Therapy doesn’t start and end during the 50 minutes your teen spends in weekly or bi-weekly sessions. It is an ongoing process that requires reflection and introspection, and it should not be limited to therapy sessions, even if that may be when the majority of breakthroughs happen.
If your teen does not reflect on the progress or information they gain during their therapy sessions, they are missing out on a valuable part of the therapeutic process.
Imagine if students only went to math class once a week and didn’t spend any time doing math homework, solving practice problems, or working on anything math related until their next class. Chances are they wouldn’t do so well in math, and the teacher would have to spend a lot of class time reteaching material students forgot during the week.
This is the same thing that happens when teens don’t spend any time reflecting between therapy sessions.
While there are many tools your teen can use to process what they have learned in therapy, post-therapy journaling is one of the easiest and most effective methods they can use for introspection between sessions.
The benefits of post-therapy journaling
Although it might seem like a simple practice, post-therapy journaling can be incredibly helpful for teens as they go through the therapeutic process.
Post-therapy journaling is a useful tool for a few key reasons:
Journaling improves recall
Writing down information learned in sessions will help your teen recall what they talked about and learned during therapy.
A week can be a long time to remember information. If your teen doesn’t write down what they are supposed to be working on during the week or any of the insights they gained during their last session, they might forget.
Journaling helps improve self-awareness
When your teen is having a great day and feeling good about themselves, they may not remember the negative thoughts or feelings they experienced just a couple days prior.
Journaling helps increase self-awareness, allowing your teen to become more aware of patterns and thoughts that they experience throughout their week. This will help them be able to articulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to their therapist.
Even if they feel great during the time of their session, they will be able to remember that they struggle with a harmful behavior or thought pattern earlier in the week and share this information with their therapist.
Journaling helps reinforce new thought patterns and behaviors
When your teen goes to therapy, they often will learn new ways to frame tough situations, new coping strategies that can help them deal with negative emotions, and better ways to communicate with the people around them.
By journaling about what happens throughout their day and ways they can use their new framing, coping skills, and communication skills to deal with these situations, it reinforces their new thought patterns and behaviors until these actions become second nature.
Journaling prompts
Sometimes teens want to start journaling regularly, but they aren’t sure how to start. If your teen isn’t sure how to use journaling to help them between sessions, here are a few prompts they can use to get started:
What did you learn about yourself during your last therapy session?
What was the most challenging part of your therapy session this week?
Was there anything you held back on sharing or felt uncomfortable sharing during your last therapy session?
How would a situation in your life look differently if you were to apply one of the strategies or coping mechanisms your therapist shared with you this week?
What would you most like to talk to your therapist about next week?
What was the most helpful part of your last therapy session?
How would you describe your last therapy session in a sentence? A word?
What emotions did you feel during therapy this week, and how are you going to cope with these emotions during the upcoming week?
Tips for post-therapy journaling
If your teen is struggling with post-therapy journaling even after using some of the prompts mentioned above, it’s okay.
Journaling can be tricky or uncomfortable for some teenagers, especially when they are first starting the practice.
As a parent, you can encourage your teen not to give up even if journaling seems like a challenge by sharing a few of these tips:
Journaling is self-beneficial
All too often, teens worry about whether or not they are saying the right things or using the right format or writing for the right length of time.
The truth is, there is no right or wrong when it comes to journaling.
No one is going to look through their journal and grade them on their spelling, grammar, or writing ability.
If your teen only writes two sentences- perfect! That’s better than none.
If your teen’s journal is riddled with spelling errors- perfect! They are the only one who needs to know what they have written down.
If your teen tends to ramble in their journal posts- perfect! This means they are expressing exactly what they are thinking and how they are feeling without making modifications.
When your teen realizes that journaling is solely for their own benefit, they will have an easier time using this tool.
It’s okay to miss a day
Many people treat bad habits like eating potato chips. Once they eat one or two, they figure they may as well keep going until they’ve eaten half a bag.
However, just because you’ve eaten one chip doesn’t mean that you have to keep eating the whole bag. You can stop at any time.
When your teen misses a day of journaling, they might feel bad about themselves and decide that they might as well skip the rest of the week and start fresh after their next therapy session. They don’t realize that just because they “ate one chip” or “skipped one day,” doesn’t mean that they have to be hard on themselves or keep making a negative choice.
If your teen forgets to journal or just doesn’t feel like journaling one day, that’s okay. Remind them that they have the freedom to pick back up the very next day and continue building a great new habit.
Feel free to switch things up
Journaling doesn’t always have to look like responding to prompts with written paragraphs. It can include drawings, bullet points, stream-of-consciousness rambling, song lyrics, and so much more.
If your teen is growing bored of their current journaling style, this doesn’t mean that journaling is not for them. They can try a new style and be as creative as they would like.
Remember, there is no right way for your teen to journal, and any steps they make in this process should be celebrated.
When practiced regularly, post-therapy journaling will help your teen make the most of their therapy sessions, allowing them to grow and make meaningful progress toward their goals.