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What is therapeutic journaling?

When we keep a diary, we often record the details of our day, including the people, events, and places that were part of it. Therapeutic journaling invites us to turn a little more inward, paying attention to and expressing our emotions, bodily sensations, and reactions. We may still write about external events, people, and places, but with a greater focus on understanding our inner experience and ourselves more deeply.

Types of therapeutic journaling

Expressive writing

A structured writing practice, often associated with Dr. James Pennebaker, where we write about a stressful or emotional experience for about 15–20 minutes per session, over several days. This activity aims to help us process difficult experiences. This type of writing can become therapeutic because it helps us acknowledge and express emotions, giving voice to previously unspoken feelings and shaping experience into a meaningful story. It helps us make sense of events by linking causes and effects, increasing self-awareness. This, in turn, can help us integrate emotional experience into a coherent narrative.

Thought records

Thought records are cognitive-behavioral tools that can be used as part of the CBT therapy process or as a standalone practice. We use them to identify and gently challenge unhelpful thinking patterns. For example, when you notice your mood getting worse or you engage in unhelpful behavior, you can pause to write down the thought or visual image that is going through your mind at that moment. Then you describe the situation and explore whether any restrictive and overwhelming ways of thinking appear. For example, you may notice that you might be engaging in all-or-nothing thinking (“If I’m not perfect, I’m a failure”), catastrophizing (“This is going to go terribly, and I won’t cope”), eventhough there might be alternative and more helpful perspectives we can also bring to the situation.

Gratitude journaling

Gratitude-based writing helps us cultivate appreciation for people, experiences, and everyday moments that might otherwise be taken for granted. Common gratitude-based therapeutic writing includes three main forms: writing a gratitude letter to someone we have not properly thanked (which can improve our social well-being and connections), gratitude journaling, where we note a few good things from the day, and reflecting on good versus bad memories to notice how negative experiences can shape our perspective and to gently reorient attention toward positive ones. Together, these practices help us strengthen awareness of positive experiences and ease the impact of negative emotions over time.

Compassion-based journaling

Compassion-based journaling can involve reflecting on difficult moments through the lens of mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness. This type of journaling draws on work in self-compassion, which is the practice of extending care, support, and kindness to ourselves during stressful and difficult times. With this journaling, we first notice and name our emotions without trying to change or fix them. Then we try to understand if that struggle and imperfection are part of being human and something we all share, which can generate a sense of relatedness and promote compassion for ourselves. Finally, we offer ourselves understanding and care rather than criticism. We can do this by repeating words of affirmation or encouragement, just as we might respond to a close friend in need. Over time, this practice can help us reduce negative self-talk and relate to ourselves in a more balanced and compassionate way.

Benefits of therapeutic journaling 

Research shows that therapeutic journaling can help us manage stress and regulate our emotions. For example, journaling:

  • Helps us put our emotions and thoughts into words, making them easier to understand and make sense of. This process of meaning-making can help us experience our emotions and thoughts in a more integrated and less overwhelming way. In a sense, it allows us to gently untangle some of our often-entangled inner experiences.
  • Helps us detect patterns in our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, such as how we tend to react in a particular mood. 
  • Help us identify triggers linked to specific bodily sensations, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors. For example, through journaling, we may notice that we become unusually self-critical when we are tired and sleepless, or that we tend to withdraw from others when we are feeling overwhelmed.
  • Helps us reframe our thoughts and interrupt unhelpful cycles of negative thinking, such as rumination, that can run automatically in the background. Over time, this can soften harsh self-criticism and create space for a more balanced and compassionate perspective.
  • Allows us to create a narrative, or “story,” around our experiences, which can help our lives feel more coherent, clearer, and less fragmented.

Setting aside a few minutes each day to write, as a way to connect with ourselves and organize our inner world, can improve our sense of well-being. The benefits of journaling include a sense of calm, groundedness, resilience, and compassion. Similarly, therapeutic journaling can be a helpful source in improving mood and coping with the effects of stress, anxiety, and depression. Journaling does not mean avoiding or suppressing emotions we would rather not have. Similarly, it also doesn’t try to replace other types of care and resources we may need. Instead, journaling creates a deliberate time and space to be with ourselves, our emotions, and thoughts,  to come into a gentler kind of knowing.

Takeaways

  • Therapeutic journaling is a practice that helps us connect with our inner world, express our emotions, bodily sensations, and reactions, and organize them in ways that foster greater emotional regulation, groundedness, and compassion.
  • While many journaling practices exist, expressive writing, thought records, gratitude journaling, and compassion-based journaling are common ways to practice therapeutic journaling.
  • Expressive writing is a structured practice of writing about emotional experiences over several sessions to process them, make meaning of them, and integrate them into a coherent narrative.
  • Thought records are a CBT-based practice for noticing and gently challenging unhelpful thinking patterns and building more balanced perspectives.
  • Gratitude journaling is a practice of noticing and writing about positive experiences we might take for granted, helping strengthen senses of joy, gratitude, and acceptance.
  • Compassion-based journaling is a reflective practice that uses mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness to notice emotions without judgment and respond with understanding rather than criticism.
  • Journaling supports our wellbeing by helping us put our emotions and thoughts into words, detect patterns, identify triggers, and reframe unhelpful thinking. It also helps interrupt cycles of negative thinking and create a coherent narrative, or “story,” around our experiences.

References & further reading

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This page is also part of the Roamers Therapy Glossary; a collection of mental-health related definitions that are written by our therapists.

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