How journaling can help you through hard moments
This NPR Life Kit episode features writer Suleika Juad discussing how journaling can help people process difficult experiences and emotions. The episode emphasizes that there is no wrong way to journal, provides practical strategies to overcome writer's block, and shares specific prompts designed to facilitate meaningful self-reflection.
Summary
The episode opens with host Marielle Segarra introducing the topic of journaling and addressing the common fear of starting. Writer Suleika Juad shares her personal experience of keeping journals since childhood and how journaling became especially meaningful during her leukemia diagnosis and treatment. Juad describes journaling as a form of alchemy—a space where she could process trauma and experience a shift toward feeling lighter. Research cited in the episode indicates that writing about traumatic or stressful experiences yields measurable health benefits including improved immune function, lower blood pressure, and fewer stress-related doctor visits.
The episode addresses a primary barrier to journaling: self-judgment and fear of how entries will be perceived. Juad emphasizes that journals are private spaces with no required audience, structure, or format. She and Segarra discuss how traditional expectations (complete, memoir-style entries) can be counterproductive, especially during difficult periods. Juad shares her own experience using lists and fragmented notes while undergoing cancer treatment when she lacked energy for formal writing.
To help listeners overcome resistance, the episode presents multiple strategies: writing in lists or fragments, using second or third person perspective, writing directly to imaginary critics, experimenting with different writing tools (pen, paper, phone notes, typewriter), and keeping the barrier to entry intentionally low. Juad recounts setting a rule during her illness that she only needed to write one word daily to meet her commitment—a practice that paradoxically led to more consistent and substantive writing.
The episode concludes with Juad sharing two favorite prompts from her book 'The Book of Alchemy.' The first, 'Just Ten Images,' involves listing ten images from the past 24 hours—a practice that reveals unexpected patterns and stories different from one's internal narrative. The second prompt, 'A Day in the Life of Your Dreams,' asks writers to describe a future day in present tense, forcing articulation of values and desires. Juad credits this second prompt with helping her clarify what she wanted in life, ultimately influencing major life decisions including her marriage and where she chose to live.
About this episode
For Suleika Jaouad, journaling has been a source of solace through life's ups and downs for as long as she can remember. Writing in her journal helps her process, reflect and make meaning from painful experiences. In her book, <em>The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life</em>, Jaouad shares writing prompts from writers, artists and thinkers, to help you put pen to paper (even when you don't feel like it). Because creative expression, even on bad days, can offer inspiration and insight. This episode originally published July 28, 2025.<br /><br />Follow us on Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en" target="_blank">@nprlifekit</a><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit" target="_blank">Sign up for our newsletter here.</a><br />Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected]</a><br />Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening and convenient playlists of popular help topics like personal finance, getting healthy, and more. Learn more at <a href="http://plus.npr.org/" target="_blank">plus.npr.org</a>.<br /><br />See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy">NPR Privacy Policy</a>
Key Insights
- Juad experienced journaling as a transmutation process during cancer treatment, where writing through emotional content resulted in a small but tangible shift toward feeling lighter and accessing her subconscious.
- Research demonstrates that writing about traumatic or stressful experiences produces measurable physiological benefits including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure, and decreased stress-related medical visits.
- Juad deliberately set a minimal daily commitment rule during her illness—writing only one word counted as success—which paradoxically increased her consistency and led to more substantial entries than she anticipated.
- Juad credits the 'Day in the Life of Your Dreams' prompt with forcing her to articulate her values and desires at a time when imagining a stable future felt dangerous, which ultimately influenced major life decisions including her marriage and residence.
- The absence of audience, format requirements, or structural expectations in journaling frees writers from preemptive self-judgment and allows them to experiment with various forms including lists, fragments, fictional narratives, and visual entries.
Topics
Transcript
This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash podcast. You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Marielle. If I were to make a list of the things that scare a lot of people, From NPR. and without a pencil, and the blank page. Yeah, I would put writer's block on that list of big scaries. So many of us are afraid to start writing because we judge ourselves, because we've been told we're no good at it, because we don't know what to say. But writer Suleika Juad is here to tell you it's…
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