A Practice You Can Trust

Writing About Hard Things Helps

This is the part the research is most clear about. Across decades of studies, on many kinds of struggle, expressive writing helps people feel better (Frattaroli, 2006; Sohal et al., 2022). It is not a cure. It is small and slow. But it is real.

So the first thing is: keep writing. If you have a habit, keep it. If you do not, the research suggests that even short sessions help — fifteen minutes, a few times a week, is enough to start showing up in studies (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986). Five minutes a day, kept up over weeks, builds the same muscle a different way.

This is what Daily5 is for. A small daily writing habit. Something you can do on the train, before bed, in the gap between meetings. The page does not need to be long. It needs to be there.

Most Days, Write the Way You Already Do

For ordinary days — the small frustrations, the warm moments, the things you are noticing — write the way you naturally write. I felt this. I did this. I am wondering about that. That is the honest, full-feeling mode. That is where most of the warmth in journaling comes from.

Anything that asks you to feel what you feel — savoring a good day, sitting with gratitude, working through a small irritation — belongs in this mode. Sol is built for this kind of reflective journaling. Quiet prompts. The page asking you a question you might not have asked yourself.

On the Hardest Days, Try the Small Shift

For the heaviest days — a loss that loops, a regret that will not soften, a fight that replays at 3 a.m. — the 2025 research suggests that one small experiment is worth trying.

Use your name. Or he/she. Write about yourself the way you might write about a friend going through the same thing.

Sulabh has been thinking about this for two days. He is tired. He keeps returning to the same moment.

That is a different sentence than I have been thinking about this for two days. Both are true. They sit in the body differently. The research suggests that on a heavy day, the second one — the one with your own name — might give the part of you that is hurting a little room to breathe (Park et al., 2016; Travers-Hill et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2025).

You do not have to do it. But you can. It is one option in the toolkit.

A Caveat I Want to Be Honest About

If you are reading this and any of it resonates, please remember that this is not therapeutic guidance. It is a reflection on research, written from outside the clinic looking in. If grief or prolonged sadness is something you recognize in yourself, especially if it is severe or persistent, the people qualified to help with it are mental health professionals. A journal is a good companion. It is not a replacement.

What I Am Taking From This

I am not changing my whole practice based on a single study. The research on grief and self-distancing is still small. The samples are small. The effects are real but modest.

But I am taking something. The next time I sit down to write about something that has been looping in my head, I want to try writing about myself the way I would write about a friend. Just to see what happens. Just to give the loop one more chance to soften.

Most days, I is the right word. Some days, my own name might be kinder. Both are journaling. Both are the practice.

The page has been there for a long time. The research is just catching up to what writers have known for centuries.

Keep writing.

References

Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823–865.

Park, J., Ayduk, Ö., & Kross, E. (2016). Stepping back to move forward: Expressive writing promotes self-distancing. Emotion, 16(3), 349–364.

Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274–281.

Sohal, M., Singh, P., Dhillon, B. S., & Gill, H. S. (2022). Efficacy of journaling in the management of mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Family Medicine and Community Health, 10(1), e001154.

Travers-Hill, E., Dunn, B. D., Hoppitt, L., Hitchcock, C., & Dalgleish, T. (2017). Beneficial effects of training in self-distancing and perspective broadening for people with a history of recurrent depression. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 95, 19–28.

Zhou, N., Ren, F., Cao, C., She, Z., Smith, K. V., & Xi, J. (2025). Can self-distancing benefit adjustment to bereavement? A multi-method investigation. Social Science & Medicine, 367, 117743.