What is a processing journal for EMDR or bilateral stimulation practice?

A short, ongoing record of what surfaces around your bilateral-stimulation practice: the trigger, the image or memory, the belief, the emotion, and a 0-to-10 distress rating. It doesn't do the reprocessing itself. The journal just tracks what the practice brings up, so patterns are easier to spot over time.

What should you actually write in an EMDR journal?

The same handful of things each time: what triggered it, any image or memory attached, the belief it brought up, the emotion, where you feel it in your body, and a distress rating from 0 to 10. A few sentences is enough. You're leaving yourself a marker, not writing an essay.

Should you journal before, during, or after a session?

After works best for most people, while it's still fresh. Also journal whenever something surfaces on its own between sessions. EMDR's own guidance tells clients to expect continued processing for a day or two and to note it rather than dig into it right away.

Do you need to journal every day for it to help?

No. Journal when you finish a session or when something surfaces unprompted; that matters more than a daily habit. A few honest lines a few times a week, kept up over weeks, tell you more than a single detailed entry or a streak you can't maintain.

What if journaling brings up more than you expected?

Stop writing, ground yourself, and set it aside. If your distress rises above a 7 out of 10 and won't settle, pause self-guided practice and consider working with a professional on that material. Writing is meant to settle you, not send you further into distress.

Is keeping a journal the same thing as doing EMDR?

No. Journaling is a reflective habit; EMDR and bilateral stimulation are a technique aimed at a specific memory or feeling. They pair well, but writing about something isn't the same as reprocessing it. Our comparison of EMDR and journaling covers the fuller difference.

How to Keep a Processing Journal (With Prompts)

A processing journal is a short, regular record of what surfaces around your bilateral-stimulation practice: the trigger, the belief, the emotion, the body sensation, and a 0-to-10 distress rating. Use simple prompts to capture a few sentences after each session or whenever something surfaces on its own. Ground yourself first, go slow, and stop if distress won’t settle.

Maybe you just finished a round of bilateral stimulation and a memory showed up that you weren’t expecting. Maybe nothing came up at all, and you just want a record for next time. Either way, a plain notebook or a notes app, used consistently, does more work than people expect.

What exactly is a processing journal?

A processing journal is a running record you keep around your bilateral-stimulation practice: what you worked on, what came up, and where your distress landed before and after. The name can be misleading, so it helps to be precise about what it does and doesn’t do.

The journal doesn’t process anything by itself. Bilateral stimulation, the left-right taps, eye movements, or tones at the center of EMDR, is what does that work. The journal notices and holds what surfaces around it, so you’re not carrying it around in your head or losing track of a pattern you’d otherwise miss.

That distinction matters because journaling and bilateral stimulation solve different problems. Journaling on its own is a reflective habit. Bilateral stimulation is a technique aimed at a specific memory or feeling.

Used together, the journal becomes the record of what the technique is actually doing over time, entry by entry, instead of a vague sense that things are “probably getting better.” Our comparison of EMDR and journaling goes deeper on how the two are different and where they overlap.

What should you do before you write anything?

A processing journal works best once a few things are already in place. Set these up before your first entry, not in the middle of a hard one.

Have a calm place ready. Before you write about anything that stirred you up, know how you’ll bring yourself back down afterward. If you don’t have one yet, our guide to building a calm, safe place walks through the exercise in a few minutes.

Go slow, on purpose. Journal about one small, everyday trigger at a time, not your heaviest material first. A short entry written soon after something surfaces beats one long entry that tries to capture everything at once.

Know your stop point before you need it. If your distress rises above a 7 out of 10 while writing and it won’t settle, stop, use grounding, and consider working with a professional on that material. Writing is meant to settle you, not push you further into distress. If it does the opposite, that’s the cue to close the notebook, not push through.

How do you actually set up a processing journal?

Pick a format you’ll actually use. A plain notebook, a notes app, or the built-in journaling and progress tracking inside EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, all work fine, available in the web app. The best format is the one you’ll open again tomorrow, not the fanciest one.
Decide when you’ll write. Two moments cover most of it: right after a bilateral-stimulation session, while it’s still fresh, and whenever something surfaces on its own between sessions, a memory, a dream, or a feeling that shows up out of nowhere. EMDRIA notes that processing can continue after a session ends, with new thoughts or feelings sometimes surfacing over the following day or two. That’s exactly what the second kind of entry is for.
Keep each entry short. A few sentences is enough. You’re leaving yourself a marker, not writing an essay.

