How to Filter Journal Entries by Emotion

Javier, a 29-year-old former software engineer, has written 31 journal entries since the end of his five-year engagement. He tagged most of them "anger" without thinking much about it. Then, a few weeks ago, he noticed himself writing differently. He wants to find those entries — the ones that feel different from the angry ones — and see when they started.

Filtering your journal by emotion tag turns your entry history into a map. Patterns emerge: which emotions cluster on certain days of the week, how long periods of one feeling tend to last, when something shifted.

Steps

1. Open the Journal tab and see your full entry list

Tap Journal at the bottom of the screen. Your entries are displayed in reverse chronological order — most recent at the top. Each entry card shows the date, a snippet of the first line, and any emotion tags you added, displayed as small colored chips.

2. Tap the filter icon

In the top-right corner of the Journal screen, tap the Filter icon (a funnel or sliders icon). The filter panel slides up from the bottom of the screen.

3. Select an emotion tag to filter by

In the filter panel, you'll see the full list of emotion tags you've used across all your entries. Tags are sorted by frequency — the emotions you've tagged most often appear first. Tap any tag to select it.

You can select more than one tag. Selecting multiple tags shows entries that contain any of the selected emotions (not all of them). If you want entries that contain a specific combination, use the Match all tags toggle.

4. The list narrows to matching entries

Tap Apply. Your journal list immediately updates to show only entries containing the selected tag or tags. The filter indicator at the top of the screen shows which filters are active.

Scroll through the filtered list. You might notice that several angry entries cluster on Sunday evenings. Or that your entries tagged "loneliness" tend to be shorter than others. These are patterns the filter helps you see.

5. Try filtering by "acceptance" to see recent shifts

Clear your current filters and apply Acceptance as a single filter. This shows you every entry where you tagged that emotion. If there are only a few — or if they're recent — that tells you something too.

Filtering by an emotion you haven't used often can be more informative than filtering by one you've used constantly. The contrast is where the story lives.

6. Clear filters when done

Tap Clear All in the filter panel, or tap the active filter chip at the top of the screen to remove individual filters. Your full journal list returns.

Additional Filter Options

Beyond emotion tags, you can also filter by:

• Date range — tap From and To to specify a time window. Useful for reviewing a specific week or month.
• Entry type — filter to see only free-form entries, only guided entries, or only milestone entries.
• Loss type — if you've added multiple grief types to your profile, filter by which loss a given entry relates to.

Filters can be combined. For example: Emotion: Anger + Entry type: Free-form + Date range: Last 30 days shows you your recent, unstructured expressions of anger.

What to Expect

Filtering does not delete or archive entries — it only changes what's visible in the list. Your full journal is always intact.

Some people find that filtering and reading is more useful than adding a new entry on certain days. Going back through tagged entries can be its own kind of reflection — seeing how a feeling has appeared and reappeared and perhaps started to appear differently over time.

note

Journal filtering is available on all plan tiers, including Free.