Dear Stoics,

This week, we want to tell you the origin story of the very thing you hold so often, whether in the form of a paper notebook or an app: a journal, and the research that turned writing things down into one of psychology’s most replicated findings.

In the 1980s, a young American psychologist named James Pennebaker asked one group of students at the University of Texas to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding a difficult experience. Fifteen minutes a day, for four consecutive days. Another group of students was asked to write about neutral, everyday things like clothes, dorm rooms, etc. After giving the instructions, Pennebaker waited and watched the university medical records.

What did he find? The writers who had opened up in their journals visited the doctor significantly less often in the months that followed. Over the decades since that research, hundreds of studies have extended the great finding: expressive writing has been linked to better mood, reduced anxiety, eased symptoms of depression, better sleep, and even improved immune markers. All this from dedicating a quarter of an hour to pen and paper.

How is that even possible? Pennebaker’s explanation is fairly simple: keeping things inside is hard work. Carrying an untold story, monitoring it, steering conversations away from it, and feeling it press against the day consumes real energy and makes your life more difficult. It’s like trying to hold a balloon underwater. Writing sets the load down somewhere outside ourselves, where we can finally walk around it. When we put that heavy weight into sentences, we often discover it has limits: a beginning, causes, sometimes even an end. That’s pretty optimistic, right?

Let’s remember two important notes from the research. First, the writing can hurt in the moment. Yes, people often feel sadder right after journaling about a difficult experience. The benefits and the healing start in the days and weeks that follow. So, feeling bummed out tonight is not a sign that your journaling failed. Second, writing shouldn’t keep circling back to the same place. What should you do if you notice the same sentences repeating page after page, or screen after screen? Pennebaker’s advice is to change the angle: describe the event as a friend might see it, or as you might see it ten years from now. Perspective is healing’s greatest friend.

If something has been weighing on your chest lately, consider this advice: take fifteen minutes a day with the Stoic app or a notebook. You’ll have no audience or grammar police, so there’s no need to reread what you wrote or run a spellcheck. Then close the notebook and go about your day with this lovely affirmation in mind: What I write down, I no longer have to carry alone.

Yours truly,
The Stoic App Team


P.S. Want to read more about expressive journaling? Here you go:
- Conversation with James Pennebaker, PhD (podcast and transcript)
- The study of the health benefits of expressive writing

Each day until Sunday, a new journaling prompt is waiting for you in the app. This time, the inspirations are designed to make you turn around and look at the road behind you.

We notice progress in others, we celebrate it at milestones, but day to day, it often slips past us unremarked. The truth is that the person you were five years ago would have questions about your life right now, and probably some reasons to be impressed.

Stoic invites you to reflect: What would your past self not believe about your present? What did you build entirely on your own? And who has walked a long stretch of this road with you?