With distress levels high in the wake of the pandemic, anxiety journals are the hot new tool for coping with stress.
Florida’s college and high school students are using them. So are professors and teachers. Even anxious parents and caregivers are turning to journaling to process their emotions.
“Anxiety journals help you track your mood, your symptoms and make you more self-aware,” said Orlando Gonzalez, a licensed mental health counselor who led a webinar on Anxiety Journaling in May for faculty at the University of Miami. It was the fourth time a workshop on the topic has been offered at the university in the past two months.
They differ from typical journal writing in that the goal is to get worries out of your head, look for patterns and triggers, and use that to change your actions.
“There is a lot of learning that happens when people are trying to put thoughts and effects together. It’s a therapeutic process,” said Gonzalez, who works at UM as director of the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program.
About a third of Florida’s adults — 32.3% — reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder in a survey completed in February 2023 by KFF (formerly known as Kaiser Family Foundation). Only a fraction of these Floridians have found tools or services to improve their mental health, the study found.
While getting thoughts down in writing has long been a tool used by therapists, anxiety journaling differs in several ways.
- It uses prompts.
- It encourages reflection.
- It’s designed to help with self-awareness of triggers and create awareness of negative self-talk.
- It tracks progress, especially for those in therapy.
At Nova Southeastern University’s Anxiety Treatment Center, Dr. Kayla Thayer uses anxiety journals to supplement counseling. By having patients write down the situations in which they feel anxious, she helps them figure out over time what causes the distress.
“You are focusing on the connection between thoughts, emotions and behaviors,” said Thayer, a clinical psychologist and director of the NSU center.
Reading back what they wrote helps patients look for patterns and triggers so they can make intentional changes, she said. For some, anxiety is spurred by how they felt in situations and for others by their thoughts. Prompts can help bring that out.
“When was the last time you noticed feeling anxious, what was going on, what were you doing and who were you with?” Thayer said. “With it written down, we are working to identify patterns of problematic thinking or unhelpful thinking styles. A lot of people can benefit from it.”
The pandemic and rising stress levels fueled the concept of anxiety journals, and publishers now offer at least a dozen paperback versions with varying writing prompts, exercises, activities and rituals. You can also create your own, using prompts that work for you.
Stephanie Wells, of Orlando, uses an anxiety journal, and her 24-year-old daughter does too. Wells said anxiety journaling helped her family through the coronavirus pandemic and became a key tool for stress management. She has created her own, a compilation of ideas learned through years of therapy.
She believes consistency is important.
“Like with anything, you have to commit to doing it,” she said. “It needs to be habit even when you are not feeling anxious, so when you are in that spiral, you have a habit built and the memory muscle is there. When you fall into a panic attack, it’s easier to acknowledge what’s happening and draw on your strategies.”
Elizabeth Scott, a California psychologist and wellness coach, says journaling about stress gets it out of your head and helps you to stop ruminating, which people do when they are anxious.
“Instead of becoming reactive to anxiety, you become proactive in preventing it,” Scott said.
You can journal daily, weekly, or on an as-needed basis when stress gets intense, she said.
Some prompts for anxiety journaling, for example, include: “Describe the events that are currently causing difficulties for you” or “The thoughts that went through my mind this week were…” or “my worst fear is…”
“Anxiety is feeling out of control and worrying about all the things that can go wrong,” Scott said. “This is a way to develop a sense of mastery over what feels scary.”
Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com.
5 TIPS FOR ANXIETY JOURNALING
- Use pen on paper. There is more processing of thoughts and emotion when you put thoughts to paper
- Let it flow. Concentrate less on grammar and punctuation and more on getting thoughts out of your head.
- Read and reflect on what you write
- Close out what you read in a couple of sentences. For example, “I notice…” or “I feel…”
- For each fear you have, try to write at least one way you could think about it differently.
SOURCES: fsap.miami.edu; Elizabeth Scott, Ph.D.