The benefits of noting sensations, emotions, and thoughts is that you are momentarily able to objectify an experience, to witness it basically. As a result, you get a little distance from the experience and you are also better able to see it in the context of all the other experiences that are also happening.
When some sensations, emotions, and thoughts are difficult or sticky, they seem really hard to grasp/experience and they also seem to be part of our identity -- I am the sensation, I am the emotion, I am the thought... But when we are more in "witness" mode, then the experience "I have the sensation, I have the emotion, I have the thought".
Noting also strikes a balance by helping "witnessing" occur. Sometimes people want to push away bothersome experiences, but as they say in psychology "what you resist persists". So the better approach is to let difficult experience show up, but neither ignore nor indulge in them.
The extra benefit of noting is that when we get really used to seeing the nature of mind objects (sensations, emotions, and thoughts) over and over again, then when a new thing seems difficult or sticky, we intuitively know that all mind object arise and pass, they aren't "solid", and they aren't our identity.
Sounds like you are using noting in a similar way in your practice: creating some distance by noting and witnessing an experience that has been bothing you. Makes sense to me.
