Using Expressive Writing for Stress

Understanding Stress and Its Impact

What is Stress?

Stress can be a tricky concept because it straddles both psychological and physical realms. At its core, stress can be viewed as the balance between the demands placed upon us and the resources we have to manage those demands.

Stress is not always bad. There’s an optimal level that can keep us engaged and invigorated.”

Donna Bottomley

However, when stress surpasses our ability to cope, it tends to tip the scale, leading to feelings of being overwhelmed.

Activation Levels

Imagine a gauge for how activated you feel, ranging from completely flat to hyper. This line, running from top to bottom, helps in identifying your current state of activation.

• Flat is when you feel low on energy and motivation, perhaps even indifferent.
• Hyper can manifest as restlessness, anxiety, or an adrenaline rush.

Understanding where you are in any given moment can give you information on how much ‘head-room’ you have right now.

Stress vs. Burnout

Though often used interchangeably, stress and burnout are different. Stress is an activated state, where you are somewhere on the dial from green to red, whereas burnout is when you have gone beyond overwhelm or have been tolerating a consistent level of high activation for too long. It is when your system is exhausted from chronic activation. It can feel like a dimming of all the lights—it is when stress leads to exhaustion, withdrawal, and/or a feeling of defeat.

How to Pinpoint Your Stress

You could visualise the dial (above), or use the ‘Feeling Wheel’ ladder (below) to plot where you are 0 – 10 right now in terms of activation or flatness.

Vertical Axis: Represents activation (Flat at the bottom and Hyper at the top)

Horizontal Axis: Represents the quality of the feeling (Pleasant on one end and Unpleasant on the other)

Start by scoring your activation level (top to bottom) between 0 – 10, and then notice if the feeling you currently have is pleasant or unpleasant. Plot where you are. The more you do this the more information you will start to have about how you feel in any particular moment. From here you can then start to see patterns emerging.

Using expressive writing to move through stress

Here is a quick guide to using expressive writing for untangling a feeling of stress. Expressive writing can be a powerful tool for offloading and processing how we feel and helping us gain clarity.

Step 1: The Offloading Phase

This initial seven-minute writing session is all about letting it out—unfiltered and raw.

Here are some tips:

Write Freely: You do not need to worry about grammar or structure. Just put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and let the words flow.

No Overthinking: Write spontaneously about the week’s stressors without analysing or editing the words that come out.

Keep going: If stuck, focus on a recent stressful event and write the first thing that comes to mind, then keep going.

Step 2: Check-in and breathe

After the offloading session, take a moment to check-in with yourself, notice your posture, and breathe slowly in and out for 30 seconds before proceeding to the next session. This helps to balance our nervous system if we have been writing about something activating.

Step 3: The Processing Phase

Now set your timer for another 7 minutes. This session is where you will be ‘processing’ what you have offloaded.

How to process your thoughts and feelings:

Look for Patterns: Look for themes or repeating topics in your writing. For example, have you had that issue before? Is there something that you are avoiding, or a thinking pattern such as ‘all or nothing’ thinking that is showing up here.

Notice with curiosity instead of judgment: Whilst you are writing about what you notice, aim to be curious rather than judging yourself. If we can be curious we can find out so much more than if we are shutting things down and not wanting to see them.

Keep going: If you stop before 7 minutes is up, see if you can write some more, and write through to a deeper level of understanding about this issue.

Actions and Intentions: You might want to note down any actions that you want to take, or intentions that you want to set, if this issue shows up again for you.

Before and After: Plotting Your Change

You could plot how you feel at the beginning and end of the writing session, using the feeling wheel above, to give you a sense of whether how you feel has changed.

You can also continue writing past the 7 minutes if you feel you have more to process. But do give yourself a distinct start and end point to the session, rather than keeping it open-ended.

These sessions of expressive writing can be a way to recalibrate before a new week begins. Sometimes, recognising that our stress is part of preparing for what lies ahead, and isn’t a bad thing, can alter how we perceive and process these feelings of activation.

Final Thoughts

If you find it helpful, why not try a weekly expressive writing practice, so that you can have a regular offload and process. It is your safe space to write about whatever you want to.