Why Are Therapists Always Telling Me to Journal?
Writing is medicine.
— Julia Cameron
Journaling is such a powerful tool. It sounds so simple, maybe even kind of boring. But oh my dears, it is THE way to work on yourself and bring intention to everyday life. And when it’s paired with therapy (with a therapist who’s a good fit for you, of course), it can be a turbocharged support. In this post, I talk about:
How journaling supports mental health
Different styles of journaling
Some journaling communities I recommend
Common barriers to journaling and potential solutions
Journaling as a Safe Space
We all need to vent and process things on a regular basis. That’s part of life and part of maintaining good mental health. It’s great when we can do that with safe people in our lives, but that is not always realistic. Sometimes we might need to work through something when we’re far from our support system. Sometimes people are not available to us because they’re busy or they are occupied with their own life events. Rather than bottling things up or waiting for someone else to show up, it’s empowering to exercise our personal agency and use the safe space that’s always available to us—the blank page. Journaling is venting. Journaling is catharsis. Journaling is processing. Your journal is a confidential place for you to write what you feel and why you feel that way.
People sometimes underestimate the power of simply venting onto a piece of paper. In Opening Up by Writing it Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain, psychologist James W. Pennebaker compiles research that demonstrates the long-term benefits of journaling. In addition to many mental health benefits, Pennebaker points out that expressive writing is also good for overall long-term physical health, as it boosts immune function, protects against heart disease and respiratory conditions, and reduces headaches. When you journal, you simply take what is inside and get it out and this act turns out to be a crucial part of emotional well-being.
Journaling to Work on Your Relationship With Yourself
While it’s important to have safe people with whom we can vent and process our difficult experiences, it’s equally important to vent and process things on your own. Please don’t read this as some toxic hyper-individualistic BS that I’m really not about. It’s just that the most fundamental relationship we have in life is the one with ourselves. Sometimes new clients who start therapy with me are surprised to discover my emphasis on cultivating a positive and supportive relationship with oneself. That’s because a lot of work they may have done in previous therapy was on trying to detoxify or strengthen relationships with others, which is a worthwhile area of growth for many people. I think of the relationship with the self as being a big part of that foundation of connecting with others in a healthy way. Working on ourselves involves cultivating self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-care. If you’ve encountered the idea of self-compassion, then you’re probably aware that the way we treat ourselves makes a huge difference in our mental health. Having compassion for ourselves can help regulate emotions, improve motivation, enhance psychological resilience, increase self-esteem and self-worth, and even increase production of the “love hormone” oxytocin (you know, the one the brain is flooded with when a woman gives birth). All this evidence suggests that having an encouraging and supportive relationship with yourself is a key to well-being. Particularly for individuals struggling with perfectionism and self-criticism, journaling can be a great way to take that relationship in a more positive direction.
If you think about it, it’s totally pragmatic to cultivate a strong relationship with ourselves. Who is always there? Myself. Who knows me better than anyone else? Myself. With whom do I need a truly safe relationship the most? Myself. Who does not feed me a bunch of platitudes I’ll never believe? Myself. If you become your own ally by developing a solid relationship with yourself, you always have someone to rely on.
Journaling as Brainstorming
As a person who journals and talks to people who journal regularly, I have found there’s consensus among us journalers that this practice opens us up and allows good ideas to flow. I have found journaling to be a steady source of not just insights about myself, but also other great ideas. When I journal, I naturally brainstorm interventions to try with clients and content for my website or social media channels. Sometimes journaling also gives me the open space to remember people I’d like to get in touch with and to re-visit intentions I previously set for myself. Journaling is often used by artists and creatives to generate and clarify ideas. Journaling itself is a creative act because you’re making something with your words that hasn’t existed before.
Some Journaling Styles/Approaches
Stream of Consciousness. This is the one that I think most people will find helpful. This is freely writing whatever comes into your mind. This can be helpful when you need to vent. I have clients who call this “dumping” or “brain dump” because you’re trying to get what’s in your your head onto the paper in front of you.
Gratitude Journaling. This is expressing what you’re grateful for, what’s going right, what you’re proud of, what’s good in your life right now. It can be in narrative form or you can make a list. There’s also an abbreviated version of this that has a lot of research backing called “3 Good Things.” At the end of the day, you write down 3 good things from that day. That’s it!
Bullet Journaling. Bullet journaling is a customizable method that combines traditional journaling with elements of organization and planning. It typically involves using bullet points, symbols, and short-form notation to jot down thoughts, tasks, goals, and reflections in a structured format. There are many resources that help with getting started with this, but PLEASE be warned that there are many bullet journalers who I think take things to the extreme with organization and decoration in the journals. This can be a perfectionist’s nightmare so I highly recommend sticking to the basic formula for this style. Here’s a brief article from Oprah Magazine that takes you through the basic steps of starting bullet journaling.
