silhouette of person standing on railing

assorted-color markers in glass jarIt really doesn’t matter what emotional challenge you’re facing…if you want to overcome it and start feeling better, you can find a way to use journaling to help. You can set up a particular type of journal like a gratitude journal to help yourself become more thankful for what you do have.

You can also keep a bullet journal and set goals to overcome the challenges you are facing. Use your journal to help create more social connections and create a plan to overcome the loneliness you’re experiencing.  The possibilities are truly endless when you set your mind to it and take positive action.

Let’s look in more detail at how journaling can help combat loneliness.

Journaling Empowers You to Explore Your Thoughts and Feelings

Journaling can help you to simply focus on writing expressively white Explore flagregarding your thoughts and feelings about the loneliness that you are experiencing. If you can write about each part of your feelings, and when you first noticed them, you may identify the core cause of the feelings. When you do that, you can develop a plan to solve the problem and start feeling better.

Journaling Gives You a Way to Express Your Thoughts and Feelings

white bottom-mount refrigeratorWriting is a time-honored way of expressing thoughts and feelings safely. You never have to let anyone read it. You can write it down in the form of letters to other people. You can also write a letter to yourself, or even to someone you don’t know that you keep for yourself when you’re done. The act of writing helps you to get it out in the light so it can be studied and eventually overcome.

Journaling Provides a Way to Understand Your Thoughts and Feelings

Sometimes you may not even know what you are feeling. It can be hard to understand and express what we feel even to ourselves. But when you focus on writing it down, it can help you understand everything in a new way from a new direction that you may not have considered.

Journaling Helps You Increase Social Connections

It might seem like a strange notion to consider, but writing can even help three person holding mug and glass with beverage insideyou increase social connections. The main reason is that as you read what you’ve written, you’re going to discover ways to overcome your situation to find the healthy social connections you need. Analyzing what you’ve written will open new pathways in your mind and help you see innovative solutions and avenues for increasing your social life.

You might even try googling some of the phrases you wrote down in your journal and see what comes up in the search results – that can also inspire you to consider other avenues for increasing your social activity.

Journaling Helps You See the Big Picture More Easily

Looking back at the things you’ve written over time about any topic can provide insight into the situation that you never saw coming. That’s because having a journal to look back on provides a way to see the bigger picture. You may feel super-lonely today, but it’s still less than yesterday, which lets you know it’s going to get even better from here.

Journaling Provides a Means to Understand and Organize Your Thoughts

person writing on paperWriting things down, especially when you choose a particular method like the bullet journal, will help you get your thoughts down in an organized and useful way. When your thoughts are a jumble, you might not see the real point but when they’re organized, it makes all the difference. For example, in writing it all down, you may realize that your loneliness is really due to being with the wrong partner who does not value you.

Journaling Helps You Sharpen Your Observation Skills

Once you start writing regularly and it becomes a habit, something amazingpencil and sharpener on notebook page will happen. Your observation skills will be sharper, and you’ll have an easier time producing descriptive and expressive words to use in your journal. This is going to lead to even more breakthroughs due to having more clarity.

Writing down your observations will help you dig deeper into the feelings below the surface. Going deeper helps to get to the root causes – internal or external – of your situation. Once you know the root cause, you can take action to resolve it.

Journaling Focuses Your Gratitude Skills

Something funny happens when writing in a journal, even if it’s not specifically a gratitude journal per se. What happens? As you’re writing (even if you’re upset), you’ll become calmer – especially when you read it back. You’ll become grateful for what you do have that is positive in your life, even if it’s simply the ability to breathe in and out today.

If you want to combat loneliness, consider writing about and exploring why you feel lonely. You also should remember to read the definition of “loneliness” to ensure that this is what you are really experiencing.

No one ever needs to be lonely, even when they are alone if they know how to work through their thoughts and feelings. Journaling can help with that.

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About the Author Dianne Daniels

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and currently residing in Norwich, Connecticut, Dianne M. Daniels' mission is to empower women 50+ to Amplify their Self-Confidence, Deepen their Self-Knowledge, Inspire Creativity, and Glide into the next phase of their lives with the Power of Journaling, Affirmations, and Assessments.

You can learn how to use these time-tested, proven practices to create and manifest the life you want (and deserve) to live.

Dianne is an ordained Unitarian Universalist Minister with a Master of Divinity degree from Starr King School for the Ministry. She's an avid reader, a lover of old houses (she renovated an 1850s vintage Greek Revival home with her family) and has been journaling since the age of 9.

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