What writing about your day can do for your health

“Journaling is good for you” is easy to say. It’s more interesting to look at where the idea comes from, what the studies actually found, and where the evidence is still thin.

Where it started: expressive writing

In 1986, psychologist James Pennebaker asked college students to write for 15 minutes on four days in a row. Some wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings about a difficult experience. Others wrote about neutral topics, like their room or their shoes.

Months later, the students who wrote about their feelings reported better physical health and visited the campus health centre less than the comparison group. That small study kicked off decades of research into “expressive writing”.

What the wider research says

A 2005 review by Baikie and Wilhelm looked across many of these studies and concluded that writing about stressful or emotional experiences has been linked to improvements in both physical and psychological health, in both clinical and non-clinical groups.

Journaling doesn’t have to be about hard things, either. A 2018 trial tested positive affect journaling: writing about things you’re grateful for, good moments and your strengths. Adults with medical conditions and raised anxiety wrote online for 15 minutes, three times a week, for 12 weeks. Compared with usual care, the journaling group had less distress and anxiety and more resilience early in the study.

The honest caveats

• Effects are usually modest, and they vary a lot between people and studies.
• Many studies are small, and many outcomes are self-reported.
• Nobody is sure exactly why it works. Researchers still debate the mechanism.
• It’s not a treatment. Journaling can support your wellbeing, but it isn’t a substitute for professional care when you need it.

Why a little writing might help

The leading ideas are fairly intuitive:

• It gives your mind somewhere to put everything. Writing things down can quiet the loop of thoughts that keeps running when nothing is written.
• It helps you make sense of things. Turning a jumble of feelings into sentences forces a bit of order onto it.
• It shows you patterns. Over weeks, you start to notice what lifts your mood and what drains it.

Start small

You don’t need 15 minutes a day to get the habit going. Three honest lines each evening (what happened, how it felt) is a gentle way to start. That’s exactly how 3 Lines A Day works: write your three lines, add your mood if you like, and over time you’ll see the shape of your days.

Sources: Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274–281. Baikie, K. A., & Wilhelm, K. (2005). Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 11, 338–346. Smyth, J. M., et al. (2018). JMIR Mental Health, 5(4), e11290.