Capture the same handful of things every time, so entries stay easy to compare later:

What to capture	Ask yourself
Trigger	What set this off? A place, a sentence, a sound?
Image	What picture or memory came with it, if any?
Belief	What did it make you believe about yourself, right then?
Emotion	Name it: anger, fear, shame, sadness, something else?
Body	Where do you feel it, and what does it feel like there?
Distress	Rate it 0 to 10, using the same scale common in EMDR practice.

You don’t need to fill in every row every time. Two or three lines, whatever you actually remember, beats a blank page.

Don’t analyze it in the moment. Write it down, then set it aside. Digging into why something happened right after it surfaces tends to stir things up rather than settle them. Save the closer look for when you’re calm, or for a session with a professional if the pattern turns out to be bigger than everyday stuff.
Reread before your next session. A page you never revisit is just storage. Skimming your last few entries before you sit down again is usually where the useful patterns show up. It’s the same basic move a therapist makes at the start of a session: EMDRIA’s overview of EMDR’s eight phases names an entire phase, Reevaluation, built around checking what happened since last time before deciding what to work on next. Your reread is doing that job for yourself.

This kind of structured noticing has research behind it beyond EMDR, too. A 2018 randomized trial in JMIR Mental Health had general medical patients with elevated anxiety write a brief online journal a few times a week for three months, focused on the positive side of a stressful day. It found less anxiety and depression, and more resilience, within the first month compared with usual care. A processing journal is a lighter, less structured version of the same basic idea: putting what you’re feeling into words, on a regular rhythm, rather than just carrying it.

What journal prompts can you use tonight?

Prompts help on nights when you know something’s there but can’t find the words. Use whichever set matches the moment.

After a bilateral-stimulation session

What did I bring to mind before I started, and where did it rate, 0 to 10, before and after?
What did I notice in my body while I was tapping, moving my eyes, or listening to the tones?
What thought, image, or memory showed up that I wasn’t expecting?
What shifted, even slightly, by the time I stopped?
In one word, how do I feel right now compared to when I started?

When something surfaces between sessions

What was happening right before this showed up? A place, a sentence, a sound?
What image or memory came with it?
What did it make me believe about myself in that moment?
Name the emotion. Where do I feel it in my body right now?
Rate it 0 to 10. Has that number moved since the first time I noticed it?

For spotting your beliefs

What’s the negative belief this trigger seems to confirm? “I’m not safe.” “It was my fault.” “I’m not enough.”
What would I rather believe about myself instead?
Does that better belief feel even a little true right now, or only true on paper?

Patterns like this usually have roots in earlier experiences. You don’t have to trace the whole thing tonight; noticing today’s version of it, in writing, is real work on its own. Our guide to identifying your negative and positive beliefs has more prompts if this is a thread you keep pulling on.

For tracking progress over time

Compared to a month ago, does this trigger feel bigger, smaller, or about the same?
What used to spike me that barely registers anymore?
What pattern keeps showing up across my last several entries?

A journal is one of the simplest ways to actually see that shift, since memory alone tends to flatten out how much has changed. Our guide to tracking your progress with bilateral stimulation goes deeper on turning entries like these into something you can look back on.

A simple template you can copy

Date:
What I worked on, or what surfaced:
Trigger:
Image or memory:
Belief:
Emotion, and where I feel it in my body:
Distress, 0 to 10 (before → after):
One thing I noticed:

Copy it as-is, or strip it down to the two or three lines you’ll actually fill in. A short entry you finish is more useful than a long one you abandon. Research on expressive writing more broadly backs this up: a 2005 review in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment found that putting an emotional experience into words, even briefly, is linked to real improvements in mood and physical health compared with writing about something neutral. You don’t need a formal writing practice to get some of that benefit.

When is journaling not enough on its own?

A journal is a record, not a treatment, and it has real limits worth knowing.

If the same heavy material keeps showing up entry after entry and isn’t easing, that’s useful information. It’s telling you this is probably bigger than a solo journal-and-tap routine, and worth bringing to a professional rather than something to keep working through alone. Our guide to handling emotions that surface between sessions goes deeper on what’s a normal part of the process and what’s a cue to get support.

The stop point from earlier still applies here: if writing about something pushes your distress above a 7 out of 10 and it won’t settle, stop and ground yourself first. If what comes up while journaling includes thoughts of harming yourself, this page isn’t the right tool for that moment. Please visit our crisis resources page or call or text 988 in the US.

The bottom line

A processing journal doesn’t have to be elaborate to work. A few honest lines, written soon after something surfaces, using the same handful of prompts each time, is enough to turn a string of forgettable moments into a record you can actually learn from. Set it up while you’re calm, keep entries short, and let the pattern across entries, not any single one, be the thing that tells you how you’re doing.