Using Journaling to Cope with Stress

“Just write something,” I thought to myself. No expectations. No rules. Just write. As I put my pen down onto my first journal, I began what would ultimately guide me to coping with stress and improve my mindset.  

It was my middle school French teacher who encouraged me to start journaling. At the beginning of sixth grade, she gave the entire class a journal to practice our French writing. “Write anything you want in it. Don’t worry about perfect grammar or spelling, this isn’t for marks. This is for you,” she had said. At first, it was hard. How was I supposed to write for 15 minutes per day without any prompts, any direction? But eventually, I got the hang of it. I began writing simple things, like my weekend plans, schoolwork, something funny my friend had told me. I quickly realized that journaling could be fun. 

Around the same time, I started developing stress–stress that was new to me and that I had no idea how to handle. I have always labeled myself as “high achieving,” but my perfectionism soon became impossible to keep up with. If I didn’t excel on every test, every project, I would be hard on myself. If I was unhappy with my productivity throughout the day, I would be hard on myself. Everything I did was under self-imposed scrutiny.

The stress was overwhelming, causing breakdowns and late-nights multiple times a week. This was a lot for a sixth-grader. It got to the point where my anxiety was so prevalent, I began journaling about it at school during our fifteen-minute writing time. Little did I know how much of a difference those fifteen minutes would make.  

I don’t have my sixth-grade journal anymore, but I can imagine what was written inside. The thoughts and dreams of ten-year-old me, some days rambling about all my homework, others enthusiastically describing my weekend plans. On tough days, it would be about my worries and anxieties. I learned that the more I wrote, the better I felt. No, journaling didn’t take away the issue of an impending deadline or a foot-long to-do list, but it made the tasks feel achievable and less scary. We underestimate the impact of simply explaining ourselves, whether to a person or a page. 

Sometimes, my brain feels like a train station at rush hour, crowded with passengers and barely enough room to breathe. Each passing thought is like a person on the platform, zooming around and causing a little chaos. Journaling gives the thoughts their moment to drive me crazy, but then I get them onto the page, like passengers finally making it onto their train. From there, they take their route to work, or home, or wherever, and the station is left calm and organized once more, ready for a new wave of passengers. The overwhelming feeling is replaced with motivation and calm, so you feel like you really can do all those things. 

Over the course of three years, my teacher instilled a habit in me to get my thoughts onto a page and out of my head. Though writing itself may not solve problems, it gives the clarity to figure things out. Journaling became so valuable to me that I didn’t stop writing, even when my teacher discontinued the fifteen-minute writing time and even when I moved on to high school. Still, whenever I have a stressful day, or even an exciting one, journaling is a therapeutic exercise. Getting my ideas onto paper is like catching my breath. I write about my day, what made me happy, what stressed me out. My plans for tomorrow, my goals, and my dreams for the future. What I’m grateful for, how I can improve. I have made astounding progress in handling stress, thanks to journaling. It seems that the older I get, the more there is to worry about. But a notebook and a pen make everything easier for me.