Our Weekly Tip: Use Journal Writing to Deal with Loss

Our Tip of the Week: Journaling can be a powerful way to work through the process of grieving. Often, simply writing down your feelings helps diminish their emotional impact and provides an outlet for feelings of pain, sadness and loss. Journaling is also helpful in managing mood problems such as depression and anxiety that can occur following significant loss.

How-to Suggestion: The best way to journal is to practice free-writing. Forget everything your high school English teacher ever taught you about spelling and grammar. Don’t worry about good handwriting. Just let the words and feelings flow. Write through tears if you have to. The idea of journaling is to express your deepest emotions. It’s better to scribble them onto a piece of paper than to keep them bottled up inside.

Keep your journals rather than throwing them away. Old journals can help track your mood over months and years. As someone who lives with bipolar disorder, I find looking at past journals particularly helpful in identifying triggers for mania and depression. They can also serve to remind you of happy times with the one you have lost.

There are many good reasons for journaling. Make sure, though, that writing in your journal does not become a chore. Ideally, your journal should be a private place where you can share your feelings and the important events in your life, and the act of journaling should be something you enjoy.