Stress is everywhere and it is not going anywhere. And it can seem so challenging and time-consuming and stressful to do anything about it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a really quick and incredibly helpful tool out there that helps you reduce stress and build resilience.

It is called journaling.

Journaling is a little different from a “daily diary” and can be done in a lot of ways. Some of these ways or formats are specifically designed to help you relieve some tension you feel, bring you back to the present moment aka reduce some worries and stress about the past or future, and even help you to train your brain to be more resilient to stress. It is a lot more than “just writing” and can be a huge piece towards feeling less stressed overall and helping pull yourself out of negative stressful spirals in your thoughts. 

When you are stressed, your brain tends to get stuck in some loops or Cycles of Stress – it sees stress, looks out for more to protect you from it, keeps noticing mostly js tht stressful stuff, and then you stress about it and the cycles build. This is what turns on the stress response in your brain and into your body, and keeps you in those spiraling, frazzled, jittery, and overwhelmed feelings. YOu need something to help break the cycle, shift your brain to notice the other, more positive things, and turn down the stressful thought patterns. 

Journaling can help do this. 

When you journal, specifically for stress management and resilience, a few things happen in your brain. One thing is that you can shift out of focusing on alllll the stressful things or things that are not going well, and train your brain to also see the other things that are happening, and the things that are going well. You can also use it to help pull you out of those negative thought spirals, that just build and build and create more stress, and bring you back to here and now, in your body and out of your head. And it can give these stressful places another place to be. All of this helps to build up the resilience to stress, so it doesn;t affect you as deeply or stick with you as long, and turn down the stress response that is currently firing on all cylinders. 

There are many, many ways to journal, and some are more useful for stress than others. 

3 Types of Journaling for Stress and Resilience

Gratitude/What went well:

Focusing on things that you are grateful for, or that are going well or went well, is a simple but powerful tool for building resilience to stress. This journaling practice helps you to shift your brain out of the “negative” mode and turn it to the “positive”. Please note, it is not about ignoring or invalidating stressors or things that are challenging, this would be toxic positivity. This is about simply seeing the full picture. 

Your brain is wired to notice the negative as a survival instinct, so noticing the positive helps you to shift out of this stressful spiral and build resilience to it in the future. 

Brain Dump:

Similar to a daily diary, a brain dump is a free-form style journal. It is incredibly useful for when you are feeling stressed and are ruminating on a particular situation, where your thoughts won’t seem to let it go. This can interfere with sleep and can pull you out of the present moment (ex: thinking of work, and stressing about it, when you are home in the evening with your family or trying to relax), which can be very mentally exhausting. 

A brain dump helps you get all of that out of your head and gives it somewhere else to be, so you can stop thinking about it over and over, and maybe find some clarity on it.  It is a really useful tool for turning off some stress and future stress.

Sensory Check-In:

This style of journal is very quick to do, and can help you to drop back into the present moment, when you notice your thoughts are shifting far into the future or past, or you are feeling lost in your head. 

It uses the help of your 5 senses to notice things in your environment and your body, which pulls you back to what is happening now. This helps your brain to make a small shift out of being stressed, to take a break from the stress, and builds resilience when used as a daily practice. 

These 3 journaling practices are powerful tools for managing stress and building resilience. When you use them daily, or in the moment of stress, you can start to create shifts that help you better work through and be around stressors in the future. 

Want to learn more about these styles, including how to do them and how to use them in your daily life?

Join the May 2022 workshop (available after as a recording), “Journaling to Manage Stress and Build Resilience”. The workshop will be held live on May 26th @2pm EST

In this workshop, you’ll: 

• Determine which journaling styles work best for stress management and resilience building. 
• Take a deeper look into why it is an important tool for managing stress
• Look at ways to use these techniques in your day
• Try some journaling techniques

You can join in this single workshop here (workshop sign up), or you can join The Resilient SLP, a monthly workshop series, and get access to this workshop, as well as a library of previous and future workshops, with a 30-day FREE trial. 

Start your free trial here: The Resilient SLP

*Professional Development certificates are available to use as applicable. 

What style of journaling do you see yourself using? Share in the comments below or email jessi@jessiandricks.com

For more free resources, including journal templates, meditation audios, and yoga classes, enter your email below. 

With Love and Light,
Jessi