Writing Affirmations. I’m a late-blooming fan of affirmations, which are positive or balanced statements about yourself that you practice writing or saying in order to facilitate internalization of those statements. This was a helpful intervention in my own therapy several years ago and I’ve had a lot of success coaching clients to use this practice as well. Affirmations need to be tailored to the individual in order to be viable and effective, so it’s important to be thoughtful and selective about the affirmations you use. There are a handful of affirmations that I have found to be somewhat universally helpful, such as “I deserve good things” and “I am worthy.” If you do a search for “affirmations,” you will get many results and lots of examples to borrow or use as templates. Have at it!
Some Journaling Programs/Communities
Isolation Journals. This is a journaling and writing community started by Suleika Jouad, whom I’ve followed for many years because I loved her book Between Two Kingdoms. Lately, she has become even more acclaimed because of her documentary on Netflix American Symphony. The website provides many interesting journaling prompts and if you join the community, there are events and other programs that are supportive and provide structure. Please keep in mind that this community is geared towards writers and creatives and the prompts are not always oriented specifically toward mental health. My all-time favorite prompt from Isolation Journals is this one and I often work with this in therapy with my clients.
Letters from Love. This is a substack and community started by Elizabeth Gilbert (whom you may know from Eat, Pray, Love) and collaborators. This journaling practice is about writing letters from love to yourself. If it sounds strange, you’re not alone in that reaction. If you are even the tiniest bit curious, I strongly suggest you try it. It’s uncomfortable and weird, especially at first, but it is powerful and can help with self-awareness, emotional awareness, unpacking old wounds, and clarifying what you need.
Morning Pages. The idea of morning pages is simple. Everyday, you write 3 pages. It can be about anything, it can be stream-of-consciousness. The idea is that you sit down and write and connect with yourself. This journaling practice comes from Julia Cameron who discusses it as a pillar of creativity in The Artist’s Way. I must disclose here that I’m not a super fan of the book but I have found the practice of morning pages to be fantastically helpful.
Barriers to Journaling that Need to Be Addressed in Therapy
I’ve worked with many individuals who have the best intentions to start or maintain a journaling practice but end up finding it difficult. If this is your experience too, you’re not alone. Habit change is not easy and adopting a growth mindset about goals is important. (A growth mindset is asking oneself, “What can I learn from this?” rather than focusing on whether or not you failed or succeeded.) Here are some common barriers to journaling that I’ve encountered:
No existing self-care routine. If there’s no scheduled time you take for yourself regularly, then journaling about your feelings and thoughts is going to feel pretty daunting because there’s no existing container for that activity. If you would like journaling to be the basis of a new self-care routine, you can ask yourself which day of the week and what time you want to try this and then experiment with it by committing to doing it once per week. If that seems to work, you might consider adding another day of journaling. Journaling does not have to happen every day but the benefits are maximized when it’s consistent.
Perfectionism. Sometimes I get the feedback that journaling is too hard and upon exploration, I realize that my client is setting the bar way too high! They may have certain expectations about the amount they write or what they write about or how they organize their writing and rather than allowing things to flow out of them, they are overthinking the rules around journaling. if this is one of your barriers, start journaling with very modest and flexible goals. Asking oneself “How can I make this really easy?” is a good way to figure out how to start. Sometimes we use our perfectionistic impulses to aid us in emotional avoidance so if that’s playing a role here too, see the bullet point below.
Emotional avoidance. I’ve heard from many clients over the years that they avoid sitting with their feelings because it’s uncomfortable and triggering. This is a valid and understandable reaction. I recommend structuring the journaling so that there’s a balance between exploring the negative emotions and highlighting positive things in one’s life (gratitude is a good way to do this). Depending on the person, this may be an important topic of exploration in therapy because the things we avoid facing can impact us in ways that are not our choice. Journaling can be an excellent way to get practice in approaching difficult emotions, thereby increasing your overall tolerance for negative emotions in the long run.
If your emotional avoidance is related to traumatic memories that you have not yet worked on in therapy, I suggest you discuss with your therapist how you can benefit from journaling given where you are in your treatment at this time. Your therapist may have suggestions that are tailored for your specific symptoms and concerns and they can work with you to find ways to stay psychologically safe while journaling.
Triggers. The act of writing can be triggering for some of us, especially those of us who may have struggled with academic writing and received negative feedback on our writing by people in positions of authority. These experiences that led to painful feelings of inadequacy and failure are important to unpack and explore in therapy, especially if they reinforced unhelpful messages from other sources. My hope is that journaling is accessible to anyone who would like to do it but I accept that because it is verbal, it might not be suitable for everyone. For some clients I’ve worked with, journaling ended up being a corrective experience of writing because it started as something they felt they weren’t doing right and became a safe and supportive activity.
Some Final Thoughts
While I have found few substitutes for pen-and-paper writing, I know people who enjoy journaling on their computers, writing emails to themselves, and doing voice memos. I’m sure there are journaling approaches that I’ve never even considered, including journaling apps that I’ve never tried. All this is to say that the traditional method may not suit everyone but the spirit of the ritual remains the same, which is that we check in with ourselves in a way that only we ourselves can. By doing so, we continue growing and learning about ourselves. Happy journaling.