How to journal for therapy journal ideas including 10 Pre Therapy Journaling prompts, 32 brand new therapy prompts, and two bonus printable therapeutic journaling pages. There’s a lot of great material here to help support your health and wellness. Take a look and then get to journaling.
Note: While this article discusses students and kids, the information is useful for anyone of any age who would like to use journaling for therapeutic reasons.
Personal Use Journaling Therapy Session
You see…
Journaling, for many people, is as personal and therapeutic as lying on a couch and talking to a therapist for hours.
That’s because…
Once the pen starts gliding over the paper, the mind starts to dig deeper and deeper into thoughts, memories, dreams, curiosities, and fears that are far from the surface of the mind.
Wonderfully…
This process fosters self reflection and a deeper understanding of oneself.
Now…
Many journal keepers are often surprised at the subject matter that emerges during some writing sessions. And, the therapeutic nature of the therapeutic journaling process is what makes is so powerful, simple, accessible, and helpful.
So…
Share this list of writing therapy ideas below with a beloved and help them gain the benefits of journal keeping for self-therapy. Or use these therapy journal prompts yourself.
This is a potent list of pre therapy prompts so keep it handy and reference it often. These ideas can and will help you gain greater understanding of and develop more compassion for yourself.
10 Simply Yet Powerful Therapy Journal Ideas & Prompts
- What are you struggling with right now?
- Is there anything you could do to eliminate one or more of these challenges?
- What does help with this issue look like to you?
- How do you feel today on a scale of 1 – 10 and why?
- How do you practice self-care of yourself on a daily basis?
- What does it mean for you to have a “safe space”? How could this be beneficial to your mental health?
- What thoughts are the loudest in your mind right now? Which ones are the quietest? What does this tell you about yourself?
- List 5 things you love about yourself.
- List 5 things you love about someone you love.
- What can you do today to help improve your mood and make yourself feel better?
Ok, this is an excellent essential list of therapy journal prompts. If you need more support, below we have for you even more pre therapy (and therapy) tips, writing ideas and more mental health journal prompts. So keep on scrolling.
Tips on How to Journal for Therapy
Parents and teachers can bring journaling into the lives of youngsters quite easily. Here are some basic tips to help you get the child in your life started with some type of a therapeutic journaling program.
How to Journal for Therapy Tip #1 — Make all needed supplies readily available so kids do not have any obstacles to getting started with their journaling. The basic supplies include ink pens or pencils and some form of notebook or paper pad. Be sure to provide creative supplies for those with a more artist flare.
Therapy Journal Tip #2 — Many people who enjoy journaling feel more comfortable with a specific type of notebook or special journaling book. If you have the ability to let your child select their own journal, they just might take to regular journal keeping more quickly.
Tip #3 — Journal keeping doesn’t require any specific format. Simply encourage your child to start writing whatever is on their mind. If they write in one block of text or many paragraphs, cursive or print, none of it matters. They just need to get comfortable opening up in their journal writings. Pro tip: A good place to start is with emotional states.
Tip #4 — Set a timer and encourage your kid to keep their pen or pencil moving until it goes off. Start with 5 or 10 minutes and increase the time as your child become more comfortable with their journaling. (Another pro tip — Longer sessions will allow deeper processing of their thoughts on the page.)
Tip #5 — Make sure your child knows they can always choose to keep their own information and journal entries private. One idea is to have them fold the private pages in half inside their journals, so they can be flipped past without seeing the page. This sense of privacy will help them unveil the more pressing issues on their mind. Even if no one else ever reads it or helps them, they will get it off their chest just writing it out.
Now, check out list of journal prompts…
32 MORE Journal Prompts for Therapy and to Support Your Mental Health & Wellness
- How does anxiety impact your daily routines?
- Write about a new routine that could benefit your physical health as well as your mental health.
- What insights arose today about your personal growth?
- List three things you believe could be a gift to improving your mental health.
- Describe triggers and ways to process emotions.
- How could adjusting your mindset positively impact your mental health?
- What anxieties do you want to explore in therapy today?
- Brainstorm daily routines that reduce anxiety triggers.
- How might a routine support your physical health?
- What insights arose today about your personal growth?
- Make a list of journal prompts to process emotions.
- How might a growth mindset benefit your mental health?
- How can journaling build resilience during difficult times?
- What mental health benefits might come from living in the present moment?
