3 Common Journaling Mistakes and Myths For HSPs and Introverts
Inside: Let’s talk about 3 common journaling mistakes and myths that often keep highly sensitive introverts from understanding their emotions better.
Today, I’m going to talk about myths and mistakes that we often make as highly sensitive introverts when it comes to journaling our feelings. I’m going to share three myths and three mistakes, and I want to give you some practical suggestions and tips on how to overcome these things and think differently.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

When it comes to your emotions as highly sensitive introverts, you may often feel overwhelmed because you feel and think and process things so deeply. It often leads to overwhelm, and that overwhelm can lead to emotional numbness. Where you just turn everything off and say, “Nope, not dealing with anything because it’s too much.”
You blow up and overreact because of what you’re feeling. The challenge of overthinking emotions instead of working through them really bites us in the booty. We might replay a situation over and over and over again, trying to analyze it, figure out what we did wrong, what we could do differently, if we understood this person, what if this happened, or what if that happened. But we’re not actually making any progress.
We’re just feeling more stuck or more overwhelmed, right, or more inclined to <FLAG> going numb. So journaling is actually a way to process your emotions instead of just thinking about them. As long as it’s all going on in your head, you’re not actually processing anything. And when you’re not processing things, you’re not going to be able to move forward.
Myth 1: Journaling Makes You Feel Worse
Myth number one about journaling your feelings as a highly sensitive introvert is that it will make you dwell on your feelings more and feel worse. We talked about our tendency to overthink and think deeply, which has us spinning our wheels. We’re not actually processing our emotions.
Here’s what is going on here: You begin to think, “Well, I’m thinking about this over and over and over and over again,” which you may think is actually processing. It’s not, and you don’t feel any better. So you tell yourself journaling will be the same thing. It will just make you think about it over and over again, and it will make you feel worse. That’s not the case.
Journaling is not about having a pity party. Your journal is not your own private pity party. It’s not about wallowing or ruminating over all the junk over and over again. It is about creating a safe space to acknowledge and validate all of your feelings, release them, and process them in a healthy way.
Writing down your emotions will help them feel less overwhelming. It will lessen the intensity of your feelings and experiences, which will prevent you from falling into overwhelm. Overwhelm can lead to going numb, blowing up, not dealing, avoiding, and suppressing—all the things that you want to avoid.
Myth 2: Journaling Needs to Be Perfect
Myth number two says, “I need to write everything out perfectly.” Perfectionism is one of those things that is just par for the course when it comes to being highly sensitive and introverted.
I don’t know why, when we all got mixed up together, God was like, “Okay, extra sensitivity, introversion, oh, and we’re going to add a little struggle with perfection as well,” So even when it comes to journaling, it’s not about creating something polished and perfect.
Nobody is going to see the pages of your journal unless you want to show them. Nobody’s grading it. It’s not for public consumption. It’s just about being real and raw and vulnerable on the page, and I’m going to tell you from experience that oftentimes it comes out messy.
There are days I have lovely handwriting. I love writing. I love the way the pen feels gliding across the page. But in moments where I am feeling really upset, when I’m really in despair or sad, and I’m writing in my journal, I can barely read my own chicken scratch. I’m just trying to get it out so fast. It comes out messy. I misspell words, I cross things out, I miss-number pages. It’s a crazy mess, but that’s okay.
Just write however you feel. If you are not feeling whole sentences on a day when you want to journal, great – write fragments, write bullet points, write lists, draw pictures. It doesn’t have to be the next great American novel. That’s not what we’re doing here.
Does it feel like your emotions are a storm you can’t control? Do you long for peace, but instead, you’re stuck overthinking, overwhelmed, and unsure of how to move forward? Imagine waking up feeling calm, confident, and capable of handling whatever life throws your way. This transformation is possible—and I’m here to guide you there!
Schedule your first emotional resilience coaching session today!

