Journaling can be a creatively enriching activity, but it’s also a good way to track your growth, strengthen your memory, and reduce stress and anxiety. Which topics work best to help you overcome stressors, though? A new study investigated.

Researchers at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, recently conducted a study involving workers from a somewhat stressful field, the church, to see which type of journaling can help build resilience during stressful events. The team chose ministry workers because they often deal with heavy topics, including grief, and are on call at all hours. This can lead to burnout and increased stress.

To conduct their study, the researchers had 254 ministry workers journal for 15 minutes a week, over the course of five weeks. Participants either wrote about how they’d successfully coped with a stressful situation, how they’d unsuccessfully coped with a stressful situation, or they merely described the event. The workers were evaluated just before this intervention, just after it was over, and at the three- and six-month marks post-intervention period.

According to the findings, published in the journal Stress & Health, those who wrote about how they’d responded to situations all reported better perceived resilience than those who merely wrote about the stressful event itself, while those who focused on successful coping mechanisms had the longest lasting benefits. The researchers say that while self-reflection in general has been found to help with resilience, their findings help show how best to focus this type of approach.

Monique Crane, study co-author and associate professor at Macquarie, explains, “We think this method is effective because it more closely mimics experiential learning, which is the way we learn many other things life.

“In this latest trial, one of the most important findings was the length of time the benefits lasted.

“The participants who reflected on successful coping reported they were still feeling more resilient six months afterwards.

“This is quite significant, because with most resilience training, people initially feel they are prepared for future events, but within a month or so, the benefits have usually worn off.”

Crane and her team are hoping to use their findings to help create a resilience training program involving self-reflection.

If you’d like to try this sort of journaling yourself, Crane offers some tips for getting started here.