Insights for women · Rest and overwhelm
Three Journal Prompts to Untangle Your Overwhelm (That Actually Work)
Your overwhelm isn't about your calendar. It's about what's happening inside.
If you're feeling overwhelmed, you're not alone and you're not doing anything wrong. But let's be honest about something: writing "Dear Diary, I'm stressed" doesn't help much. Most women who've tried journaling for overwhelm gave it up because it felt like one more task that produced nothing.
That's because overwhelm isn't mostly about a busy calendar. It's about what's underneath: the invisible weight you carry for other people, the pressure to keep pushing, the guilt that arrives when you finally stop. You don't need another to-do list. You need a way of listening inward that reaches the beliefs fueling the overwhelm, and then a way of working with what you find.
These three prompts come from our clinical work. We use versions of them in sessions and in the women's program, and we've chosen them because they reliably surface something true.
Why journaling works when it works, and why it often doesn't
Writing engages a different part of the mind than thinking does. When you think about a problem, you tend to loop. When you write about it, you have to put one word after another, which forces a kind of linear honesty that looping avoids. That's why a page of writing can produce a sentence you didn't know you believed.
But journaling fails when it stays at the level of events. "Today was hard, the meeting ran long, the kids were difficult." That's reporting, and reporting changes nothing. The prompts below are designed to go underneath the events to the beliefs and the body states that make events overwhelming in the first place.
Two rules we give every woman: write by hand if you can, because the slowness is part of it. And don't edit. The sentence you want to cross out is usually the one that matters.
Prompt one: What am I carrying that doesn't belong to me?
Overwhelm often comes not from what we're doing but from who we're doing it for. Many women are absorbing, without ever having agreed to it:
- Other people's emotions, especially the moods of a partner, a parent, or a boss
- Family expectations that were set decades ago and never renegotiated
- Workplace responsibilities that drifted onto their desk because they were competent
- An unspoken rule that they must always say yes, keep the peace, and show up perfectly
This is the home territory of the pattern we call the Pressure Absorber: the woman whose nervous system learned that everyone else's weight becomes hers. She is usually the most reliable person in any room, and the most depleted.
Take five minutes and write freely on these: Who or what am I holding onto that's quietly draining me? What would it feel like to set even one piece of it down?
Setting something down isn't selfish. In our experience it's closer to a self-return: giving back to yourself a piece of attention that was never meant to be permanently loaned out.
Prompt two: What's the story I tell myself when I rest?
This one goes deeper. When you finally pause, what does the voice in your head say? For most of the women we work with, it says some version of: You're being lazy. You don't deserve this. You're falling behind. Everyone else is doing more.
That voice isn't simply internalized pressure. It is the nervous system equating rest with risk. Somewhere, usually early, you learned that stillness was dangerous: it got you overlooked, or criticized, or it left a gap that something bad could fill. The voice is the body's way of keeping you moving, and it's very good at its job.
Write down the exact sentences you hear when you try to rest. Then write where they come from. Whose voice is that, really? Most women can name the person within a few lines. You can't rewrite what you won't name, and naming the voice is the beginning of taking rest back.
Prompt three: If I were being completely honest, what do I need right now?
Not what's reasonable. Not what's expected. Not what keeps the peace. What do you actually need?
To cry. To say no. To scream into a pillow. To be held, or left entirely alone, or told that you're not too much. Even if the answer feels impractical or irrational or embarrassingly large, write it down.
Women who have spent years managing everyone else's needs often find this prompt the hardest of the three. Not because they don't have needs, but because they've stopped checking. The muscle has atrophied. Writing the need, even a need you have no plan to meet, starts to bring it back.
Two further questions: What am I truly craving, not to fix the stress, but to feel seen inside it? What part of me needs permission to matter today?
What this looks like in the room
A woman we'll call Marisol brought her journal to a session and read us her answer to the third prompt. It was one line: "I need someone to ask me how I am and wait for the real answer." She cried as she read it, and then she apologized for crying, and then she laughed at herself for apologizing.
That sequence, need, tears, apology, is one we see constantly. It tells us where the work is. For Marisol, the work wasn't about overwhelm at all. It was about a lifetime of being the one who asked, and never the one who was asked. Journaling found that in five minutes. Working with it took longer, and was worth it.
Composite example. Details combined and changed; no individual is described.
How to use these
One prompt per sitting, five to ten minutes, by hand, no editing. Don't do all three in one night. Give each one a day or two to settle before moving on. If a prompt produces something that frightens you or won't leave you alone, that's not a sign to stop; it's a sign the prompt did its job and the next step is a conversation rather than a page.
Where this goes
These prompts don't fix overwhelm. What they do is show you what the overwhelm is made of, which is the first thing anyone needs to know before anything can change. Most women who work with them find the same thing: the problem was never the calendar. It was a belief, a voice, a need that got buried, and all three can be worked with.
That's where the healing begins. And if what you find on the page is bigger than a page can hold, that's exactly what we're here for.
When it's time for more than a prompt
Journaling is powerful, and it has limits. It's less likely to be enough on its own if:
- What comes up on the page is something you've never told anyone, and you're not sure what to do with it now
- The voice from prompt two is loud enough that you can't get past it to rest, no matter what you understand about it
- You can name your needs but can't feel entitled to meet them, and the gap between the two is exhausting
- Writing has brought up grief, anger, or fear that doesn't settle on its own
All of that is normal, and none of it means you've gone too deep. It means the prompts have reached something that wants a witness. Guided journaling is one of the four pillars of how we work, in the program and in individual therapy, and the difference is that you aren't holding the page alone.
If something here landed, here's where it leads.
Three ways in, in order of how much you want to commit. Each one is complete on its own.
Dr. Robert Jaffe, PhD, LMFT, and Dr. Mitra Rashidian, PhD, LMFT are psychotherapists in Encino, California, who co-lead the women's work. Between them, more than sixty years of sitting with women who look fine from the outside.
This article is educational and reflects general clinical experience. It is not therapy, a diagnosis, or a treatment recommendation, and reading it does not establish a therapist-client relationship. Composite examples combine details from many people and identify no one. If you are in crisis, call 988 or 911.