Is Video Journaling Recommended by Psychologists? What the Closest Research Says

The direct answer: no professional body recommends video journaling, and no controlled trial has tested it. If an article tells you psychologists recommend it, ask which ones, and for what.

But that's not the end of it. Psychologists have studied the pieces video journaling is made of: talking about an experience out loud instead of writing it, watching yourself on video, and people filming their own lives. That research is more encouraging than you might expect, and it says a lot about how to do it well.

I make a video journal app. The evidence review on this site already says, plainly, that no trial of video journaling exists. This piece is about what we can reasonably infer anyway.

The closest study: talking into a recorder vs. writing

The best evidence that talking might work like writing comes from a 2006 paper by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Lorie Sousa and Rene Dickerhoof in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: "The costs and benefits of writing, talking, and thinking about life's triumphs and defeats."

In the first study, 96 students spent 15 minutes on three consecutive days processing their worst life experience, in one of three ways: writing about it, talking about it alone into a tape recorder, or thinking about it privately. A fourth group didn't consider an event at all.

Four weeks later, the students who wrote or talked reported better life satisfaction, mental health and overall health than those who only thought about it. The talkers did about as well as the writers on most measures. The authors' explanation was that writing and talking both force you to put an experience into order, while private thinking tends to loop.

That's the nearest thing in the literature to a video journal entry about a hard day, and it's genuinely encouraging. It also has limits worth saying:

• It used audio, not video. Seeing your own face is a different experience, as the next section shows.
• The participants were students, the sample was small, and the outcomes were self-reported.
• It was three sessions about one experience, not a daily habit.

Watching yourself: video feedback in therapy

The second piece is what happens when you watch yourself back, and here psychologists have used video deliberately.

In cognitive therapy for social anxiety, people often believe they come across far worse than they do. A technique called video feedback tests that belief by recording them and showing them the footage. In Harvey, Clark, Ehlers and Rapee's 2000 study in Behaviour Research and Therapy, socially anxious people gave a speech and then watched it. Those who were first prepared — asked to predict exactly what they'd see, picture it, then watch the video as if it were a stranger's — rated their own performance more favourably than those who just watched. A later study by Kim, Lundh and Harvey (2002) found similar effects.

The lesson is that watching yourself isn't automatically helpful. Without preparation, people tend to watch for flaws. With it, the video can correct a self-image that was harsher than reality.

A related warning comes from video calls. In a 2023 Stanford survey of more than 10,000 people, "mirror anxiety" — the strain of watching your own face while talking — was one of the strongest predictors of video-call fatigue, especially for women. A daily thirty seconds isn't an hour-long meeting, but it's a reason to look at the lens rather than the self-view. There's more on that in this guide to awkwardness on camera.

Filming your own life: video diaries in clinical research

The third piece is people recording their own lives for clinicians. In 2000, Michael Rich and colleagues described Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Young people with asthma filmed their daily lives and reflections, and the footage revealed triggers and medication problems that clinicians had missed.

That work used video diaries as a way for clinicians to understand patients, not as a treatment. It's evidence that video captures things people don't think to report, not that keeping a video diary improves your health.

What the evidence supports, claim by claim

How to video journal, if you follow the research

Putting the pieces together, this is what I'd take from them. It's an inference from adjacent studies, not a tested protocol:

1. Talk to make sense of things, not just to vent. Both writing and talking worked better than private thinking because they force order onto an experience. Say what happened, how you felt, and what you make of it. Journaling research on writing points the same way: combining thoughts and feelings beats emotions alone.
2. Let good days be good. Record them; don't analyse them.
3. Look at the lens, not your face. Mirror anxiety is real, and it pulls attention away from what you're saying.
4. Prepare before you rewatch. Predict what you'll see, then watch as if it were someone else. The gap usually runs in your favour.
5. Stop if it's too much. The writing guidelines say to stop if a topic feels overwhelming. The same applies to a camera.
6. Don't use it instead of help. If you're struggling, a video journal is a supplement to seeing someone, not a substitute.

So, is video journaling recommended by psychologists?

Not as such. What psychologists have shown is that talking an experience through can work like writing it down, that watching yourself can be corrective when you're prepared for it, and that video catches things words don't. Those are good reasons to try a video journal, as long as you don't believe anyone who says it's been proven to fix anything.

Where video is strongest is recording change you can't see from the inside — a skill, a recovery, a year. That's what Jourvelope is built for: one journey per goal, with Day 1 next to today.

FAQ

Do psychologists recommend video journaling?

No professional body recommends it and no controlled trial has tested it. Psychologists have studied related things: in one 2006 study, talking about a bad experience into a tape recorder improved wellbeing about as much as writing about it, compared with just thinking about it.

Is talking about your feelings on camera as good as writing them down?

The closest evidence says it can be, at least for difficult experiences. In Lyubomirsky and colleagues' 2006 study, students who talked into a recorder about their worst experience did about as well as those who wrote about it. That study used audio, not video, and a small student sample. Journaling techniques psychologists use.

Can watching myself on video make me feel worse?

It can. Watching your own face is tiring and invites self-criticism. Therapy research on video feedback found it worked better when people first predicted what they'd see and then watched as if it were a stranger.

Is video journaling good for anxiety?

It hasn't been tested. Related research is mixed in a useful way: talking through a hard experience can help, but watching yourself can raise self-consciousness. If anxiety is significant, talk to a professional; a video journal can support that but isn't a treatment.

Sources

• Lyubomirsky, S., Sousa, L., & Dickerhoof, R. (2006). The costs and benefits of writing, talking, and thinking about life's triumphs and defeats. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(4), 692–708.
• Harvey, A. G., Clark, D. M., Ehlers, A., & Rapee, R. M. (2000). Social anxiety and self-impression: Cognitive preparation enhances the beneficial effects of video feedback following a stressful social task. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38(12), 1183–1192.
• Kim, H.-Y., Lundh, L.-G., & Harvey, A. (2002). The enhancement of video feedback by cognitive preparation in the treatment of social anxiety. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 33(1), 19–37.
• Fauville, G., Luo, M., Queiroz, A. C. M., Lee, A., Bailenson, J. N., & Hancock, J. (2023). Video-conferencing usage dynamics and nonverbal mechanisms exacerbate Zoom Fatigue, particularly for women. Computers in Human Behavior Reports.
• Rich, M., Lamola, S., Gordon, J., & Chalfen, R. (2000). Video intervention/prevention assessment: A patient-centered methodology for understanding the adolescent illness experience. Journal of Adolescent Health, 27, 155–165.

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