Guide
Overthinking Journaling: What the Research Says About Writing and Rumination
Overthinking usually means one of two things psychologists distinguish carefully: brooding — replaying the same negative thought without resolution — and reflective pondering, a more neutral kind of turning things over. Two studies found that expressive writing specifically helps the brooding kind, which is the type most people mean when they say they can't stop overthinking.
What 'overthinking' actually means
Psychologists split rumination into two types: brooding, a passive, self-critical replay of the same negative thought without any movement toward resolution, and reflective pondering, a more neutral attempt to understand your own feelings. Most people describe both as overthinking, but they're not psychologically the same thing — and the research on writing treats them differently.
Why the obvious worry doesn't hold up
A natural worry is that writing about what's bothering you will just add more overthinking on top of what you're already doing. A 2008 study tested this directly: participants were assessed for ruminative style, then randomly assigned to expressive writing or a neutral control condition. People with a higher brooding score reported significantly fewer depression symptoms at every follow-up when they wrote, compared to people with a lower brooding score. Reflective pondering, the more benign kind, didn't change the effect either way.
What a second study found
A separate 2006 study followed depression-vulnerable college students through three days of expressive writing and checked back six months later. The writing group showed lower depression symptoms than the control group, and when researchers traced why, the benefit was explained by a drop specifically in brooding — not in reflective pondering, which didn't shift. The part of overthinking that actually causes harm was the part writing moved.
What this doesn't mean
None of this means writing switches off overthinking on contact, or that more writing is always better — one added 'booster' session in the 2006 study didn't add any extra benefit beyond the original three days. What the research supports is narrower and more useful: putting brooding-style thoughts into words is one of the few things shown to specifically target that loop, rather than just giving your mind something else to circle.
What a daily practice can realistically do
Phi's 60-second voice entries aren't a substitute for the structured, multi-day writing protocols used in these studies. But the same underlying mechanism — getting a repetitive thought out of your head and into a fixed, external form — is what a short daily voice entry does by default. If brooding is what wears you down, a quick spoken record gives that specific loop somewhere to go, rather than leaving it to run on repeat.
Sources
Gortner, E. M., Rude, S. S., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Benefits of expressive writing in lowering rumination and depressive symptoms. Behavior Therapy, 37(3), 292–303.Sloan, D. M., Marx, B. P., Epstein, E. M., & Dobbs, J. L. (2008). Expressive writing buffers against maladaptive rumination. Emotion, 8(2), 302–306.