Dr. Shelley Sommerfeldt 11/1/19 Dr. Shelley Sommerfeldt 11/1/19

The Healing Power of Journaling

Journaling has many powerful healing benefits, such as helping to express & process emotions, improve self-confidence, increase self-awareness, reduce stress, work on problem-solving, improve memory & cognition, and help with mental health coping.

Why is writing so beneficial? Journaling is a method of expressing and releasing thoughts and feelings. It can be a powerful tool for healing. Just as talking to someone about feelings, experiences, and emotions, journaling can also allow for the release of these thoughts and allow you to emotionally process what you’ve been dealing with. This essentially relieves the brain of holding all of these experiences within your mind and body and allows for a release, which can be essential to healing and feeling better. Journaling allows you to be open and honest with yourself. This type of truthful expressive writing about your thoughts and feelings can be quite therapeutic. It has been noted to improve both your cognitive and emotional wellbeing.

The act of writing accesses your left brain, which is your rational and analytical side. While your right brain is creative, emotional and intuitive. So while your left brain is distracted with the task of writing, this allows your right brain to tap into the emotional and intuitive side to express your feelings. This can be very helpful in accessing both parts of your brain to clarify your thoughts, feelings, and know yourself on a deeper level. This specific act of writing can tap into your brainpower, improve mental wellbeing and get your creative juices flowing.

Benefits of Journaling:

1. Express & clarify emotions, thoughts & experiences

Writing can help you to process your feelings on a subject. By writing, you can thoroughly explore what you are feeling and openly and honestly. This allows for further healing and even clarification on things that you may be struggling with.

2. Improve self-confidence

Journaling can bring on self-confidence as you are better able to explore your thoughts and feelings, thus feeling more confident and secure within yourself. Feeling more confident goes hand-in-hand with feeling secure and strong in your thoughts, actions, and feelings on a subject.

3. Increase self-awareness

Through the act of writing, you can more thoroughly explore your feelings, thoughts, and therefore, increase your understanding of yourself. This is the act of self-awareness and being more clear and confident with who you are as a person. Having a strong sense of self-awareness can also build higher confidence and help you to feel better about yourself.

4. Reduce stress

Journaling allows you to express yourself, similarly to talking to a friend or therapist. Through this act of divulging your thoughts and feelings, you can reduce stress and anxiety that you may be holding in. Writing allows for these emotions to be expressed and often allows for feelings of relief, which can reduce stress.

5. Work on problem-solving

Writing can be a great way to brainstorm and explore ways to problem-solve challenges in your life. Through writing about problems, feelings, and experiences, you can work on strategizing and solving problems in your life. This helps you to explore various outcomes and ways in which you’d like to work toward handling difficult situations, which can be very helpful.

6. Improve memory & cognitive function

Our brains require activities to stay alert, receptive and continually growing. These activities keep our brains and cognitive function healthy. Writing and journaling can be one of those great mental tasks which help to promote good memory and strong cognitive functioning.

7. Better coping with mental health issues

Stress, anxiety, and depression are some of the most common emotional and mental health issues in the United States. Many people require various strategies to treat these conditions, which are often through therapy, coaching and psychiatric medication. There are many self-help strategies, however, and journaling is one that is often used in conjunction with therapy and coaching or simply as an ongoing strategy to help process these feelings. This is because journaling helps to boost coping and is overall a wonderful coping strategy to employ in your toolbox of self-care.

8. Help with goal setting

Writing helps to explore things within yourself such as working toward goals and handling challenges in your life. Writing things down can often make it feel more “real” and help you to visualize a step-by-step plan for achieving goals in your life.

Tips to Start a Journaling Practice:

The first step in starting a journaling practice is to buy a journal, notebook, pad of paper or anything you like and just begin writing! It’s recommended that you set a goal of about 20 minutes per day. Also, choose a time of day in your schedule to plug in this activity and make it a goal. Perhaps you spend a few minutes each morning writing before starting your day or at night, to recap your day and your experiences.

Many people may need a bit more structure to start, so if that’s you, then one idea may be to use daily or weekly prompts. Prompts are questions or themes that you can write about, which keep you focused on a topic and a bit more organized with your writing.

