How to Journal: A Detailed Beginner’s Guide to Therapeutic Writing and Drawing

Many of us kept a journal as kids, then gave up the habit as we grew older. But recording your experiences, thoughts, and feelings can offer you many mental and emotional benefits as an adult, and it might be a good time to bring back the practice.

The best part? There’s no right or wrong way to journal. Whether you tap out quick notes on your phone, doodle in a notebook, or pour out your heart with lengthy prose, when and how you practice journaling is entirely up to you — and it may have some powerful mental health benefits. Here’s how to get started on therapeutic journaling.

“From an ayurvedic perspective, journaling is essentially mindfulness in action, since it gives us a chance to proactively and healthily process our emotions,” says Meera Watts, founder and CEO of Siddhi Yoga, a yoga, meditation, and ayurvedic training school based in Singapore.

As journaling caught on, researchers began studying its potential health and wellness benefits. One of those researchers was James Pennebaker, PhD, a psychologist who discovered that people who wrote about emotional events or feelings for 20 minutes a day for three or four days saw improvements in immune function.

Today, many people practice journaling — including journaling for therapeutic value — though their approaches vary.

Journaling functions in many ways, but it’s often recommended to reduce stress and anxiety.

“By putting our feelings into words on paper, we’re hitting the brakes on our emotional response,” says Holly Schiff, PsyD, a clinical psychologist with Jewish Family Services of Greenwich in Connecticut.

Some types of journaling can also be a form of meditation because it requires that you focus your attention on what’s happening in the present. Often, journaling involves writing down your thoughts and emotions — good or bad — and working through them to gain a better understanding of yourself. “Reconnecting with oneself and rediscovering who you are happens when you practice [forms of] meditation,” Watts says.

Therapeutic journaling may also be an effective tool for reaching your healthy living goals, whether they include lowering blood pressure, losing weight, making more time for family, or paying off debt.

“With daily journaling, you can start to rewire what lies beneath your actions and behaviors, which is your identity, or who you identify as,” says Kate Kali, a psychosomatic hypnotherapist and neuro-linguistic programmer in Los Angeles.

For example, let’s say your goal is to reduce your blood pressure medication needs (with your doctor’s approval). You can journal about the identity of a person who doesn’t have high blood pressure. How does that person go about their day? How do they walk and talk? What are their habits or behaviors? Kali recommends using a journal to work through these types of questions and come up with an action plan you can take that day to align yourself with that new identity and potentially help cultivate shifts in your health and wellness.

You can begin a journaling therapy practice on your own or get help from integrative doctors, therapists, life coaches, yoga instructors, or ayurvedic practitioners.

When it comes to journaling, your options are broad. Here are a few styles you may be interested in trying.

Setting Intentions

You can use your journal to set intentions for the day, week, month, or year; record daily events; track progress toward your goals; reflect on the past day; and note all of your present thoughts and feelings. You can even create an art journal and draw thoughts, emotions, goals, and events instead of writing them down.

Gratitude

Many people also practice gratitude journaling, including Watts. “Gratitude journaling is my favorite exercise because it helps us let go of negative thoughts and focus on feeling grateful and optimistic in unexpected circumstances,” she says.

To do it, simply write about something or someone you’re grateful for. Or you can jot down several things. “Then you gradually increase this practice each day by going into greater detail about each aspect and why you’re grateful for it,” Watts says.

Expressive Writing

Morning Pages

Bullet-Point Journaling

Journaling is more than just a method for unpacking thoughts, feelings, and desires; it can also be a powerful wellness tool. Here are a few of the potential health benefits of writing.

Decrease Anxiety 

Cornelia Gibson, EdD, executive director of Agape Counseling Center and Network in Fairfield, California, recommends journaling therapy for patients with anxiety. “Anxiety is typically connected with thoughts, so what we want to do is externalize those thoughts, or get them out of their head,” she says. “We’re not getting rid of the problem, but we’re moving it to paper so people can recognize it.”

That said, it’s also beneficial to write about cheerful things.

Improve Memory

Expressive writing, or writing down your thoughts and feelings as they come, may help boost your memory.

However, the groups studied were relatively small. Larger studies are needed to confirm these findings.

Improve Sleep

It’s not uncommon for unwanted thoughts and worries to get in the way of sleep, but journaling may help ease your mind and clear the path for better rest.

This study, however, had limitations. Not only was it small (only 42 subjects), but people self-reported their sleep patterns, which means that researchers can’t check the accuracy of those reports.

