If you are participating in therapy, how are you tracking your progress? Do you have a therapy journal you are using to write down key questions, track your mood, or practice gratitude? If not, how do you even know if therapy is working for you?

Journal therapy is very much a thing, but even if you aren’t working with a therapist that specializes in this form of therapy, you can still use a journal to get more out of your therapy process. Therapy can take time from months to years, and tracking that journey can be a useful way to recognize progress along the way.

When you decide to bring a journal to your therapy sessions there are some key points to write down and keep track of…

Therapy Plan

Keep track of your therapy plan. That includes who your therapist is, how to contact them, and their license. (You would be surprised how many times clients forget their therapist’s phone number.) It also includes what you want your treatment to look like. Therapist’s will often call this a “treatment plan” and note your diagnosis and therapy goals on their end. You should also know what you are working on and what your end goal is. Make note of little steps to your goals and check off progress you have made!

Safety Plan

Safety is a therapist’s number one priority in the therapy room, and ultimately it should be yours as well. If you have struggled with unsafe thinking in the past, it can be crucial to have a safety plan readily available as you navigate your mental health journey, so keeping one in your therapy journal can be super useful. Safety plans usually contain 4 key components:

Calendar

The most basic component of a good journal is a way to keep track of time. Having a calendar or at least a place to date your entries is essential. You will most likely be meeting with your therapist on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis, so keeping track of upcoming events that may interfere with that regularity can be important. It can also save you from playing “phone tag” with your therapist to figure out a good time to reschedule or cancel. (Nobody likes getting charged a late cancellation fee.)

Mood & Self Care Trackers

There are a couple universal things that therapists usually want to know about, and keeping track of them throughout therapy can be a clear indicator of how well you are taking care of yourself. Those things are your sleep, your eating habits, and your exercise routine. These are the basic, foundational components of our self care, so if these are not in a good place, all the other self care isn’t going to be as helpful as you may like it to be. In addition to tracking the self care in your life, tracking your mood can give you some sound data on what triggers certain emotions and how your sleep and other self care activities affect how you feel.

Additionally, making notes in a journal during or after a therapy session can help you remember homework assigned, important questions asked, and highlights from the progress you have made since the last session. You can also use a therapy journal to practice daily gratitude or write down affirmations that speak to your current journey. Making full use of a therapy journal can make your mental health journey that much more meaningful.

If you are looking for a journal that helps outline these key components (like the pages above) check out the Healing Journal! Here’s to hoping your therapy journey leads to peace, love, and happiness in your life!