Journal Prompts for Overthinking: How to Calm Anxiety and Get Started
Megan Bell
Why Journaling Feels Hard When You’re Overthinking
Journaling is one of the most recommended therapeutic tools to manage stress and overwhelm, but what do you do when your beautiful, overly anxious mind begins to overthink the very process of journaling? When you find yourself staring at a blank page in a brand new journal meant to encourage your motivation, only to find your stomach dropping, or find your mind going blank as the wretched text cursor tauntingly blinks in and out of time on the screen as though mocking your attempts at mental and emotional self-care.
STOP…..take a few deep breaths... and give yourself grace. This experience, frustrating though it may be, is so universally human, and you are far from the only person to struggle with getting started.
Journaling for Overthinking: Gentle Guidelines to Get Started
To help you manage the overthinking about journaling, here are some basic guidelines for journaling that I often recommend for my own clients.
1. There’s No Wrong Way to Journal
Remember, technically, there is no wrong way to journal. Journaling works because it helps us externalize worries, which allows space to create emotional distance. This helps us better gain perspective instead of overthinking to the point of catastrophization. As long as you are expressing and releasing the emotional weight and intensity, it is okay to journal in a manner that feels right for you.
Some people do well with free form journaling where we allow whatever comes to mind to spill across the page, others find relief in more artistic forms of journaling where they might create an abstract picture or comic strip, others pick a song and journal based on what the music elicits, some feel silly writing to themselves and will choose to write as if they are sending a letter to a friend. It’s okay to explore different approaches, and it’s okay to do what feels right or needed in the moment.
If journaling ever feels overwhelming or increases your anxiety, know that you don’t have to navigate it alone. Thrive Therapy & Counseling offers a safe, supportive space to help you process your thoughts and find healthier ways to cope. Connect with us here.
2. Build Consistency, Not Perfection
Create a level of consistency. In an ideal world, we would be able to sit down and carve out sacred time and space to tend to the overgrown weed-like mess our overthinking creates, but this isn’t always realistic. Focus on creating a level of consistency in your journaling practice, whether you focus on time of day, length of journaling, location of journaling, style of journaling, or number of times a week.
Creating consistency is especially important as you get started, as this will support building muscle memory and make it more likely that when stressed or overwhelmed, you will remember that journaling is a tool you can reach for in order to self-care and cope.
3. Proactive vs Reactive Journaling Explained
All coping skills can be used both proactively (before anything has happened, tends to be more focused on maintaining positive progress and keeping stress low, done on a more frequent basis) or reactively (in response to something happening, tends to be a more immediate crisis response and focuses on bringing down heightened anxiety).
Both reactive and proactive coping skills have a positive place in any mental health toolbox, and it’s okay to experiment with both and see which method feels more helpful to your brain when it comes to journaling. Remember, though, both proactive and reactive tools are necessary, so if you choose not to use journaling proactively, make sure you have another coping tool in place proactively and vice versa.
4. Using Prompts to Overcome Journaling Paralysis
Don't pressure yourself to re-invent the wheel. It is okay to use prompts or structured journals to help guide you in the journaling process when you feel overwhelmed and adrift. Allowing a structure to ground and anchor your thought process can be reassuring and give you a sense that you can navigate through the rapid-fire storm of overwhelming thoughts.
Journal Prompts for Overthinking: 8 Approaches That Work
Now that we have some guidelines in place, let's take a look at a selection of journal structures and prompts that you can experiment with to help get started in your journal journey.
1. 3 to 1 (good for maintaining perspective)
Because our beautiful brains are wired to see the negative first in order to support survival, it can be hard for our minds to acknowledge the positives that are in play when faced with something stressful or overwhelming.
In a 3 to 1 approach, we name or list three positives, big or small, from the day, and we then list 1 constructive note for the day. In addition to seeing the negative first, negative thoughts often tend to hold more weight than positive ones, which is why we do a minimum of 3 positives to 1 constructive thought (depending on how overwhelmed your brain is, you may need to start with a high ratio, i.e., 5 to 1).
Please also note that I said constructive and not negative. It is okay to acknowledge areas where we struggled, however we do not need to give our anxiety cannon fodder for its overthinking by fixating on the negative.
Three positive things today were….
One thing I would like to work on is…..
Three things that made me smile were….
One thing I’d like to do differently tomorrow is….
2. Catch the Good (good for combating A negative sense of self or the world)
Similarly to what was mentioned before, our brains have a tendency to fixate naturally on the negative. The Catch the Good prompt is a structure that naturally allows us to redirect our attention so we have better odds of seeing the full picture. You can pick a word for the day/week/month and focus in your journaling on catching moments when you feel yourself or the world engaging in that way.
Word for the week: considerate
This week I felt myself being considerate when…
This week, having my needs considered by others made me feel…..
Word for the week: humor/funny
This week I felt funny when…
This week, a bit of humor that brightened my day was….