- Write about your journey to self-acceptance and well-being.
- How might a journal be a powerful tool for processing negative thoughts?
- List ideas for a self-care routine that supports your mental health.
- Explore a trauma and steps towards healing from it.
- How could a daily journaling practice improve your resilience?
- What insights arose for you today about self-acceptance?
- Make a list of prompts to practice mindfulness of the present moment.
- When you feel negative thoughts creeping in, how could journaling help provide perspective?
- Write a letter of forgiveness to yourself for judging your feelings during difficult emotions. How can you be gentler with yourself?
- What small things made you smile in a positive way today? Make a list of moments to remember.
- Explore ways to gently stretch your comfort zone for personal growth. How might journaling support positive changes?
- List difficult emotions you experienced today. How can journaling help process those in a productive way?
- Make a list of people you forgive. How might writing provide insight into letting go of past hurts from others? Reflect on how forgiveness benefits your mental health.
- What feelings or emotions are you carrying into this therapy session today? How might peering into your anger allow it to give way to calm?
- Think of a time recently when you felt hopeful about the future. Describe the details of that moment and what made you feel optimistic.
- Write about a memory from childhood that made you happy. What details can you recall about the people, place, emotions you felt? Allow those happy feelings to arise as you write.
- Imagine you had a magic wand that could make your worries disappear. What would your life look like without those anxious thoughts? Describe the calm possibilities.
- If you were completely free from criticism or judgment just for today, how might you live differently? What activities call to you that you typically avoid out of concern for others’ opinions? Allow yourself to envision pursuing those in writing.
201 More Free Journaling Prompts for You
- 35 Great Gratitude Journal Prompts
- 52 Self Love Prompts to Help Students Thrive
- 33 Prompts to promote optimism & health
- 52 Self Esteem Writing Prompts
- 29 Sad Writing Prompts to Help You Process Sadness
Therapy Journaling Free Printables
→ Access the printable ←
Therapeutic Writing Worksheet perhaps for personal use or an insightful homework assignment.
Discover what the difference is between journal therapy and keeping a journal.
Benefits of Journaling for Students
The school years can be a volatile and confusing experience at times and some kids, sadly, do not have adults that they trust enough to open up to and ask for help. These children keep a lot in and stuffed down, which can cause a lot of anguish and hardship that could be avoided if a child just had some way of digging deeper into their own minds, their own dreams, and their own ambitions.
This is why…
Keeping a journal is a powerful therapeutic tool for students (and for people of all ages).
It can become even more powerful when journal entries are shared with others a child trusts. Young journalers can help one another through problems and learn to become better at journaling when they share their journaling endeavors with one another or perhaps with a trustworthy, caring adult mentor.
A trusted personal to confide in can offer different perspectives, offer assistance to overing negative feelings, and encourage the creation of new patterns and habits.
Sometimes the hardest part, however, maintain proper boundaries. Of course, for some kids, the thought of shared journaling just isn’t a comfortable idea, and in this case, the child should definitely be encouraged to keep a solitary, private journal.
A Few Final Thoughts
Journal keeping is a great self-care therapy tool for kids in our modern, high-tech, low-touch society. It is also a excellent tool to help kids deal and process past experiences, current problems or worries, or difficult situations and issues they may not want to talk to others about.
Therapeutic journaling might also become the doorway that allows your child to talk about pressing issues because, for some children, it may be easier to show their journal page to a trusted adult than it is to speak their thoughts and feelings out loud.
Of course, seek out expert assistance or professional services and engage the use of professional therapist tools when or if needed. There is truly no shame in seeking out and engaging the services of a competent professional. Indeed, in this regard, it is one of the greatest actions one can take when struggling in life.
A better experience awaits those who take action and engage pre therapy journaling and/or therapeutic journaling. There no replacement for the sensations of feeling better than to… well, feel better. So take action today to make that happen for you students or yourself. I know you’ll be glad you did.
Ok. That is all for now.
Until next time, write on…
If you found these pre therapy journaling prompts and how to journal for therapy tips helpful,
please share them on Facebook, Instagram, X, Tiktok and/or Pinterest.
I appreciate it!
Sincerely,
Jill
journalbuddies.com
creator and curator
Tip #5 is especially important! Sometimes, when kids know you’ll respect the privacy of the folded pages, they’ll eventually share the contents of those same pages with you. Those folded pages in a journal are a symbol of trust!