Free Inquiry Blog Post #5: Emotional Awareness, Pattern Recognition, and Mental Health Benefits
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Emotional Awareness and Pattern Recognition
Emotional awareness and pattern recognition is one of the researched benefits of journaling, according to the Mental Health Center at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Offices. According to the experts, writing down your thoughts and emotions enhances emotional awareness. By paying attention to the patterns in your journaling, you can begin to notice triggers, recurring themes, and emotional responses. This awareness is key to understanding what influences your emotional state (whether it’s certain people, situations, or your internal thought patterns). A 2015 study by Baikie and Wilhelm confirmed that expressive writing increases emotional awareness and emotional intelligence. Journaling encourages introspection, and as you write about your experiences, you begin to identify the emotional drivers behind your actions and reactions. With this knowledge, you can take proactive steps to manage your emotional health.
I decided to begin to put this research and knowledge to the test. As my journal entries have accumulated with each and every day that has gone by, I’ve began to reread older reflections to begin to look for consistent patterns. Up until this week, journaling has served the purpose of helping to process emotions in the moment, but there hasn’t been much backreading. However, once you have weeks of entries to sift through, you can start to look at longer term trends, which in turn can lead to developing a greater sense of self-awareness.
Through going back in time and looking through previous entries, I noticed several patterns that had emerged. Certain emotions like stress, anxiety, and frustration were appearing more than once. In addition, these emotions were linked to similar situations, triggers, or even specific times of the week. For example, Sunday afternoons and Sunday evenings were a noticeably anxious time each week, which was being fueled by the thoughts of returning to the grind of the semester on Mondays and all of the upcoming assignment due dates, tests, and presentations. In addition, there were also anxious periods that popped up throughout the last month or so when there was an increase in the workload or when multiple assignments were introduced in the span of a couple of days. There was also a lot of self-doubt that I wasn’t going to be able to get everything done on time linked to these times.
Before I began journaling, the emotions were invisible and felt somewhat unavoidable. They just happened and there was nothing that I could do. However, now that I’ve read them in the journal, they are now visible. Now the key to all of this is what I do with this information, because it can be very valuable if used correctly. Obviously, if I were to just read the emotional patterns in the journal and change nothing, then I won’t see results. After reflecting on the data, I’m going to make a conscious effort to be more positive when it comes to the school workload and reassure myself that I’ve handled this workload before. I’m also planning to practice deep breathing when I can feel stress building-up. In addition, this past Sunday afternoon, I went out for a long walk at PKOLS, which I felt took my mind off things and I wasn’t thinking about Monday and the return to the pressure.
Mental Health Benefits
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Mental Health Benefits
Now that I’m reaching the end of this free inquiry assignment, I wanted to dive deeper into the mental health benefits of journaling, and whether or not I’ve noticed any of the perceived benefits. After all, that was part of one of my inquiry questions in the beginning: Can consistent journaling support self-awareness, emotional regulation or positive mental health over time? I found a great short video clip through doing a little bit of research that was featured on 9News in Denver, Colorado that does a great job at highlighting some of these benefits.
In addition, the University of Rochester Medical Center outline several of the benefits in a very useful article that I found that would be useful to check out. According to them, journaling can help with mental health by:
- Managing anxiety
- Reducing stress
- Coping with depression
- Helping you prioritize problems, fears, and concerns
- Tracking symptoms day-to-day so that you can recognize triggers and learn ways to control them
- Providing an opportunity for positive self-talk
Over the course of the assignment, I would say that journaling has helped with my mental health in quiet but noticeable ways. First, journaling has helped change how stresses are held and processed. Writing down thoughts allowed for them to be brought out into the open instead of just harboring them inside me. I feel like this has significantly reduced my cognitive load, especially during the semester when that cognitive load is jam packed. There have been noticeable improvements there. Second, I really do think that writing down thoughts and then rereading them looking for patterns has helped significantly as I can noticeably identify patterns and make adjustments based on what was triggering my stress or anxiety. Lastly, I think it has helped with positivity and self-compassion as I was able to notice patterns of negativity and self-doubt. Using this information, I was able to make adjustments and be more positive in situations where I normally would be doubting my abilities or becoming stressed about the task.
While I acknowledge that journaling can’t fully eliminate stress, anxiety, or difficult emotions (after all, we are all humans and will feel stressed or anxious from time to time), it has definitely changed the way I interact with them. Instead of trying to avoid these feelings or supress them inside of myself, journaling has created a place to acknowledge them and work through them.
Sources:
Mental Health Center. (2025). Researched Benefits of Journaling. https://www.mentalhealthctr.com/how-journaling-supports-emotional-well-being/
Ballas, P. & Pierce-Smith, D. (n.d.). Journaling for Emotional Wellness. https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=4552
[9News]. (2021 May 11). The Benefits of Journaling for Mental Health. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKpb1MWAkkI