10 Ways That Writing Can Help You De-Stress

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

You have too many things on your mind. You keep thinking about all of the things that you need to do, returning to the same few items that are troubling you. Writing can offer you relief from your troubles. Here are some ways that writing can help you de-stress.

1. Writing clarifies your thoughts

The act of writing forces you to think about the events that happened during the course of the day. You are no longer involved in the situations which made you angry or sad, and you can clarify what precipitated these events on paper.

2. Writing is meditative

Writing stream of consciousness is similar to walking meditation. Your breathing slows as you concentrate on the words and allow them to flow out of your head onto the keyboard or paper. There is a zone that writers get in where they are swept away by the words.

3. Writing makes you smarter

Writing is an active process which makes you smarter. The book writer must research their subjects, the emotional writer searches for new words to use in their journal or diary. Writing improves your vocabulary and makes you smarter. You are better able to handle stressful situations.

4. Writing helps you sleep better

Writing allows you to break the stress-causing cycles within your head. There are some people who read themselves to sleep, and others who write their own stories while they go to sleep. The more relaxed you are, the better you will sleep. You will wake up more rested which decreases your stress.

5. Writing removes anger

Take a pen and paper to write down all of the angry thoughts that you have. The page does not have to be shown to anyone. Focus on the anger and release it through the words that you have. Write about the revenge tactics that you want to take with the situation. By paying attention to the anger that you have, you are releasing it harmlessly into the world and pulling your emotional state back to a good baseline.

6. Writing solves problems

Writing down your problems assists you in coming up with solutions. Use brainstorming to come up with the answers and points that you need to follow. Within those potential solutions is the real course of action that you can take. By identifying your problems, you decrease your stress because you now have focus.

7. Writing offers purpose

Don’t hesitate to write out the list of things that you have to do. When you have a to do list, you develop tactics that you need to use to get them done. With that development of tactics, you gain purpose and lose the stress.

8. Writing strengthens your immune function

When you write, your breathing slows and you allow more oxygen to go to your brain. Being actively engaged in your work heals the body and encourages it to fight more purposefully against viruses.

9. Writing alleviates asthma

The power of the breath is astounding. Being in that writing zone encourages your body to eliminate and reduce the stresses that it’s facing. A way to healing the lungs is to take deep breaths, something which is done while writing.

10. Writing unties stomach knots

Your stomach can get tied up in knots because of the stresses that have been placed upon you. Writing helps with the mental issues as well as the physiological ones because you are breathing slower and meditating on your topic.

It honestly does not matter what you write, just as long as you are writing. The process of writing removes both mental and physical stress, bringing you back to a sense of calmness and peace. The next time you are stressed, try taking twenty minutes to write down your thoughts and see how you feel.

This article was contributed by James Adams who is a staff writer for one of the UK’s leading online suppliers of ink cartridges where he spends his time covering new releases such as the HP 901XL ink cartridge and developments in design for their blog, the CreativeCloud.

The Skool of Delivered to Your Inbox

Sign up for my FREE Course on the 7 Most Important Things You Never Learned in School