Writing and Journalling During Perimenopause: A Simple Tool With Real Benefits
Learn how journalling and creative writing during perimenopause can help manage anxiety, process emotions, track symptoms, and restore a sense of clarity and control.
Why Writing Works When Words Fail You
Brain fog has a particular cruelty during perimenopause. You know what you want to say but the thought dissolves before it reaches your lips. Writing slows that process down. It externalises what is inside your head and gives it a shape you can examine rather than just endure. Many women find that the act of putting words on a page, whether in a proper journal or on the back of an envelope, creates a separation between themselves and their symptoms. The symptom becomes something observed rather than something experienced from inside, and that small shift can make it feel significantly more manageable.
The Evidence for Expressive Writing
Expressive writing, the practice of writing honestly about difficult thoughts and feelings, has been studied as a health intervention since the 1980s. Researcher James Pennebaker consistently found that people who wrote about emotionally challenging experiences for just fifteen to twenty minutes a day over three or four days showed measurable improvements in immune function, mood, and cognitive performance. More recent studies have applied similar methods to menopausal women and found reductions in perceived stress and improvements in sleep quality. The mechanism is thought to involve the prefrontal cortex processing emotions that would otherwise cycle unresolved through the amygdala, which is the brain's alarm system.
Symptom Journalling Versus Expressive Journalling
There are two broadly different approaches and both have their place. Symptom journalling means recording what you experienced and when, noting hot flashes, sleep quality, mood, energy, and any other relevant details. This kind of record is enormously useful when speaking to a doctor because it replaces vague recollections with actual data. Expressive journalling, by contrast, is less structured. You write whatever is on your mind without editing or self-censorship, and the goal is emotional processing rather than data collection. Many women find that combining both approaches works well: a few structured notes about physical symptoms, followed by a paragraph or two of free writing about how the day actually felt.
Getting Started Without Overthinking It
The most common obstacle to journalling is the belief that it needs to be done properly. It does not. A cheap notebook and a biro are sufficient. There is no grammar to observe, no audience to impress, and no minimum length requirement. If you sit down and cannot think of anything to write, start with the weather or what you had for breakfast and let it go wherever it goes. Morning pages, a concept popularised by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way, involve writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness first thing in the morning before engaging with phones or email. Many women in perimenopause find this ritual anchoring, particularly when mornings tend to arrive with a wave of anxiety before the day has even begun.
Creative Writing as a Different Kind of Outlet
Journalling is not the only form of writing that helps. Fiction, poetry, memoir, and letter writing all offer distinct benefits. Writing a short story allows you to inhabit a character who has none of your current physical complaints, which can be a genuine relief. Poetry demands compression, forcing you to find one precise word rather than three approximate ones, and that process sharpens the thinking that brain fog tends to blur. Letters, even unsent ones, can be a way of saying things to partners, children, or parents that are too charged to speak aloud. Creative writing groups exist in most libraries and community centres and offer the added benefit of social connection.
Using Writing Alongside Other Tools
Writing works well in combination with other management strategies rather than as a standalone solution. An app like PeriPlan allows you to log symptoms and track patterns over time, and many women find it useful to jot a few lines in a physical journal alongside that digital record, noting the context behind the numbers. Why was anxiety high on Tuesday? What happened the night before? The digital log captures the data and the written journal captures the story around the data. Together they give a much fuller picture of what is actually driving your symptoms, which makes conversations with healthcare providers more productive.
Keeping the Habit Going
Consistency matters more than length when it comes to journalling. Five minutes every morning is more valuable than an hour-long session that happens once a fortnight. Attaching the habit to something you already do reliably helps: writing while your coffee brews, or for ten minutes after the children leave for school, or in bed before turning the light off. Some women find it useful to set a timer so the session has a clear ending point. Others prefer to write until they feel they have nothing more to say. Both approaches work. The only rule is that it does not become another obligation that adds stress to a life that already has enough of it.
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