The Anxiety Journal: A Tool for Anxious People

A tool for putting your worries behind you

Ask anybody how they deal with anxiety, and you'll get a number of different answers.

• Exercise

• Journalling

• Breathing Exercises

• Therapy

• Yoga

Within each of these, there's specific practices that people prefer. While it's true that any number of techniques may work for you, there are some that are more universally proven to help deal with anxious thoughts -- one of them being The Anxiety Journal.

What It Is:

A specific set of prompts proven to get anxious thoughts out of your head.

1) To start, write down very specifically what is bothering you. What is the thought that's giving you trouble? That's weighing you down and preventing you from being present in your day.

2) Write down the worst possible outcome. Be detailed here. Write down everything you think you could happen.

In this writing, explain how you would handle it. If this worst case scenario happened, what actions will you take?

3) On a scale of 1-10, assign how likely that worst-case scenario is to happen.

1 being "Impossible"

10 being "Guaranteed"

4) Next, write down what the best case scenario, and the most likely scenario are for the anxious thought. For each of these, assign them a number 1-10 for how likely they are to happen.

Why It Works:

You know that nagging feeling in the back of your head when you don't respond to a message, or leave your to-do list unfinished? Your brain has a tendency to hang onto "open loops" (officially known as The Zeigarnik Effect). By writing down and creating a plan for the worry, your brain considers it "closed"-- it is no longer something worth thinking about because it has been handled.

Support For This Technique:

This "Anxiety Journal" method is very well documented and supported. Harvard professor Arthur C Brooks had an episode on his podcast Office Hours with Arthur Brooks covering this, as well as studies by the American Psychiatric Association.

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If you've tried this Anxiety Journal technique and have any feedback, please share! We love speaking with you and are always looking for ways to improve ourselves and help our readers.

If you're struggling to combat anxiety on your own, and don't know where to start, check out our app, available here!