What should I write when I'm anxious?

Does journaling help anxiety?

There is real evidence that it can. Writing about your thoughts and feelings - especially with a positive or forward-looking slant - has been linked to lower anxiety and distress. In a 2018 randomized study in JMIR Mental Health, Smyth and colleagues found that twelve weeks of online positive-affect journaling reduced anxiety symptoms and mental distress and increased resilience in adults with elevated anxiety. Journaling seems to work partly by helping you step back from anxious thoughts and see them as thoughts, rather than facts.

What are good journal prompts for anxiety?

The most useful prompts help you externalize a worry and then gently question it - the same move at the heart of cognitive behavioral therapy. A few examples this journal rotates through:

• What is the worry underneath the worry right now?
• Is the story my mind is telling me definitely true?
• What is one thing in my control today, and one that is not?
• What would I tell a friend who felt exactly this?
• What is one small step I could take in the next hour?

Tap New prompt in the tool above to shuffle through the full set of fifteen and land on one that fits how you feel today.

Is this journal private?

Completely. Your entries are saved only in this browser using local storage, and nothing you write is ever transmitted to Lyte Psychiatry or anyone else. You can export everything to a plain text file at any time, and deleting an entry removes it from your device. Because it lives on this one device, clearing your browser data will erase it - so export anything you want to keep.