3. Name the elephant (helps with redistributing the power balance)
Sometimes our worries can feel so big that we lean into avoidance as a defense mechanism and start pretending they aren’t there. The problem with this approach is that feelings in general do not like being ignored, not for the long term. They inevitably will start to pop up in the most worrisome ways-think late-night intrusive thoughts or somatic issues like stomach aches and headaches, or even panic attacks.
Leaning into the concept that acknowledging and accepting can reduce stress, promote emotional regulation, and encourage resilience, the name the elephant journal approach focuses on taking the power from the feeling and returning it to the individual. “Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself,” -Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The elephant sitting on my chest is….
I am having this worry because______ is important to me
One thing I can do to boost my confidence in navigating the situation is….
4. Cite the Evidence (Challenge Anxiety’s Story)
One thing most people don’t realize is that anxiety loves evidence. If you look at how it operates, anxiety often comes to us with a list of examples of why we should be worried and overwhelmed by a situation or moment. Practice being your own lawyer, challenge the anxiety’s evidence with evidence of your own, indicating why the worry may not be true, and why we don’t need to get overwhelmed
My worry is that…..
Because____happened
Five reasons why that might not be true are….
My fear is that….
Because____happened
Other reasons that may be happening are…..
5. T.O.M. (helps us find the more grounded middle thought)
When we are stressed and overwhelmed, we often don’t realize how intense our initial negative thoughts actually are. Because of how intensely negative they can be, it makes sense then that we become overwhelmed. Using the DBT T.O.M. method as a journal structure can support us in helping us find a thought on the matter that is calmer, more grounded, and more likely to be true.
We start by identifying the initial negative thought, and we then use it as an anchor point and find an opposite thought that is overly positive to counterbalance the negative. Then we search between those two points and identify a thought that is in the middle and more likely to be true.
T (initial negative thought):_____
O (over the top opposite positive thought):_______
M (a middle thought that is halfway between the two):
Example
T: Everybody hates me
O: Everybody loves me
M: Most people are indifferent-or-I know people who do love me, so that isn’t true, it's just my anxiety
6. Feelings log (helps build mindful awareness)
A feelings log or Captain’s log approach can be helpful in building mindful awareness. By doing short regular entries, we can become more aware of patterns in triggers, cycles, and themes. Being aware of our natural flow can reduce some of the stress and overwhelm when our patterns resurface, and it also creates an opportunity for us to choose mindful change. If you want to take it a step further, at the end of the week or month, you can do a summary review entry.
Date:
Feeling Identified:______
What triggered it:______
Themes involved:_____
Other exacerbating factors:_____
One thing I want to try and shift is_______
Example Entry
Date: 08/28/25
Feeling Identified: overwhelm
What triggered it: new project for work
Themes involved: collaboration, work dynamics, public speaking
Other exacerbating factors: poor sleep last night, didn’t eat breakfast
One thing I want to try and shift is going to bed earlier
7. Advice from a Friend (allows us to practice giving ourselves grace and compassion)
Often, when we are stressed and overwhelmed, we have a harder time showing ourselves grace and compassion. We might slap labels on ourselves or our actions, like the words stupid or failure. We might even try to guilt and shame ourselves into never making that mistake again. The problem is that drowning ourselves in guilt and shame can be paralyzing instead of motivating.
A good way to help create emotional distance and give the grace and compassion we need as humans is to put someone else in our shoes. Imagine it is a friend, loved one, or stranger who is coming to us with this worry. How would we respond? Most likely, we would do our best to balance practical advice with empathy and understanding.
Name the worry:______
If someone came to me with this worry, what emotional support would I offer:_____
If someone came to me with this worry, what practical advice would I offer:_____
8. Notes from my body (helps build mindful awareness and distract and redirect)
The problem with stress and overwhelm is that we so often get trapped in our heads. The notes from my body journaling approach force us to consciously redirect our focus outside of our brain and the hurricane of overthinking, and to reconnect with our body and our connection to the physical world. This can help create emotional space for us to step away and gain perspective, and can help us to key into when our feelings are stepping forward in a less verbal way.
The feeling that is stepping forward today is_____
I noticed this feeling in my body in my (name location) when______
When I feel it in my body I want to ______
Things that make that part of my body feel better are______
If journaling ever feels overwhelming or increases your anxiety, know that you don’t have to navigate it alone. Thrive Therapy & Counseling offers a safe, supportive space to help you process your thoughts and find healthier ways to cope. Connect with us here.
Start Small with Journal Prompts for Overthinking
There are so many wonderful ways to journal, and the aforementioned prompts are but a handful of examples you can use to help get you started on your journaling journey. Have fun, experiment, and give yourself permission to discover what works for you and your pugnacious overwhelm.
If no one’s told you lately, I'm proud of you for wanting to take care of yourself. The mental health journey can be long and winding, but you choosing to even consider trying something different is a great step in showing up for yourself.
