Gratitude Journaling During Difficult Times: Finding Light in Life’s Darkest Moments

Maybe you’ve noticed how hard it is to feel grateful when everything hurts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, participants who practiced gratitude writing for just one week maintained their sense of gratitude and showed decreased stress at one-month follow-up, while those doing traditional expressive writing actually decreased in gratitude. When life feels heavy—during illness, grief, isolation, or collective crisis—gratitude journaling offers a way to notice what remains alongside what’s been lost, backed by research showing measurable benefits for mental health, stress response, and physical well-being during life’s darkest moments.

Gratitude journaling is not positive thinking or denial. It is structured observation that reveals what still supports you, creating a record that exists outside your immediate emotional state. When everything feels overwhelming, written entries become evidence that something else is also true—not instead of your pain, but alongside it. The benefit accumulates through repetition, building a broader perspective over weeks and months. The sections that follow will walk you through exactly how this practice functions during crisis, what the research reveals about its effects, and how to build a sustainable approach that makes space for all your feelings.

Key Takeaways

• Crisis buffer: Gratitude writing decreases stress and negative affect during prolonged uncertainty, while traditional expressive writing may reduce gratitude.
• Mental health support: Meta-analysis shows consistent reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms when gratitude practices complement existing care.
• Physical benefits: Gratitude journaling has been linked to improved heart health, lower blood pressure, and better sleep quality.
• Therapeutic complement: Adults in psychotherapy who added gratitude writing showed greater mental health benefits up to three months later.
• Realistic expectations: Effect sizes are modest but meaningful—this is a practice that accumulates gentle shifts over time, not instant transformation.

Why Gratitude Journaling Works When Life Feels Impossible

You might have tried gratitude journaling before, only to feel like you were performing positivity rather than experiencing it. That disconnect reveals something important about how this practice actually works. According to Dr. Autumn Gallegos, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center, gratitude journaling is “the practice of focusing our attention on positive outcomes in our life and the source of those positive outcomes.” This approach helps you hold both realities at once—the weight of what’s difficult and the presence of what still supports you.

Research from the pandemic period reveals why this dual awareness matters. Studies found that gratitude writing “may yield more health benefits than expressive writing because gratitude writing generates positive emotions that attenuate negative emotional states, including psychological distress.” When you’re already drowning in difficult emotions, writing that invites you to notice what’s supportive may offer more immediate relief than only processing pain. That doesn’t mean you skip the hard stuff. It means you give yourself permission to see what else is present.

Maybe you’ve noticed yourself resisting this—especially when entries start feeling like evidence that you should be handling things better. That resistance is information, not failure. Gratitude journaling works because it externalizes what’s supportive, creating a record visible when your mind can only see what’s broken. The practice builds capacity to hold complexity rather than demanding you choose one emotional truth over another.

The Science Behind Emotional Balance

Research shows gratitude interventions associated with benefits including “more positive moods and emotions, greater optimism, more prosocial behavior, less worry, and less psychological pain.” These patterns reveal that gratitude practices influence not just how you feel in a given moment, but how you relate to yourself, your circumstances, and others over time. Dr. Gallegos notes practices may shift language from “I” to “we,” strengthening social ties and your sense of connection when isolation threatens to become the dominant experience.

What the Research Shows About Gratitude Journaling in Crisis

Consider what happens when gratitude practices meet actual hardship, not just everyday stress. A 2023 systematic review of 64 randomized controlled trials found gratitude interventions associated with 5.8% higher overall mental health scores, with specific improvements across depression, anxiety, and life satisfaction. Those percentages might sound modest, but they represent consistent shifts across diverse populations and contexts. What makes these findings significant is their stability—the benefits show up whether people are navigating everyday stress or sustained crisis.

The integration with therapy matters especially. Adults who added gratitude writing to psychotherapy showed greater mental health benefits up to three months post-intervention compared with expressive writing or control conditions. This establishes gratitude journaling as a therapeutic complement—a low-cost, accessible practice that can amplify the work you’re already doing in therapy or recovery. You’re not replacing professional support. You’re creating a bridge between sessions, a way to notice patterns that might otherwise disappear under the weight of everything you’re carrying.

Physical health evidence adds another dimension. Research links gratitude journaling to improved heart health by lowering blood pressure and regulating breathing and heart rate, as well as better sleep quality. These physiological changes clarify that gratitude practices don’t just “feel good”—they may influence the body’s stress response systems, which matters when difficult times come with hyperarousal, insomnia, and somatic tension that won’t let you rest.

The nuance deserves attention. Effect sizes are generally small, and certainty of evidence for some outcomes is rated low to very low due to study heterogeneity. Gratitude journaling is not a cure or a replacement for processing difficult emotions. The benefit comes from accumulation, not from any single entry. Over time, repeated noticing of what remains builds a more balanced perception of reality.

Special Populations and Contexts

Women with breast cancer who kept gratitude diaries reported better daily psychological functioning and more adaptive coping. The practice functions as a therapeutic complement in treating anxiety and depression across general populations. Research establishes gratitude journaling as particularly valuable during prolonged uncertainty—the times when we most need tools to notice what’s still holding us, even when the future feels impossible to imagine.