If your purpose of journaling is to work on emotional healing then ask yourself questions that you can write about that are related to healing, such as, “how can I focus on my healing today?” Or “what did I do today that has helped me to heal?” Another theme may be to focus on personal growth and write about your strengths or personal challenges that you’d like to grow from and overcome.

A gratitude journal is another common theme idea. You can write statements of gratitude each day. Writing about something that you are grateful for can give your mind a positive mental shift.

I hope you’ve found these tips helpful and that you can start your writing journey.

ONLINE SERVICES ARE AVAILABLE

If you are needing support, virtual services are available, see Online Coaching with Dr. Shelley. Services are provided by telephone or online through a HIPAA-compliant telehealth portal, which allows you to be in the comfort of your own home during sessions & have increased privacy. Sessions are available for individuals or couples. Appointments can be booked online or simply email Dr. Shelley with any questions or appointment requests.

Blog written by: Dr. Shelley Sommerfeldt, Clinical Psychologist, Relationship Coach & Founder of the Loving Roots Project, an online wellness practice specializing in personal growth, mental wellness, & relationship betterment.

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Therapeutic Benefits of Gardening

Spending time outdoors, growing flowers or plants, can actually boost your mood & improve mental health.
Horticulture as a treatment intervention has been around for quite some time & has many benefits. Gardening can:
bring a sense of responsibility, provide nurturing, increase focus & mindfulness, gets you active & outdoors, and it brings on feelings of success.

With springtime upon us and stores putting out their seedlings, vegetables and fresh young flowers, writing about some of the benefits of gardening seem fitting. Many people engage in gardening for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, it is simple to create more curb appeal to their home, others supply flowers to create more sustainable homesteads, some provide nourishment to bees and other creatures who need them, and some people just garden because they love it. Did you know there are some wonderful therapeutic and mental health benefits to gardening too?

Horticulture as a treatment intervention has been around for quite some time, but it wasn’t until the 1940s and 50’s that it picked up steam with use and credibility. Rehabilitative care programs began to use horticulture therapy practice with hospitalized war veterans. A variety of professionals now use horticultural therapy techniques to assist participants in learning new skills, regaining some that were lost, improve memory, cognition, language, and socialization. There are some specifically designed therapeutic gardens that are helpful for sensory-orientation as well as just incorporating the healing elements of nature. This blog will specifically look at some of the mental health benefits to gardening.

Here are a few of the benefits:

1. Sense of responsibility:

Gardening can provide one with a sense of responsibility as taking care of plants can add a sense of purpose, meaning and fulfillment. This gives a person a task that they are involved in, responsible for and in charge of, which can be very important if a person is struggling with feeling unfulfilled, lonely or just trying to find meaning in their life. Many horticulture programs have community gardens that can help increase social experiences.

2. Nurturing:

Care-taking of any sort can provide us a sense of being nurturing to another living thing. This allows for one to nurture a plant and watch it grow. Many people enjoy starting from tiny seeds, watching them sprout into seedlings and eventually grow and bloom. The process allows people to really care and nurture something that will grow and succeed. Research has shown that providing support and nurturance can lead to reduced stress, increased happiness and feelings of connectedness.

3. Focus and being in the present moment:

It may be surprising for some, but gardening can assist you in living in the present moment. It brings you to the here and now and as you focus on the activity at hand. It can increase your state of mindfulness. This also allows for a nice distraction away from everyday stressors and some people use it as a means to process and let go of unpleasant emotions. The activity also promotes interest and enthusiasm for the future as many want to see their plants grow and bloom.

4. Gets you active and outdoors:

Gardening can get you active and take you outdoors to tend to plants and water. Many people find that just being outdoors, in the sunshine and fresh air can add a very healthy outlet in their life. Many school programs with children and even some agencies for the elderly bring in gardening as a means to teach as well as keep people active. Gardening can be hard physical work and lead to the development and improvement of motor skills and muscle coordination. It also allows for sensory experiences due to textures, colors, smells, etc., which can be helpful in stimulating the brain and responses of the person involved.

