Journaling Prompts for Chronic Stress
Chronic stress is different from acute stress—it doesn't come in a burst and then resolve. It's the steady, sustained pressure that changes your baseline, affects your health, colors your perception, and starts to feel like just the way things are. When you've been under pressure for long enough, you can stop recognizing it as stress—it just becomes life. Writing about chronic stress means stepping back enough to actually look at it: what's driving it, what it's costing you, what you've tried, and what you might be unwilling to change that deserves an honest examination.
Journaling Prompts
What are the primary sources of stress in your life right now? List them. Now look at the list: which are temporary, which are structural, and which involve choices you're making that you could potentially change?
What does this level of sustained stress feel like in your body? Where do you carry it—your shoulders, your gut, your jaw, your sleep? When did you last feel genuinely unstressed?
What have you tried to manage the stress that hasn't worked? What has helped, even partially? What do you know about yourself under stress that you could use?
What would have to change—in your life, your work, your relationships, your expectations of yourself—for the stress to meaningfully reduce? Which of those changes are you most resistant to, and why?
What are you protecting by staying in this level of stress? Is there something uncomfortable about a less pressured life—an identity, a way of proving something, a structure that would disappear?