How to Practice Gratitude Journaling During Hard Times

Start with frequency that feels sustainable. Some research suggests once-weekly gratitude journaling may be as effective and more sustainable than daily practice, potentially reducing “gratitude fatigue.” If daily feels like too much pressure, give yourself permission to aim for once a week. You might discover that lower frequency actually makes each entry feel more meaningful because you’re not forcing it when words feel impossible.

Specificity matters more than volume. Entries that are concrete—”the nurse who sat and listened to me this morning” or “the way afternoon light came through the window while I was too tired to do anything but notice it”—tend to feel more emotionally resonant than vague statements like “I’m grateful for healthcare” or “I appreciate nature.” The details ground you in actual moments rather than abstract concepts. They give your attention something real to return to when everything else feels unstable.

Notice what comes up as you write, including resistance, grief, or anger. Gratitude journaling works best when it makes space for all of it, not just the feelings you think you’re supposed to have. If you sit down to write and feel nothing but numbness or resentment, that’s worth recording too. “Tried to think of things I’m grateful for and just felt angry that I have to work this hard to feel okay” is a more honest entry than a forced list that makes you feel like you’re performing for an invisible audience.

Format options include daily or weekly lists of three to five things you appreciate, gratitude letters written to someone (whether or not you send them), or brief diary entries naming moments of relief or connection. Some people find structure helpful. Others need more freedom. The most effective gratitude journaling helps you hold both realities at once—the pain and what still remains—without grading yourself on whether you’re “doing recovery right.” And if you miss a week, or a month, your journal will still be there when you come back.

When to Use Gratitude Journaling as Support

During acute or chronic stress, even brief gratitude writing (one week) can help maintain your sense of gratitude while decreasing stress over time. As part of therapy or recovery work, ask your clinician about integrating gratitude prompts as gentle homework between sessions. When difficult times show up in your body as racing heart, shallow breathing, or insomnia, gratitude journaling may offer indirect support through down-regulating stress response systems—giving your nervous system permission to soften, even slightly.

The Limitations and Realistic Expectations

No clear consensus exists on optimal dosage—how often to journal, for how long, in what format—especially for people with clinical depression or trauma histories. Studies vary widely, making it hard to know what works best for whom. This uncertainty means you’ll need to experiment, paying attention to what feels supportive versus what starts to feel like one more thing you’re failing at. That’s not a flaw in you. It’s a gap in the research that leaves room for your own discovery.

The pandemic study suggests gratitude writing may reduce stress better than expressive writing in the short term, but questions remain about whether focusing on gratitude might delay deeper integration of difficult experiences for some people. There’s a tension here worth acknowledging. Sometimes you need immediate relief. Sometimes you need to sit with what’s hard until it reveals what it came to teach you. Both are valid. The practice works best when you can move between them rather than treating gratitude journaling as the only tool you’re allowed to use.

Limited data exist on moderators like baseline depression severity, trauma history, or cultural background that might influence whether gratitude journaling feels supportive versus invalidating. More work is needed to understand when these practices may need adaptation, such as early in acute trauma or during complicated grief. If you’re in the immediate aftermath of loss or violation, being asked to find things to appreciate might feel like erasure rather than support. Trust that knowing. Give yourself permission to return to gratitude practices when they feel like an invitation rather than a demand.

As the 2023 systematic review authors frame it, gratitude interventions should be used “as a therapeutic complement in treating anxiety and depression,” not as stand-alone cures. Gratitude journaling works best when it’s specific, genuine, and integrated with—not in place of—emotional processing, with realistic expectations about modest but meaningful effects that accumulate over time. You’re building a practice, not fixing yourself.

Why Gratitude Journaling Matters

Gratitude journaling matters because emotions that stay unnamed tend to stay unmanaged, but so do supports that go unnoticed. The practice creates distance between stimulus and response—that pause where choice lives. Over time, patterns that once controlled you become patterns you can work with. This isn’t about transformation through positive thinking. It’s about building capacity to hold complexity, to notice what remains even when loss feels total, to give yourself evidence that you’re still here and something is still holding you.

Conclusion

Gratitude journaling during difficult times offers a way to broaden your emotional field without erasing pain, with research showing consistent benefits for mental health, stress response, and physical well-being. This practice isn’t about forcing positivity when life is hard. It’s about structured noticing of what remains so you can carry what’s difficult without being consumed by it. Whether you’re navigating grief, illness, isolation, or collective crisis, gratitude journaling represents a low-cost, accessible tool that can complement your existing support systems. Consider starting with once-weekly entries of three to five specific things, giving yourself permission to notice resistance and grief alongside moments of appreciation. What you discover might surprise you—not because everything suddenly feels better, but because you’re learning to see more of what’s actually true.

For more guidance on building a sustainable practice, explore gratitude journaling examples for mental health recovery or learn about safe practices for emotional journaling during trauma recovery.