How to Deal With Stress

Journaling as Stress Management

Find a quiet spot, use a journal or notebook, and take some time out for yourself to think.

Writing down your stress-related thoughts is a proven way to relieve stress and anxiety.

Journalling is an outlet of expression that can help you process and understand your stress and anxiety.

When you are feeling a large amount of stress, often your thoughts are racing and you can't get any sleep.

You may even find it difficult to focus on completing a task, and you find yourself becoming distracted and working on several things at a time.

Expressing your feelings is cathartic. That means that it feels good and helps you get rid of the tension.

How to Journal

• When you are ready to start, give yourself a time limit of 2 minutes--perhaps set an alarm.

  Then start writing everything that comes to mind. Your frustrations, worries, concerns, and even accomplishments, pressures, family issues, financial worries, etc.

  Be quick! Write everything down in 2 minutes.

• When the two minutes are up, take time to circle or highlight the main points. Draw a link to issues that are related.

• Then, take a separate piece of paper and write at the top of it one issue that you identified during the two minutes. You are going to elaborate on that issue, which will help you begin to understand it better.

  Understanding your issue will help you understand what actions to take, in order to work through the issue that is causing your stress.

  Write down everything that comes to mind with that particular issue. You might like to think of it as a question and answer session. Write down questions that will make you think more deeply about the issue, and then write down the answer.

• Try these questions:
  • What bothers me the most about this?
  • What are the Pros and Cons of the particular situation or problem?
  • How would I feel if this changed?
  • How do I imagine it changing?

  ALSO, ask yourself "why". Then ask yourself "why" again. Keep writing down the answers.

  What you will uncover is the reason behind your stress.

When we write down our thoughts and feelings we begin to process them. Our confusion about issues creates fear and anxiety, but as we write, the confusion clears and so do the emotions.

What are your stressors?

• Events in your life
• A certain person
• Finances or not enough money
• Your home or work environment
• Too much to do - at home or at work

Although not everything can be fixed, you will gain a better understanding of your stress, and learn better ways to make things work for you. Journaling is a great stress management activity!

Journalling is something that we can all do.

How to deal with stress in this unique way will uncover the underlying reasons of your stressors, bring clarity to the situation, and you may just find a solution!

You might also like:

• Problem Solving
• Ways of Coping with Stress
• Side Effects of Stress

How to Deal with Stress to Stress Management Activity

How to Deal with Stress to Easy Stress Management

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