Boosts Immune Health

Putting pen to paper may strengthen your immune system.

Journaling is generally a safe and effective activity. However, there are a few caveats.

For people with anxiety, it’s best to limit yourself to five minutes if you’re recording anxiety-provoking thoughts. You want to write down what’s making you anxious so you can reference it later, but you don’t want to think about it too deeply. If you do, you may wind up perpetuating those anxious thoughts, Dr. Gibson says.

Similarly, writing in-depth about your feelings following a sad or traumatic event, like divorce, may do more harm than good. If you find that writing is potentially worsening your symptoms, it may help to meet with a licensed therapist to more deeply explore your experience.

Journaling can fit many goals and lifestyles. “Journaling can be a way to log private thoughts, expel negative emotions, begin building and manifesting your dreams, or simply track something over time,” says Amy Sullivan, a health coach in Los Angeles.

Journaling can also help people with anxiety track their triggers and identify what’s causing them to feel overwhelmed. This allows you to prioritize what’s important and come up with potential solutions, Gibson says. If you’ve partnered with a therapist, you can even bring your journal to your sessions and share insights.

For those with sleep troubles, jotting down your thoughts and feelings before bed can help declutter a busy brain, so you can fall asleep faster.

However, take care not to journal about anxious thoughts for extended periods of time or to dwell on negative experiences. You may end your journaling session feeling more stressed, anxious, or depressed than when you started.

Before you can start journaling, you need to decide what tools to use. Some people jot quick notes in a smartphone app, whereas others use pen and paper. If you get tired with writing or typing, you could also try dictating a note on your phone or recording audio of your spoken thoughts.

Another important consideration is privacy. The fear that someone will find or read these very personal journals can be a barrier for some people when considering a practice of therapeutic journaling. Secure digital apps or even old-fashioned locked drawers can help you keep things private.

“There’s something really special about doing a journal that speaks to you,” Kali says. While companies have created guided journals for gratitude journaling, meditation journaling, and morning pages, you don’t need to buy a specific notebook. What’s more important is that you find a journal that holds meaning for you, because that will create a sacred space for writing, she says.

As you begin journaling, consider what will make the process easier for you. “Some of my patients enjoy prompts, while others like to journal free-form, almost like a stream of consciousness, and just write down whatever comes to mind they want to get off their chest,” Dr. Schiff says.

In addition, choose a time of day for journaling that fits your schedule and preferences. Perhaps you prefer to journal in the morning as soon as you wake up, or maybe you’d like to include journaling in your wind-down routine at night.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to set aside two hours for journaling — it can be as short as five minutes. How long you spend journaling depends on your schedule and how much you have to write or draw. “There are days when I feel more inspired to journal, and sometimes I just need a quick refresher,” Kali says.

The key to creating a journaling habit is not to force yourself to do it if you’re not feeling inspired or don’t have anything to write. “As human beings, we have a natural propensity to move toward pleasure and away from pain, so if you create any discomfort around the journaling process, you’re going to end up fighting yourself on it,” Kali says. “So it’s okay to skip days.” 

Favorite Podcast for Journaling

The Power of Journaling

This podcast is hosted by Rebecca Kochenderferer, author and founder of Journaling.com. There are more than 90 episodes, and each focuses on a different aspect of the practice, including journaling to create calm, meet goals, and incorporate art.

Favorite Books

Expressive Writing: Words That Heal

Written by Pennebaker and John Evans, this book shows you how and when expressive writing can help you overcome trauma, resolve issues, improve health, and build resilience. You’ll also find a four-day, 20-minute writing program and a six-week writing program so you can put expressive writing into practice.

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

This bestseller introduced the concept of morning pages to millions of people. A related book, The Artist’s Way for Parents, helps you encourage creativity in your kids.

Favorite Apps

Happyfeed

Reflect on good things every day with a gratitude journal app that securely syncs across all your devices. Add more meaning to your entries by uploading photos to go with them. At the end of the month, create a photo grid to see positive memories at a glance. You can also connect with friends through the app and share your favorite moments with each other.

Diaro

You can use this diary app across your devices to jot down quick entries on your phone or tablet or have longer writing sessions on your computer. You can attach photos to your entries, customize your journal’s look, and organize entries by tag, folder, or location.

Reflectly

Reflectly encourages daily reflection through motivational quotes and challenges, and AI-generated journal prompts help you dig deeper. It also serves as a mood tracker by providing daily, weekly, and monthly insights based on your journal entries. If you’ve been depressed for the past week and can’t figure out why, Reflectly may help you answer.