Journal Writing - Putting Your Stress Down on Paper

Journal writing can be an effect stress reduction technique. By changing your behavior when you are put in a stressful situation, you can start to develop coping strategies that will stop your stress eating you up.

Write Down the Problems and Concerns that Triggered the Stress

Have a look at the events and circumstances that trigger the stress and prioritise them into the order you'd like to solve them. By increasing your self-awareness, you are unlocking the puzzle to reducing your stress. If you get writers block, think about questions like "How was my day today" or "What thoughts are going round my mind right now?". For the first few days you might want to write down everything whilst you are prioritising. If this list becomes unwieldy, concentrate on the items that trigger the most stress in your life, since these are the ones you will be tackling first.

How Do You React to Stress?

Fear and anger tend to dominate the emotional scale, however, there are many subtle shades of these emotions including worry, grief, guilt, frustration, jealousy, sadness anr more. If you find you label all your stressful feelings as fear or anger, try to spend a little time looking at the more subtle, underlying feelings. Once you have identified what causes the stress, you are in a position to ask "Why does that cause stress?" and then add that to your journal. Try not to pre-judge or censor your writing, try to make it as fair and honest as possible.

Write Down the Resolution

Once you have identified the "What" and "Why" of your stress you can start to write down possible solutions to dealing with those triggers. Participants in journal writing think this is the most helpful and therapeutic part of the process and enjoy creating a reasonable action plan to reduce the stress in their daily lives.

When you have completed the journal you may want to review the main points with friends and family, so they are able to understand your circumstance more effectively, and will be more able and prepared to offer you support if you want to call on their help.