Four Ways Journaling Helps You Reclaim Your Story After Trauma
By Chidimma Ozor Commer, PhD, LMSW
Trauma has a way of making you feel fragmented, disconnected, or unsafe in your own body by stealing your story. Writing offers a gentle path back to yourself, thus reclaiming your story.
While it has such healing properties, journaling doesn’t erase pain—it creates space to witness it safely, at your own pace.
Therapeutic framing: In therapy, journaling is often used to process experiences, increase self-awareness, and help regulate emotions after trauma. It’s a form of creative expression that can help you navigate what you’ve experienced in a way that feels safe and courageous.
Whether you’re new to journaling or have filled stacks of notebooks, these trauma-attuned approaches and prompts can help you use writing as a compassionate tool for healing and reconnection.
1. Creating Safety
Why safety matters: Trauma recovery begins with grounding and reclaiming a sense of control. Before writing, it’s important to prepare your mind and body.
Therapeutic practices:
Grounding techniques: deep breathing, naming five things you can see, or touching something with texture to reorient yourself to the present while connecting with your body.
Boundaries: set a timer, write in short bursts, or stop if emotions become too overwhelming or intense.
Affirmations: remind yourself that you are safe now and that the page is a private space. Practice presence by anchoring yourself to that feeling of safety and groundedness.
Therapeutic journal prompt (for beginners): “Right now, I feel…” — simple awareness without judgment.
Therapeutic journal prompt (for experienced writers): “What helps me know I’m safe in this moment?” — invites reflection and mindfulness.
Therapeutic takeaway: Safety anchors your writing practice and ensures journaling supports you in your healing journey rather than re-traumatizes you.
2. Externalizing and Reclaiming Your Story
Why reclaiming your story matters: Trauma often steals your narrative—leaving confusion, shame, silence, or stigma in its place. Journaling helps you reclaim authorship of your story on your terms. And through journaling you have the power to tell your story as you wish.
Therapeutic framing: Narrative therapy encourages externalizing (“The trauma happened to me, but it is not me”). Writing allows you to move experiences from internal chaos to structured meaning. To be clear, awful things happen and while some find meaning in their experiences, some do not and that’s also okay.
Ways to get “it” out:
Write letters you’ll never send.
Use third-person (“She felt…”) if direct recounting feels too raw.
Focus on what you survived, not just what happened. You are the one you’ve been waiting for.
Therapeutic journal prompt (for beginners): “What do I want my younger self to know about how far I’ve come?”
Therapeutic journal prompt (for experienced writers): “How has my understanding of strength changed since this experience?”
Therapeutic takeaway: Reclaiming your story builds agency, autonomy, self-compassion, grace, grit, and integration.
3. Regulating Emotions & Building Self-Compassion
Why regulated emotions matter: Journaling helps identify emotional patterns, release stored tension, and practice self-soothing through words.
Therapeutic framing: Techniques from cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based therapy can be integrated (think: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or MB-CBT)—writing helps you observe thoughts rather than be consumed by them. You can experience the thought without being swallowed by it.
Mindful Strategies:
Label emotions without analyzing or judging them (“Today I noticed anger showed up when…”).
Use gratitude or affirmations to balance heavy topics. This does not have to lean into toxic positivity.
End entries with grounding statements like “I am safe and healing.”
Therapeutic journal prompt (for beginners): “What emotion feels closest to the surface right now?”
Therapeutic journal prompt (for experienced writers): “What parts of me are asking for gentleness today?”
Therapeutic takeaway: Over time, writing shifts from venting to emotional regulation and self-nurture and just might become your favorite tool in your toolbox.
4. Integrating Insight Into Everyday Healing
Healing isn’t just what happens on the page—it’s how those insights reshape and free your daily life.
Therapeutic practice: Review past entries periodically to notice growth, recurring themes, or triggers that have softened. What a gift to see and feel the growth.
Therapeutic journal prompt: “What has changed in how I speak to myself or others since I began writing?”
Therapeutic takeaway: Journaling bridges the therapeutic space and real life, promoting sustainable healing on your terms.
Benefits of Journaling for Trauma Survivors
Journaling can’t change the past, but it can help you build safety, reclaim your story, and nurture compassion toward yourself.
Healing through writing is not linear—each word you write is an act of bravery, courage, and self-connection.
If you’d like to explore journaling alongside therapy, talk with your therapist about how to integrate writing into your healing process.
Ready to start your healing journey? Our therapists specialize in providing trauma-informed care. Contact us to begin your healing journey today.
