How a Simple Journaling Exercise Can Help with Your Anxiety

Anxiety can make you feel like a victim of circumstances. You might feel stressed or isolated. It can upset your mood, your energy level, and your ability to concentrate.

The best way to learn about your thoughts is to write them down. And therefore, journaling enables you to capture your thoughts, and dive deep into those anxieties and complicated emotions that are bothering you. Now, overcoming anxiety becomes far more manageable with awareness. The results show when the theory is put into practice.

Try this simple journaling exercise to manage anxiety.

Step #1 – List down the fears

Write down your fears and concerns in your journal when you feel anxious. If you use a paper journal, leave a gap of 10 lines between items; you’ll be going back to each item shortly. Keep writing until you have nothing more to add to the list.

Review the list and put a priority on each item, starting with high-impact in a descending sequence.

For each item, write down what is happening now and what you are afraid of happening in the future. What would be the impact on you if that happens?

Step #2 – Reframe the mind

This step reframes the source of anxiety to how can it be eliminated.

For each item you listed come up with multiple potential solutions that you could try out for removing the source of anxiety. Could you change the way things are at present? Or could you change your thoughts and perception of the current circumstances?

For each fear about what could happen in the future, challenge it by thinking critically and debating with yourself whether it is indeed a concern. What is the probability and impact of that fear? Could the adversity be converted to an opportunity with a positive outcome?

Writing this information down can help you to relieve anxiety because you realize that some things are less likely to happen than you thought or they are not as severe as you thought they could be. Record how you could think differently about each fear and the new set of possibilities for it.

Step #3 – Act to relieve anxiety

As the saying goes, plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Keeping in view what might happen, think about the significant challenges that you have faced earlier and how you overcame them. There were strength and wisdom within you that made it possible.

For each fear write down briefly what you would do if it happens. The resources you would utilize and the steps that you would take.

Identify one or two things that you can do now to prepare you for each fear. Do you need to procure specific resources or build new skills? With this, you shift from a place of anxiety towards a place of empowerment.

Note down what you have learned from each source of anxiety and why you should be grateful for it.

This simple journaling technique can provide the means to help manage anxiety in all types of situations. How do you manage your anxiety? Leave us a message in the comments.