Journaling During Your Rehab Stay: Why It Helps

Many counselors will tell their patients to keep a journal in residential or inpatient treatment in order to document their thoughts during this transitional period. Sometimes, the patient may choose to show their writings to others, and sometimes, they may not. But the mere act of keeping a journal can add another element to their treatment and be incredibly beneficial to their overall recovery in general.

Self-Reflection

Journaling can help you reflect on your actions and progress while in treatment.

There is a lot of time during residential rehab for self-reflection, but actually having these thoughts written down can be wonderful for the individual. Drug abuse often causes people to become self-absorbed without the ability to reflect on their actions. Journaling can help smooth out these problems and allow the individual to focus on what is really important within their thoughts and their day-to-day interactions with others.

This activity, even if performed for only thirty minutes a day, can help patients truly reflect on how they feel and even how others feel by writing their thoughts down in a way that is tangible. Plus, it creates an important snapshot of the early days of recovery for the individual to look back on later on in their life.

Sense of Purpose

Journaling also helps patients in residential treatment recover a sense of purpose, which is one of the four major dimensions that support a life in recovery, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Because a person has to leave their job, family, friends, and other activities behind to attend a program of this sort, residential treatment can sometimes feel isolating and empty, especially in the very beginning. Those who begin to journal about their experiences, though, have already found an early sense of purpose during treatment that they can continue building on afterwards and into their post-care recoveries.

Your Recovery Depends Upon Your Honesty

Journaling is a Helpful Treatment Tool

Often considered a holistic treatment for a therapeutic tool, journaling is extremely beneficial for the recovery of those in residential treatment. This option really can help a person consider what is important to them and why they are in recovery as well as shape their time in a residential program for the better. If you would like to find a residential treatment center in your area or discuss the benefits of journaling for recovery, call 800-256-3490.