If you’ve ever sat down to write a blog post and ended up more confused than when you started, you’re not alone.
You might even have told yourself something uncomfortable in that moment. That you can’t write, that you’re overthinking it, or that blogging just isn’t for you.
But in my experience, blogging often feels hardest for therapists who are actually very good at what they do.
Not because they lack ideas, but because they’re trying to speak to too many people in one post.
More...
Why blogging feels harder when you care about getting it right
Confession time. I used to have an embarrassing number of blog drafts.
Not two or three waiting to be finished, but closer to twenty. Sometimes even twenty-five.
Half-written posts. Abandoned ideas. Documents with promising titles that just… petered out.
And it wasn’t because I didn’t know what to say. I had plenty I could say.
The problem was that I’d start writing, get a few paragraphs in, and then that familiar therapist voice would kick in.
‘Well… it depends.’
When ‘it depends’ takes over your blog writing
For example, I might be writing a post about loneliness.
I’d start off feeling clear, talking about how common loneliness is. About how most people feel lonely at some point, even if their life looks full from the outside. About how you can feel lonely even when you’re not physically alone.
Then my thinking would begin to open it out.
Because loneliness can look like being on your own and craving connection.But it can also look like being in a relationship that isn’t really working anymore.Or being surrounded by people but always playing a part, never feeling fully seen.
Each of those experiences is valid. Each one speaks to a different person.
And that’s where the writing would start to wobble.
When empathy turns into overthinking
At that point, the blog post didn’t quite know who it was for.
Was it written for:
- Someone who’s isolated and longing for connection?
- Someone who feels lonely in their marriage?
- Someone who feels unseen because they’re always adapting to others?
So I’d start trying to talk to all of them.
I’d add a paragraph for one version of loneliness, then another for a different version, then another to make sure no one felt left out.
Before long, the direction blurred.
The post started to feel confusing to write because it was confused. I could feel myself losing my footing, unsure where the blog was actually going or who it was really speaking to.
And that’s usually the moment I’d stop.
Blogging isn’t hard because you can’t write
That stopping point is also when the story in my head would start.
It often sounded like this:
- ‘Maybe I just can’t write.’
- ‘Why does this feel so hard for me?’
- ‘Other people seem to manage it, why can’t I?’
Sometimes it dressed itself up as something more practical:
- ‘I don’t have time for this.’
- ‘I’ll come back to it when my head’s clearer.’
- ‘I’ll finish it another day.’
But underneath all of those thoughts was the same assumption, that the problem was me. That I simply wasn’t good enough at writing. That blogging just wasn’t something I could get right.
Now I can see that wasn’t true.
The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t write. It was that I wasn’t clear on what that particular piece of writing was actually about.
When you’re not clear on the subject, writing feels slippery. Everything seems relevant, so nothing quite settles, and it’s very easy to mistake that feeling for a lack of ability.
Therapy work and blogging ask for different things
There’s another layer to this that I think matters a lot for counsellors.
Most of the time, when you’re sitting with a client, there isn’t a neat answer. There isn’t a definitive ‘do this and everything will be fine’.
And as counsellors, that isn’t our job anyway.
Our role is to:
- Sit alongside
- Explore
- Help someone make sense of their experience in their own time
So we get very comfortable with uncertainty, with things unfolding slowly, and with saying ‘it depends’.
But when we sit down to write a blog, it can suddenly feel like we’re supposed to do something very different, as though we should be offering an answer, a takeaway, or something concrete.
That mismatch can feel awkward.
You know that most real-life situations don’t work like that. You know that what helps one person might not help another. You know that context matters.
So you end up putting yourself under a huge amount of pressure:
- Pressure to be helpful
- Pressure to be accurate
- Pressure to make sure no one feels misunderstood
And that’s an impossible pressure to manage when one blog post is expected to speak to everyone and offer certainty where certainty doesn’t really exist.
That’s when blogging starts to feel too much, not because you don’t know enough, but because you know too much to offer a simple answer.
What actually helps blogging feel easier again
I don’t have anything like that many half-written drafts anymore, but I still abandon things sometimes.
I’ll start writing about something, feel clear at the beginning, and then halfway through I’ll realise I’ve confused myself. I can feel the writing slipping back into that ‘it depends’ space again, trying to do too much.
When that happens now, I stop.
Not because I’ve failed, but because I know what’s happening. I know I need to step back and figure out exactly what my message is and who it’s for.
I can tell I'm still feeling muddled about it.
For a long time, I thought the answer was to think harder, plan more, or push through. What I actually needed was a clearer direction.
And this is what I see again and again with blogging for therapists.
Most therapists don’t struggle with blogging because they’re bad at writing. They struggle because they’re carrying:
- Too many options
- Too many voices
- Too much pressure to do it properly
Blogging starts to feel easier when you’re clear on what a post is there to do and, just as importantly, what it isn’t.
These days, the way I write blogs means they don’t usually spiral off in twenty directions and quietly die in a folder. Not because I’ve found a perfect system or because I never get stuck, but because I know what I’m trying to say and who it’s for before I start.
And interestingly, that’s exactly the way I now help other therapists write. By helping them get clear enough that one blog post only has to do one job.
When that happens, the pressure eases, the overthinking quietens, and writing starts to feel doable again.
This is exactly why I created the Blogging Clarity Session. Not to teach you how to blog, but to help you get clear on what your blogging actually needs to look like.
A conversation, not a lesson. Clarity, not more information.
A gentle place to land
If blogging has started to feel heavy, that doesn’t mean you’ve lost your ability to write.
It usually means you’re trying to talk to too many people at once or carry too much nuance on a single page.
With a bit more clarity, writing can feel lighter again, more contained and more doable. And if this piece has nudged something for you, even a small sense of ‘oh… that’s me’, that’s enough to start from.
You don’t need to give up, and you don’t need to force it. Sometimes you just need a clearer place to stand, and permission to try again.