Myth 3: Only Journal When You’re Emotional
Myth number three says, “I should only journal when I feel really emotional.” This is a myth, and we’re talking about using journaling to avoid feeling overwhelmed. It’s really easy to think, “Well, I should only journal when I feel overwhelmed.” No, that’s not the case. You want to get to a place where you don’t constantly feel overwhelmed.
Journaling during calm moments, when you’re at peace, when you’re not in crisis, or when you’re not feeling overwhelmed is a great way to build resilience. You can think clearer without all that stuff hyping you up.
When you’re not angry, that’s a better time to think about what happens when you’re angry. You can see what patterns are going on when you’re angry when you’re not feeling angry. Also, consistency is key.
If you’re only journaling when you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not going to be consistent, because, hopefully, you’re going to have days where you don’t feel overwhelmed. You want to try and journal every day, even if it’s just one or two sentences.
We’ve busted those myths, so now I want to discuss mistakes that people sometimes make when journaling their emotions. These mistakes might sound similar to the myths because they do relate.
Mistake 1: Overthinking
Mistake number one is overthinking while journaling. Every myth we discussed can fall into this category. Sometimes, we get stuck trying to figure out the “right” words to describe how we feel. That’s great—I am all about helping you find the words and language to explain how you feel.
Identifying and naming your emotions is an important step in building emotional awareness and resilience. But you don’t want to get stuck there. If you spend all of your energy, brain power, and emotional energy trying to figure out the right word, you’ll block the actual effort and the flow you’re trying to achieve.
Just write it down. If you’re sad but not sad, write that down. I do this all the time—I’ll scribble, “I’m feeling kind of frustrated, but a little happy, but a little hopeful, but a little bit excited. I’m not really sure what it is.” You can go back later and massage it a little bit to figure out what you’re trying to say.
Once you’ve cleared your mind, calmed down, and got that on paper, you might realize, “Oh, that’s the word that I want!” I want you to focus on writing the first thing that comes to your mind, even if it doesn’t make sense. Don’t worry about it making sense at the moment.
If it makes you feel better, you can simply say, “Right now I feel …,” “Right now I think …,” or “I don’t actually know how I feel, but I think it might be this,” or “I don’t know why I’m feeling such and such, but this is what’s going on.” Just get it out on paper first. Don’t make the mistake of overthinking – we’re trying to stop overthinking by journaling, so you don’t want to overthink while you’re trying to stop overthinking.
Mistake 2: Focusing on the Negative
Mistake number two: Focusing only on negative emotions. This mistake is that sometimes we fall into the pattern of “I’m only going to journal when I’m feeling ‘negative’ emotions.” And here’s the problem with that.
I want you to get out of the mindset of good and bad emotions. There are no good emotions, no bad emotions; there are just emotions. When you can accept that there’s no such thing as good or bad; it’s just how you feel, giving yourself permission to journal becomes easier.
Because you think, “Well, I only need to journal if I’m overwhelmed,” or “I only need to journal if I’m really mad,” or “I only need to journal if I’m really, really sad or really, really upset.” You begin to make this association in your mind of journaling with negativity, and then you’re less likely to want to journal.
Also, when you’re really overwhelmed, sad, or mad, you may not be in a good place to journal, and you may not want to. You don’t want to associate journaling with negative things. You don’t want to journal only when you’re overwhelmed you want to have balance.
Journaling your feelings is about exploring all of the emotions that you feel – good, bad, ugly, in between. You want to have your entries reflect your moments of joy and happiness, of excitement and gratitude. Things where you feel calm because sometimes learning to process those as well will give you keys and clues as you process some of those other overwhelming emotions.
Mistake 3: Stopping too Soon
Mistake number three is stopping too soon. Sometimes, emotions feel too big, so we leave things unresolved. I do this myself. I journal and think, “Okay, I’m almost done,” and suddenly, I write something that kind of releases the floodgates. I feel this well of emotion come up—I might cry, or I might get upset, or whatever.
I’m like, “You know what? That doesn’t feel good, I don’t want to go there, I don’t want to deal with that. I’m just going to put my pen away. I’m done for the day.” If you can, don’t do that. Lean into whatever it is that you’re feeling because usually, on the other side of that too-big emotion is what you’re going after.
When this starts to come up, you can ask yourself, “What do I want to feel after this?” Yes, right now, this doesn’t feel good. It feels uncomfortable, maybe painful, maybe exhausting. But after that, what do you want to feel?
For example, a year ago, I was journaling, and I can’t remember what I was writing about. Suddenly, I wrote something that evoked tears and sobs. I was ugly crying over my journal, and I thought, “I don’t like how this feels. I don’t want to sit with this.” But I took a deep breath.
I reminded myself that it’s okay to just sit with my feelings and feel what I felt, and I began to just dig into that and write about it. What happened on the other side was that I realized I was really lonely. I was faced with the lack of connection in my life and of close relationships, and I hadn’t realized the effect that actually was having on me.
But at that moment, it was there, it came up, and I took the opportunity to deal with and process it. On the other hand, I wanted to have some peace. I had goals in mind for meeting new people, building relationships, and making connections, and I did.
So, push through when you want to quit. Push through it and keep at it to explore what steps can actually bring you closer to your desired feelings. Those are our three mistakes: overthinking while journaling, focusing only on negative emotions, and stopping too soon.
Other Helpful Resources:
- The Secret to Overcoming Self-Criticism
- The Importance of Rest as an HSP and Introvert
- How Coaching Helps Highly Sensitive Introverts

Do your emotions feel too BIG to handle? Learn how to process your emotions as an HSP and introvert instead of suppressing or ignoring what your feelings are trying to tell you!
Discover 5 Steps to Managing Your BIG Emotions
