Journaling for stress relief: 5 ways to write your stress out

Stress is the body's and mind's natural response to feeling under pressure. Short bursts of stress can even help you focus on an exam or a deadline. The problem is when that response does not switch off for a long time.

According to the UK's National Health Service (NHS), stress can show up as emotional symptoms such as irritability, worry, difficulty making decisions and racing thoughts, and as physical symptoms such as headaches, muscle pain and stomach problems. If these symptoms worry you, see a doctor.

Two lines of research support it. The first is affect labeling: in an fMRI study published in 2007, when participants put the emotion in negative images into words, activity in the amygdala, a brain region tied to emotional reactions, went down. Writing “I'm tense” does exactly that, on a small scale.

The second is expressive writing. Since the 1980s, many studies have tested the effect of writing about your feelings for a few days. A meta-analysis combining 146 studies found a positive but small average effect. In other words, writing is not a miracle, but it is a cheap, easy tool you can use anywhere.

For a more detailed summary of the research, read our guide to the benefits of journaling.

In this method, recommended by the NHS, you set aside a 10 to 15 minute “worry time” every day, for example some time before bed. When a worry comes up during the day, you jot it down and tell yourself “I'll look at this during worry time”. When the time comes, you open the list and go through each worry:

1. 1Write it down. Once a worry moves from your head to paper, its size becomes clearer.
2. 2Ask: Is this a real problem I can solve, or a “what if” that is out of my control?
3. 3If it can be solved, write a plan: what you will do, how and when.
4. 4If it cannot, accept that, close the note and turn your attention to the present.

Stress often grows in bed, when tomorrow's tasks will not go quiet. In a sleep lab study published in 2018 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 57 young adults wrote for five minutes before bed. Those who wrote a to-do list for the coming days fell asleep significantly faster than those who wrote about tasks they had already completed. The more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep.

It was a small study with young adults who had no sleep problems. But trying it takes five minutes and carries no risk.

If you do not have time to write at length, just name it: “tense”, “overwhelmed”, “angry”, “tired”. Try to find a more precise word than a general “bad”. This is the shortest form of the affect labeling described above.

If you log these at the same time every day, after a few weeks you start to see which days and situations your stress piles up around. We explain how in our guide on how to keep a mood journal.

When you feel overwhelmed, set a ten minute timer and write down everything on your mind in no particular order: tasks, worries, unfinished conversations, things to buy. Then look at the list and put each item into one of three groups: do today, plan for later, out of my hands.

Two of the NHS's stress tips ask for exactly this split: take control of what you can, and accept the things you cannot change. A list is the fastest way to tell them apart.

Writing down three things that went well each day is also among the NHS's stress tips. In a study published in 2005, people who did this every evening for a week became happier and reported fewer depressive symptoms. In a stressful period, the point is not to ignore the difficulty but to also see the good things next to it. More in our gratitude journal guide.

Writing alone is not enough. Some of the basic steps the NHS recommends for stress:

• Be active. Exercise will not make stress disappear, but it can reduce its emotional intensity.
• Connect with people. Talking to someone you trust helps you see the problem from another angle.
• Make time for yourself. A few evenings a week for something you simply enjoy.
• Avoid unhealthy habits. Alcohol, smoking and caffeine are not ways of coping with stress.
• Prioritize. Focus on what really matters and accept that you cannot do everything.

Pixmood is a mood journal, not a stress management program. You mark your day in five seconds by tapping one of five moods; if you like, you add a one word tag such as “work”, “exam” or “no sleep” and a note of up to 1,000 characters. Weeks later, the week and month mosaic shows where the hard days pile up.

The free version shows basic insights for the last 30 days. With Pixmood Pro you can also track sleep, energy and productivity and see how they relate to your mood. Everything is calculated on your phone; there is no account and no server.

The limits: Pixmood has no breathing exercises and no worry time timer, and the daily entry has no writing prompts. You can use a notebook for the methods above; Pixmood records the tone of the day alongside them.

The NHS advises seeing a doctor if your stress symptoms worry you or you feel your stress is getting more severe. If your sleep, appetite, work or relationships have been affected for a long time, do not put this step off. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself or are in an emergency, call your local emergency number right away (112 in Türkiye and across the EU).