How to share your journal with your therapist, safely

Sometimes the clearest account of your week is the one you wrote at midnight on a Tuesday, and it's hard to rebuild in the first ten minutes of a session. Sharing journal entries with a therapist can save time, fill in gaps and bring up things that are hard to say out loud.

It also means handing over some of the most private writing you own. This guide covers what to settle before you share, the common ways people send entries and their trade-offs, and how sharing works in Understory.

Talk to your therapist first

Before you send anything, ask. Therapists differ a lot in how they want to use a client's writing, and a short conversation avoids awkwardness on both sides. Some questions worth raising:

• Do they want to read it? Some find entries useful between sessions. Others prefer you bring them in and read aloud, or talk about what you wrote rather than share it.
• When will they read it? If you send something on a Sunday night, will they see it before your next session, or only during it? Knowing this stops you waiting for a reply that isn't coming.
• How do they want to receive it? Many practices have a client portal or a preferred secure channel. Use it if they do.
• What happens to it afterwards? Ask whether what you send becomes part of your clinical record, and how long that record is kept. Rules on this vary by country and profession, so your therapist is the right person to ask.
• What isn't it for? A journal entry sent between sessions usually isn't a way to reach someone in an emergency. Agree on what you should do instead if things get bad.

Decide what to share

You don't need to share everything. In fact, it's often more useful not to. A few approaches:

• One entry about something you want to talk through.
• The weeks since your last session, so your therapist can see the shape of them.
• A thread, such as every entry where a particular person or worry comes up.
• The whole journal, if you and your therapist have agreed that's helpful.

Read through what you're about to send. Writing done for yourself can be harsher, messier or more unfiltered than you remember. That's fine, and it may be exactly why it's useful, but it's better to know what's in there before someone else reads it.

It's also completely fine to keep some entries to yourself. A journal you can't be honest in, because you might share it later, stops being useful.

The ways people usually share, and their trade-offs

Reading aloud in session. Nothing leaves your hands. It uses session time, but many people find reading their own words out loud useful in itself.

Printing or exporting a file. Simple, and your therapist can keep it. The downside is that once a file is sent, you can't take it back, and it may sit in an inbox or a downloads folder for years.

Email. Convenient, but ordinary email isn't end-to-end encrypted, and copies tend to live on several servers and devices.

A client portal. If your therapist's practice has one, it's usually designed for exactly this, and it's a good choice.

A private link. A link to a page that shows only what you chose. The best ones are encrypted, expire on their own, and can be switched off whenever you like.

How sharing works in Understory

In Understory, a shared link is called a clearing. You open one from the share button on your dashboard ("Share with your therapist") or from a single entry. Opening a clearing is part of Premium; closing one always works.

What you choose

You can share a single entry, a date range, a hand-picked set of entries, or your whole journal (up to 500 entries in one link). When you share a date range or your whole journal, entries you marked as windthrow, and anything you've moved to Fallen wood, are left out. You can add a short note for the reader, such as "These are the weeks before our next session".

How it's protected

When you open a clearing, your browser creates a brand-new encryption key just for that link and encrypts the entries you chose with it. Only the encrypted version is uploaded.

The key goes into the link itself, after the # symbol. That part of a web address is handled by the browser and isn't sent to the server when the page loads. So when your therapist opens the link, their browser downloads the encrypted text and decrypts it on their device. Our server holds something it can't read, and it doesn't tell the reader who you are.

What your therapist sees

Each shared entry shows its date, its season label if you set one, and your words. If the companion has read an entry's mood, the mood word and its themes are shown too. The companion's own reflections and conversations are left out, so the reader sees only your own writing. They don't need an account.

How long it lasts

You choose when the link closes: after 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or not until you close it yourself. Your open clearings are listed so you can close any of them at any time. Closing one deletes the encrypted text from our server, so the link stops working straight away and can't be brought back.

Keeping it current

If you share your whole journal, you can choose to keep the link current, so it grows as you write. Because our server can't read your entries, it can't update the link by itself. Your own device does it, after you unlock your journal. In practice your therapist sees everything up to your last visit.

What to know before you send it

Be clear-eyed about a few things:

• Anyone with the link can read it. The key is in the link, so treat the link like the entries themselves. Send it through your therapist's portal or another private channel, and avoid group chats or shared inboxes.
• Some details aren't encrypted. Our server stores how many entries a clearing holds and when it was created, updated and set to close, linked to your account. The entries and your note are encrypted.
• A reader can always copy what they see. Closing a link stops future access, but it can't undo a screenshot or printout made while it was open. That's true of any sharing method, which is one more reason to share with someone you trust.

Exporting a PDF instead

You can also download entries as a PDF, either one entry or a date range. The file is made in your browser, so nothing is sent to us to create it. It's an ordinary, unencrypted file, though, and it includes mood readings and reflections where they exist. Once it's sent, it's out of your hands. If you want to be able to take access back, a clearing is the better choice.

After you've shared

A few habits keep sharing comfortable over time:

• Use the shortest expiry that works, such as 7 days before a session.
• Close links you no longer need. The list of open clearings makes that quick.
• Keep writing for yourself first. If you notice yourself writing with your therapist in mind, it may be worth a separate entry, or a conversation about it.
• If you delete your Understory account, every clearing you opened is deleted with it.

If you need help now

Sharing entries with a therapist works best for the slower kind of reflection that can wait until they read it. If you're in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, please don't wait for a session. Find a Helpline lists free, confidential support in many countries, and if you're in immediate danger, contact your local emergency number.

Try it

Understory is a private, end-to-end encrypted journal. Journaling is free, and Premium adds the AI companion and encrypted clearings you can share with a therapist and close whenever you like. If you're curious how the encryption works more broadly, read is your journal app reading your entries? Or create a free account and start writing.