When you lose someone or something you love, it can have a major impact on your wellbeing. And while grief is a normal response to loss, normal does not always mean easy. When the pain of loss is too much to realize, your body and mind might work to avoid it. There are times when this avoidance or denial can serve you. But there are other times when this protective defense actually gets in your way. That is when a grief journal (and grief journal prompts) can be especially helpful.
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Why Grief Journals Help with Healing
There are so many benefits to using a grief journal for healing. Using a grief journal can improve your mental health and lift your spirits. What’s more, journaling about your loss can be an effective way to ensure you are tending to your grieving process.
If you have experienced a difficult loss, you may be tempted to try and rush your grief along. Maybe you’ve heard of the stages of grief and feel tempted to power through them as fast as possible.
After all, grief hurts. And who wants to stay in that pain for long? But as a certified grief informed professional and someone with lived experience with loss, I know too well what can happen when you push yourself to feel better fast. You may risk stifling your natural grieving process and inadvertently develop complicated or prolonged grief.
Using a grief journal can counteract the instinct to avoid or rush the process. Journaling around your loss offers a safe, structured, routine way to get those tough emotions expressed.
3 Reasons Why You Should Start a Grief Journal
Here are 3 big reasons why you should start a grief journal today.
1. A grief journal can build resilience.
Research has found that long-term journaling can increase resilience. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines resilience as āthe process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress ā such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors.ā Therefore, using a grief journal can better equip you to navigate your grief journey.
2. A grief journal can promote stress relief.
Studies have shown that journaling regularly about your thoughts and concerns can help with stress reduction. Grief journals not only provide a space to pour your heart out, but they serve as effective ‘grief containers’. A grief container is an example of the containment technique, which is a therapeutic visualization exercise in which one’s thoughts and feelings are expressed and managed in a controlled, safe space.
Grief journals offer the perfect amount of containment for the emotions that arise during grieving. You can express them on the page and then close it up and put it away until you are ready to dive in again.
3. A grief journal can help you move through your grief (instead of around it).
When faced with the pain of a major loss, you may find yourself suppressing or avoiding your emotions. This doesn’t always happen consciously, either. Sometimes your brain and body may suppress your feelings automatically, in an effort to protect and preserve. This can serve for a time, but it can also prevent healing in the long run.
Using a grief journal provides you with a structured opportunity to tap into those emotions, express them, and get them processed. This necessary processing of your grief allows you to experience the pain, move through it, and start to heal your wounds.
How to Use a Grief Journal
When it comes to journaling around grief, there are no rules about how to go about it. Some people find it helpful to free write their feelings. Others find that grief journal prompts help them to better express their emotions and process their grief.
In my experience, grief journals that provide a balance of both are really helpful. See below for my top therapist-recommended grief journals (including one that I created myself for my clients to use).
What is the Best Grief Journal to Use?
The best grief journal to use is the one that makes it easy for you to use it. It might seem obvious, but the less barriers the better. It should be easy to access and easy to use. It should be versatile, too.
In my opinion, the best grief journals are guided grief journals. When you are grieving, your brain and body are overloaded. A blank page might be more hurtful than helpful. A well-designed grief journal prompt or sentence starter, on the other hand, could be just what you need for some release and relief.
That’s why I created this printable Grief Journal & Workbook to use with my clients. I designed this journal to be used either on your own or as part of therapy.
This journal & workbook goes beyond the free journal I offer to subscribers and features more prompts, information and therapeutic activities to support your grief and loss journey.
The 50-page PDF includes things like:
- writing prompts
- creative arts prompts
- information about the grieving process
It’s currently on sale here in my Etsy shop if you are interested. Here are a few pages from the journal to give you an idea of what’s inside. Each page and prompt was thoughtfully-designed to support grief healing both in and out of session.
Grief Journal Prompts
Here are a few grief journal prompts to get you started. For more, check out my Grief Journal & Workbook available for purchase and instant download from my Etsy shop, Creative Therapy Ideas.
- The thing Iām most sad about right now isā¦
- The hardest part about today wasā¦
- One thing that brought me a moment of peace wasā¦
- If I could tell my grief one thing, I would sayā¦
- I canāt stop feeling worried aboutā¦
- One thing that makes me angry about this loss isā¦
Interested in Grief Counseling?
If you have experienced the loss of a loved one and you live in Pennsylvania, the Center for Creative Counseling can provide online grief counseling with a certified grief informed professional.
The Center for Creative Counseling offers online grief counseling to residents all across Pennsylvania, including busy metro areas like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Erie, and Villanova, or more rural spots like Somerset, Lancaster, or New Hope, PA.
Whether you live in Wexford, PA, or Squirrel Hill in the heart of the city of Pittsburgh, or somewhere in the Pittsburgh’s South Hills, you can receive online grief counseling through the Center for Creative Counseling. No matter where you live in Pennsylvania, the Center for Creative Counseling has you covered.
Plus, the Center for Creative Counseling offers additional online therapy services like family therapy and art therapy as well. Please visit our Services page for more info.
Online Grief Counseling in Pennsylvania
The Center for Creative Counseling provides online grief counseling all over Pennsylvania. With online grief counseling, you get work through your grief from the safety and comfort of your own home.
I offer a free 15 minute consultation to make sure I am a good fit for what you are looking for. If you want a grief counselor who is dedicated to supporting you along your grief journey (and you live in Pennsylvania) I am here to help.
ā Getting started is easy ā just fill out the form below to sign up for the Practice Openings Email List and be the first to find out when the practice has a therapy opening.
References
- Baikie, K. A., Geerligs, L., & Wilhelm, K. (2012). Expressive writing and positive writing for participants with mood disorders: An online randomized controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders, 136(3), 310ā319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.11.032
- Dibdin, E. (2022, March 31). The Mental Health Benefits of Journaling. Psych Central. https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-health-benefits-of-journaling
- Ford, B. Q., Lam, P. J., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. (2017). The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(6), 1075ā1092. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000157
- Schaufel, M., Moss, D., Donovan, R., Li, Y., & Thoele, D. G. (2021). Better Together: Long-term Behaviors and Perspectives after a PractitionerāFamily Writing Intervention in Clinical Practice. The Permanente Journal, 25(2), 1. https://doi.org/10.7812/tpp/20.250
- Smyth, J. M., Johnson, J. A., Auer, B. J., Lehman, E., Talamo, G., & Sciamanna, C. N. (2018). Online Positive Affect Journaling in the Improvement of Mental Distress and Well-Being in General Medical Patients With Elevated Anxiety Symptoms: A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Mental Health, 5(4), e11290. https://doi.org/10.2196/11290
- Stessman, E. (2022, December 30). How to make journaling a habit in the new year, according to experts. TODAY.com. Retrieved March 13, 2023, from https://www.today.com/shop/how-journal-mental-health-benefits-t255576?bestsellers=true
- Tartakovsky, M., MS. (2022, February 22). 6 Journaling Benefits and How to Start Right Now. Healthline. Retrieved March 13, 2023, from https://www.healthline.com/health/benefits-of-journaling#how-to-start
