Writing your stresses down is a simple thing to do for stress relief. It is a simple mind trick to take stress out of your head.



In today’s world you are constantly bombarded by mental pressures. You have deadlines to meet, time constraints on your activities, over-bearing bosses, performance issues and many other mental pressures.

You get home and you have to provide for your family, pay the bills, and plan ahead for retirement. You have to deal with your children and their issues, maintain relationships and many other family stresses.

You have no time for yourself and very little for those you love the most … your family.

All of these stresses sit in your head. They take up all the room so that you seem to be missing a few hours in the day.

The day flies past too quickly and so do the weeks and months. Suddenly it is Christmas again and you have only just got your head around May and June.

Sound familiar?

If you break down what you actually do physically, you will be surprised.

The time you take to perform all your physical tasks, whether they are at work or home, is less than you think. You actually have a few hours left over in the day. Although you feel you haven’t got a spare minute. You probably have a spare four hours.

That time is all taken up in your head. You have thousands if not millions of things flying around inside your head. Stresses, pressures, deadlines etc, all running through your mind taking up space and making you feel tired, rundown, hectic and chaotic. Your stress levels are rising and time just flies by.

Mental activity takes time, unproductive time.

If you plan a task: plan it, set your goals, define tasks and do it. Then forget it, no need to re-analyze it, no need to go over and over the same details.

The same for problem solving and every other task you have.

If you write them down, this is called journaling. You will find you reduce stress.

Getting things on paper takes it out of your head. Your mind actually will release stress. Writing tasks down helps to clarify issues, helps to analyze goals and set step by step procedures to follow.

Notice how once you write things down, especially your stresses, things don’t seem so bad. You appear to have more time and the tasks seem easier and simpler to complete.

So write down everything. Don’t get carried away, I mean write down your stresses and your daily tasks.

Use a journal or diary for your tasks. You probably want to keep a track record of what you are going to do and what you’ve done.

It also helps to give yourself a ‘pat on the back’ when you have reached your goal or completed a task. Just put a big tick next to the task. Make it large, it feels better that way.

Write down your stresses though. It can be what the boss said, or your employees. It could be the frustrations of a task or a colleague. Anything, but write it down.

On paper, it doesn’t seem that bad. Stresses appear less real and less heavy when you write them down.

Now a word of warning …

Use a notebook or paper you can put in a folder. You may want to dispose of your writings and not let the boss see them. You may have a few pages of how bad you think they are, or colleagues or the task assigned. You may have a whole page of swear words, just because everything is on top of you and it helps to swear … on paper.

But write them down; keep it in a folder or notebook. Just keep it private.

A good technique to do either daily or weekly is to gather all your writings and … burn them.

Yes, set fire to it. Again, carefully, use a fire place if you have one. If not please be safe.

If you can’t burn them, then rip them up. Into small tiny pieces and them throw them away. Send them to a fictitious address (probably don’t sign anything and still rip it up, you don’t want to scare anyone).

By burning, tearing up or sending the words away, you are telling your brain to release and reduce stress.

It can be quite a euphoric ritual. You write it down by journaling, then burn the evidence. All the stress goes up in smoke.

Just one way to reduce stress. Stress relief is essential today due to the many mental stresses you face. Journaling and writing stresses down helps to get the stress out of your head. Just try it and see how easy it is.