Let’s make a list as to why journaling is a good coping skill to have:

• Reduces stress
• Helps you to identify triggers
• Decreases feelings of distress
• Identify things that trigger your anxiety
• Helps with problem solving
• Improves your mood
• Reduces anxiety
• Regulates your emotions
• It helps you to release and process emotions
• Enhances your self awareness
• It gives you clarity and helps you find solutions
• Lessens avoidance and depressive feelings
• Helps you to overcome your fears

It may seem like an odd thing for boys and men to journal but, once you take your mind out of the cultural and societal prison, you may very well discover something that will help you to grow, mature, develop as man and human being. Look at the list above. Whether you are male or female it’s beneficial.

I can honestly say journaling has helped me in all of the ways described above. There are things you can’t say publicly but, you can say it by writing in the privacy of your own space. It has helped me to examine my thoughts and feelings and it has showed me where I am flawed. Where I need improvement or what I still need to work on.

But journaling is not just for “bad days and times”. Journal for the good, the happy, the extraordinary days. You can look back on those days and smile. You can look back on those days of growth and say, look at me. I got better. I got over it. I got on with my life.

~Nikki