5. Brings about feelings of success:

Gardening can actually bring on improved confidence and self-esteem. When you plant those seeds in the fresh soil and you provide water and wait. Then you wait some more and suddenly you see the green sprouts. It’s fun and exciting and it gets even better when those green sprouts grow and grow and then, there are tomatoes, zucchinis or peppers hanging off your plant that began as that tiny little seed. Gardening brings on feelings of success, accomplishment, and pride. It feels good to work at something and have it bloom and grow. It is hard work and not everything is completely successful, but when you do put in dedication for something, it can bring on positive feelings.

ONLINE SERVICES ARE AVAILABLE

Resources:

American Horticultural Therapy Association:

https://www.ahta.org/what-is-horticultural-therapy

Therapeutic Garden Characteristics:

https://www.ahta.org/assets/docs/therapeuticgardencharacteristics_ahtareprintpermission.pdf

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Finding Happiness in Everyday Things

Changing your mindset before an activity can help you to be more present & mindful, engage with intention, and find more meaning and healing in everyday activities. So set your mind to finding peace before starting out with an activity and enjoy the therapeutic benefits of everyday things.

Do you feel that you have difficulty finding time for activities that you love? Many people don’t take on new hobbies or activities simply because they don’t feel they have enough time, but it’s these activities and hobbies that can help bring happiness and enjoyment in life. So what about utilizing the activities that you already do? Can you maximize on those in order to increase meaning and happiness in your life? Many activities that we already do can actually become therapeutic and assist us when we are in the right mindset. This has many personal benefits, such as creativity, meaning, stimulation, distraction, and emotional healing.

People use going to the gym, exercising, knitting, gardening, painting, cooking, etc. as their own type of “therapy” without even realizing it. Although activities cannot truly replace psychotherapy, the point is, we can often make everyday activities therapeutic in some way if we set our mind and intention to do so. This requires you to really think about the activity before doing it and setting your mind to making the activity therapeutic for you. This can supplement personal growth and add deeper meaning and intention to our lives. This means that the activity is not just a mindless activity, but it’s something that can actually be beneficial to our mental, emotional or spiritual health and it adds to our life, meaning, and purpose.

These activities can be helpful for us to disengage from our day to day life, distract us from challenges we may be facing, reduce stress, assist us processing difficult emotions, help us pay more attention, focus in the present moment, and overall provide us with opportunities to engage in positive activities that bring meaning and health to our life.

You can increase the therapeutic benefit of everyday activities by following these steps:

Select: Choose an activity that will be meaningful to you in some way. So maybe it’s something that’s important for your health, such as exercise. Or maybe it's an everyday activity that you’re already engaged in, that’s important to you, such as walking your dog. Put some thought into an activity in which you feel that you can be mentally present. This needs to be something that fits you, your personality and interests. For example, many people find cooking to be therapeutic, but if you hate to cook, then that is probably not the best activity for you! Find something that you enjoy and believe that you can find meaning in.

Pause: Take a moment to pause before you begin your activity. Be present, mindful, and in the moment. Mindfulness is about being completely in tune and highly aware of a given moment. This is a chance to reflect on the activity, how you are feeling and focus on how this activity will be therapeutic for you. Take the time to think about how this is a therapeutic activity that you enjoy and are using in a way to promote health and happiness. For example, before walking your dog, think to yourself what the benefits are of the activity and how this might be helpful for you. So you may think about the physical benefits of walking as well as the benefit of stress reduction and the help of distracting your mind and mentally “clearing your head” while walking.

Enjoy: Often, we get into a routine of doing an activity and we go into autopilot, without even paying attention to the activity that we are doing. If you are wanting to make an activity therapeutic, then it's important that you are following these recommendations in order to really pause before engaging in the activity and be more mindful and present in the moment. This will allow the activity to have more meaning for you, bring more fulfillment and more joy. So be sure that once you have selected an activity with purpose and intention, you will then pause for a moment to be mindful and present. Lastly, enjoy the activity and make the most of the moment. This way, you are more likely to reap the benefits of a therapeutic and healing activity.

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