Can Journaling Replace Therapy?

You have so much going on in your life, and it gets overwhelming sometimes. The stress really gets to you. Sometimes it seems like it’s overwhelming your ability to cope. You might find yourself struggling with anxiety or depression or both. And you’ve wondered, should I see a therapist, or is this something I can take care of on my own?

Journaling can be therapeutic, and it is an awesome healing tool. But is it enough?

There’s a lot of overlap between journaling and therapy:

• Telling your truth
• Examining thoughts, feelings, and behavior
• Finding meaning in pain
• Catharsis
• Examining patterns in your life
• Disclosing secrets

 As you can see, you can get a lot of therapeutic benefits out of journaling. But if you’re going to use journaling as therapy, it’s important to know how to do it in a therapeutic way.

• Talking about the facts of what is going on in your life is not enough. Just venting emotions is not enough. You have to put the two together. You want detailed descriptions of life events, together with how you feel about those events. (DeSalvo 22)
• Specificity is important. You want to name emotions. You want to get into the details of what is bothering you and not write in generalities. (DeSalvo 57)
• You need to balance writing about difficulties with writing about positives in your life. (DeSalvo 59)
• It’s helpful to learn a variety of journaling techniques that can help according to different struggles you are facing. We’ll be learning a number of these techniques on this blog as time goes on.
• Don’t judge your experience. Use your journal to observe your thoughts and feelings without judging them.
• Cultivate a compassionate relationship with yourself. Use your journal to hold your experience in a gentle and kind way, telling yourself what your vulnerable self most needs to hear.

All that said, there are things that therapy can do that journaling can’t.

• You experience compassion from outside yourself, which gives you a model from which to internalize self-compassion
• You can break through shame by telling your story to another person
• The therapist has access to therapeutic modalities designed to treat specific problems, things you might not be able to come up with on your own
• You have the accountability of working with another person that motivates you to keep digging deep
• You can form an attachment bond to the therapist that can be very healing
• You can get an outside perspective on your problems
• The therapist can shine light on your blind spots
• The therapist has a lot of tools in their belt for helping you
• When you are overwhelmed, the therapist’s presence can help your nervous system calm down. This is called coregulation.

Take a look at that list of benefits and consider whether any of those would be applicable to what you are struggling with.

When you might want to see a therapist

• If your depression, anxiety, or other symptoms are severe and are interfering with your daily life
• If you have a trauma history and have been having trouble moving past it
• If you are going around in circles in your journaling and don’t feel like you are making progress
• If you have never had a model of compassion and are having trouble accessing that side of yourself
• If you have a rocky attachment history and could benefit from a secure attachment to someone empathic
• If you are having trouble finding meaning in your suffering
• You experience a lot of shame that might be helped by breaking your silence

Journaling can do a great deal, therapeutically. I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t believe that. Journaling can help you do deep inner work, to process pain, to make changes in your life, and to heal. But sometimes you need more. At the very least, journaling can be a great adjunct to therapy, greatly accelerating your progress and giving you direction and material for your therapy sessions.

If you’re on the fence about whether you can do this on your own or not, I would encourage you to write about it. Take some time and journal about what you might want from therapy. Write about your fears of seeing a therapist. Write about any shame you might feel in seeking help, and what you believe going to a therapist says about you.

In the end, seeing a therapist or addressing your concerns through journaling is a very personal decision. You probably know deep down what is the right decision for you, so go with your gut, and hold yourself gently in the process.

Photo by Kate Hliznitsova on Unsplash