Science Behind Journaling
- Luke Bohnenberger
- Dec 23, 2025
- 3 min read
For a long time journaling wasn’t something I naturally leaned into. After my brain injury, my thoughts felt and overwhelming. Sitting quietly with them didn’t always feel productive, sometimes it felt like opening a door to chaos. What I eventually learned, through my own recovery, years of coaching and working alongside survivors and caregivers, is that journaling isn’t about controlling thoughts. It’s about creating a safe place for the brain to organize itself again.
After a brain injury, many people feel like their mind is either racing or empty and in many cases both. That’s because injury often disrupts communication between brain systems that regulate emotion, attention, memory and self-awareness. Journaling becomes a bridge between those systems. It slows things down just enough for awareness to step in and awareness is where real change begins.
From a neuroscience perspective, journaling actively engages the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for reflection, organization, planning, and impulse control. These are skills that are frequently weakened after brain injury. When you write, even briefly you are asking the prefrontal cortex to do its job: make sense of experience. Not looking for perfection, just effort. Over time, that repeated activation helps strengthen executive function through neuroplasticity. This isn’t theory, it is the brain adapting through use. At the same time journaling helps regulate the emotional brain. When emotions remain unnamed, the amygdala tends to stay active, keeping the nervous system in a heightened or shut-down state. Research on affect labeling shows that simply naming an emotion (“I feel overwhelmed,” “I feel numb,” “I feel frustrated”) can reduce amygdala activation and increase prefrontal cortex involvement. In simple terms, writing about emotions helps calm the brain’s alarm system and gives the thinking brain more influence. That is one reason people often feel lighter after journaling, even when nothing external has changed.
Journaling also plays an important role in memory and identity. The hippocampus, which helps organize experiences into coherent memories, can be affected by brain injury. This is why days blur together, progress feels invisible and survivors often say, “I don’t know if I’m getting better.” Writing creates anchors in time. It allows the brain to revisit experiences, recognize patterns and see growth that might otherwise be missed. Over weeks and months, journaling becomes a quiet record of recovery, not just what’s hard, but what’s changing.
That said, journaling after a brain injury can feel difficult and that’s important to normalize. Trouble finding words, mental fatigue, frustration, or avoidance doesn’t mean journaling isn’t helpful. It usually means it’s targeting the exact systems that are healing. This is also why unstructured journaling doesn’t work for everyone. A blank page can overwhelm an already taxed brain. Structure matters. Guidance matters. Permission to keep it simple matters.
When I work with survivors, I emphasize journaling that is short, intentional and pressure-free. One sentence counts. Bullet points count. Writing about physical sensations counts. The goal isn’t depth or insight every day, it’s consistency. Journaling is about observation, not fixing. Over time awareness builds naturally. Pairing journaling with routine the same time each day, even for a few minutes helps the nervous system feel safe and makes the habit easier to sustain.
Over the years, I realized many people weren’t struggling because journaling didn’t work, they were struggling because they didn’t know how to journal in a way that supported their brain. That’s why I created 'The Intentional Brain" Journal, guided around the Six Pillars of a Healthy Brain: Connection, Movement, Diet, Novelty, Environment, and Sleep/Pause. The goal was never to create another self-help book. It was to create a structured, supportive tool that meets survivors where they are and helps them build awareness without overwhelm. The journal is now available for purchase on Amazon and many people use it alongside therapy, coaching or as a daily check-in with their brain.
Journaling is not about forcing positivity or reliving the past. It is about giving the brain a safe container to process, reflect and slowly reconnect thought, emotion, and body. Some days it will feel meaningful. Some days it will feel boring. Both are doing work beneath the surface. Over time patterns become clearer and progress becomes visible, not all at once, but gradually.
You don’t need to write your entire story at once, you just need to start listening to it.
Sources
Lieberman, M. D., et al. “Putting Feelings into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity.” Psychological Science, 2007.
Pennebaker, J. W., & Chung, C. K. “Expressive Writing: Connections to Physical and Mental Health.” Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology, 2011.
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