by creating a more peaceful mindset, which is less stress-filled. Due to being able to clear thoughts through writing, this creates a less interrupted sleep cycle by being able to clear your mind of the thoughts you have by writing them down, which lowers stress levels. Through gaining more comfortability in recognizing and writing your own thoughts, writing about suppressed traumatic events has led to a positive outcome of helping the immune system. By processing emotions, the function of the immune system works better by lowering the chronic stress many face through suppressing the emotions felt from these traumatic events (Child Mind Institute, 2025).
Additionally, journaling has been associated with a stronger academic performance in teenagers by inspiring a new mindset sparked with motivation and creativity. Journaling can make an individual become ambitious through the process of actually writing goals or the progress being made. Journaling can further spark creativity through simply using it to write any ideas that echo in your mind that you believe are important to remember. Journaling can shimmer new ideas that you may not have thought of before unless you used journaling as a freedom to shine your creative ideas. The resilience gained through journaling is a strength that can’t be replicated easily unless you use a safe space to understand your own mind (USAHS, 2020).
Furthermore, journaling helps you as a student by creating a better memory through being reminded of your ideas which might’ve not stuck in your mind. This is beneficial in becoming a better test taker which can take off the pressure of trying to remember the millions of concepts being tossed at you which can be comprehended easier through journaling. Forms of reflective journaling also enhance critical thinking which can improve your academic performance by capturing your own thoughts which causes you to become better at reflecting on observations and concepts in schools. Overall, journaling has correlated to a higher GPA average due to the freedom to become creative and insightful through reflecting in writing which can make you have a better memory and test taking skills (USAHS, 2020).
There are many different forms of journaling which can be done that are still beneficial to helping an individual both mentally and physically. Some journaling sessions don’t need a definitive goal attached to them but can simply be used to write down scrambling thoughts that you may need to release. On the other hand, some journaling with a goal such as reflection journaling can be used to write your innermost thoughts and emotions freely which will allow you to have a better understanding of your own feelings. If you’re looking for ways to specifically improve your mental health further through journaling, gratitude journaling is beneficial through reminding yourself of the things you're grateful for everyday no matter how small or big it is. If you have trouble connecting with your thoughts or emotions, double-entry journaling can be used to organize the challenge you want to tackle on one side of the page while the other side of the page can include your own thoughts and feelings on the issue. Journaling isn’t just limited to just writing about your deep thoughts and emotions, it can also be used to create simple bullet points with or without sentences to organize schedules or create reminders (Grand Canyon University, 2022).
The important idea to remember about journaling in general is there isn’t a right or wrong way to journal. Journaling is much more than just using it to express your emotions, it can be used to create lists, organize schedules, or even set reminders for yourself which are all resourceful ways to reduce stress. Even if you only have time to journal about 15 to 20 minutes a day this is still effective in being able to reduce stress levels by removing lingering negative thoughts which pass by and instead create time to express how these thoughts affect you. Honesty is the key to these journaling sessions as it creates a better recognition of your feelings without fear of accepting them and further helping you to understand what these feelings mean (The Kim Foundation, 2023).
To add on, there are no rules when practicing journaling, as every individual has their own way of being able to understand and handle their emotions, which is why nobody has the same strategies. Journaling is meant to curate a safe space just for you to be able to express your emotions, being free of any judgment from the outside world. This is why there isn’t a wrong way to do journaling; it doesn’t matter if grammar isn’t perfect or the organization of your thoughts is confusing; if the process works for you, then you shouldn’t stop it. While the idea of journaling may be unsettling at first, more practice will allow you to become more open in recognizing your feelings no matter the form of journaling you use (The Kim Foundation 2023).
Overall, journaling is a hugely beneficial tool to use when looking for simple ways to improve the state of mind of your overall physical health. Journaling creates access in recognizing the range of emotions and thoughts you experience when facing different challenges and needing a place to express yourself. Additionally, journaling gives you a break from judgment and allows you to acknowledge the way you feel in your free time by being able to clear out your own thoughts and lowering stress levels. Furthermore, journaling holds many benefits due to the positive outcome in lowering blood pressure levels and improving sleep cycles due to the impact journaling has on regulating stress. There’s no right way to journal as long as you’re honest and aware of your feelings and learn to address them in order to create strategies to challenge these negative patterns in your behavior. Journaling for even just 5 minutes a day can lead to a clearer mind frame with fewer negative thoughts and instead replace them with ways of learning how to challenge these negative ideas with positive affirmations when facing obstacles.
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