Dear Diary…

Lynne Calaway

Whether pink and bedazzled,  artsy or sophisticated or a couple of pages in a loose-leaf notebook, almost every girl I knew in  junior high owned a diary—our safe place in which we wrote our most private  thoughts.    My investment of $4.99 with its cute  little  lock and  tiny  key was my own little Ft. Knox of secrets–a   BFF that would never blab (unless, of course, some busybody found it and popped  its  little lock with a toothpick).

Older now, we’ve given up our diaries to “journal”.  Categorized as “Expressive Therapy”, journaling,  like art and music therapy, is considered by the healthcare community as a good thing—a treatment protocol which can be integrated into one’s overall quest for wellness.

And while we’ve long recognized that journaling can have an impact on our emotional health, research has shown that writing—even blogging –contributes to our physical health as well.   The American Journal of Public Health has compiled quantitative research on the positive benefits expressive writing can have on blood pressure, our immune system and hormonal levels like cortisol—the diary has grown up.

Writing allows us to tackle the big stuff – it slows us down (hah!!…particularly for non-typists) and gives us a chance to “wrap our head around” the things we’re grappling with.  Dr. James Pennebaker, a foremost authority in word therapy, puts it this way: “When we translate an experience into language we essentially make the experience graspable.”   Even the very words we choose when journaling might be more reflective of the way we really feel than if we were talking to another person.   While getting something off our chest, the fear of judgement is not an issue—after all, we can always rip up the paper or hit “delete” when we’re done.

Diary—journal—tomato—tomaahto—however we may choose to label it, seeing a tough situation laid out before us can provide a bit of objectivity and insight, reflect patterns and process and, possibly, a fresh new perspective we’d not had before.