“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

– William Wordsworth

The Promise of the Page

Most everyone knows that journaling is a therapeutic practice. Whether or not you’ve suffered from severe trauma or you’re simply trying to grapple with and manage life’s everyday expectations, setting aside your thoughts to paper has long been touted as a key to clarity and healing. The benefits are layered, from making space for introspection to the therapeutic movement of your pen on paper. But perhaps the true gift of journaling is in the revisiting of difficulty it allows. When we’re journaling our traumatic experiences, we’re offered the safety and the luxury of our own pace as we approach triggering events. And because we’re allowing ourselves to communicate whatever and whenever to ourselves, we’re given a larger perspective of what has happened, how it has changed our lives, and how we’re responding to it. While sitting down with a notebook or at a laptop and pouring out one’s innermost thoughts may not come easily or happily to everyone, the practice of journaling is worth delving into. Creating the habit of writing to yourself even every few weeks can garner therapeutic benefits that will move you along to recovery and healing like few other tools.

Why You Should Journal

1 • Journaling requires privacy and quiet, which means getting alone with your thoughts.

The skill of becoming introspective is perhaps becoming rarer and rarer so the practice of listening to your inner monologue, digging into your memory, and replaying situations or being honest about your emotions is certainly a practice of self-care that needs to be strengthened. Everyone has at least “little t” trauma and most of us will experience that “little t”  trauma countless times in the future. Being able to navigate it, process it, and communicate it will help as painful situations occasionally arise in life. And quieting oneself in order to actually listen to oneself is a gift that will have lifelong repercussions.

2 • Writing by hand leads to a deeper cognitive processing.

If typing is a bit easier than writing, and journaling through a word processor is definitely better than not journaling at all. But the physical activity of setting a pen to paper and giving yourself the time and space to write….messy or not, mistakes and all….gives the writer a greater understanding of what’s being communicated. Choosing words more carefully, writing as quickly or as slowly as needed, being okay with the misspellings or crossed out words…all are important elements to telling your story truthfully and meaningfully. This also means they can’t be accidentally erased.

When we’re journaling our traumatic experiences, we’re offered the safety and luxury of our own pace as we approach triggering events.

3 • Putting together the pieces of your trauma helps you see where you fit in it.

As you engage in the one-way conversation of journaling, you tell your story from the beginning, whether or not it’s the story of your day or the story of your life. And as you introduce characters or situations, you begin to see yourself as a player in your story, affected negatively or positively by relationships and situations that may have been out of your control. Seeing a big picture is helpful to gain perspective and fully understand your emotional responses. You may even experience epiphanies, remember details you had subconsciously forgotten, or be able to empathize with yourself more effectively once you’ve recounted your story with honesty. In the book, Trauma and Addiction: Ending the Cycle of Pain through Emotional Literacy, Trian Dayton speaks to this benefit of journaling. “Like putting the pieces of a puzzle together, [trauma survivors] find themselves in the missing content and put it where it belongs, so they can lay claim to their unformulated experience and see it whole and within a clear line of vision.” 

Making space for your story by journaling is one of the most cost effective, easily accessible, and impactful practices in your therapy toolkit. It’s never too late to pick up a pen and start.

Verified Reliable Sources for the Content in This Article: Trauma and Addiction: Ending the Cycle of Pain through Emotional Literacy by Dr. Tian Dayton, Ph.D.

Put It Into Practice

If writing feels overwhelming to you, you’re in good company. Lots of folks bristle at the idea of journaling or even just writing out their experience one time. So if the idea of journaling makes you feel uneasy, there are a few ways to take the scary out of it.

Go to your favorite spot. Where do you feel most at ease? A favorite coffee shop? Your home office? In the bed? Start your journaling practice in comfort.

Make it enjoyable. If aesthetics mean something to you, grab a beautiful journal and a good pen. These things don’t need to be pricey, simply pleasing to you. Journaling with nice tools may help you equate the process with more positivity.

Consider paying extra attention to your physicality while you write. This is especially helpful if you’re journaling about severe trauma. Practice noticing your body’s responses to the upsetting moments in your story by notating them in a different color ink. This will help you process your emotions and understand that the physical responses are temporary.

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