Journal prompts for when you cannot sleep because of worry

It is late, the house is quiet, and your head is the loudest thing in it. One worry turns into five. You know that sleep is the thing you need, and knowing that makes it worse.

This page is for that hour. The prompts below are short on purpose. Most of them come from the pages of my own journal, the Self-Soothing Journal, and the rest are the questions I ask myself when I am lying there. You are not trying to solve anything tonight. You are trying to get the thoughts out of your head and onto paper, so your head can stop holding them.

Why does worry get louder at night?

In the day there are other things to look at, so worry has to share the room. At night it has the room to itself. There is nobody awake to check a thought against, and tired brains are not good at telling a small worry from a big one. Everything looks the same size in the dark.

Writing helps because the thought has somewhere to go. In one study, people who spent five minutes before bed writing down what they still had to do fell asleep faster than people who wrote about what they had already finished, about nine minutes faster on average (Scullin and colleagues, 2018). It was a small study, so treat it as a hint rather than a guarantee. The hint is a useful one: a list on paper is a list your brain can put down.

Before you pick up the pen

• Keep the light low. A bedside lamp or a small torch, not the big light and not the phone screen. The NHS advice for poor sleep includes leaving phones and screens alone right before bed (NHS, insomnia), and this is one of the reasons a paper journal earns its place on the bedside table.
• Keep it short. A line or two per prompt. You are emptying, not exploring. Anything that wants a proper think can have one in the morning.
• Pick one prompt, or two. Not the whole list.
• If a prompt opens something that feels too big for tonight, close the book and go to one of the five senses instead. A hot drink held in both hands. Socks. The weight of the duvet.

The prompts

First, get it out of your head

These two come straight from the journaling pages of my journal, where every page starts with the same small questions.

1. How am I feeling? One word is enough. Two if you need them.
2. What is going round and round? Write it as a list, not a story. Let each worry have its own line.

Then sort it

This is the Worry Tree, which is on page eleven of the journal and free on your phone. It asks one thing.

3. Is this worry about a problem I have right now, or about something that might happen? If it might happen, it can wait for daylight. Write “morning” next to it.
4. If it is a real problem: can I do anything about it tonight? Nearly always the answer is no. So write down the first small thing you will do about it tomorrow, and when. Now it has a time that is not now.

Then be kind about it

These are from the journaling prompts page in the journal, page sixty-five. I put them there for the days when you are stuck, and the middle of the night is the stuckest place there is.

5. If I spoke to myself the way I speak to a close friend, what would I say?
6. If my worried thoughts were a cartoon character, what would they look and sound like? Draw it if you like. It is harder to be frightened of something with a silly voice.
7. If my current emotions were a weather report, what would they be? Stormy, foggy, drizzle. Weather passes.
8. What is one thing I did today that took courage, even if it seemed small?
9. What am I grateful for, on my hardest days? The journaling pages in my journal end with “I am grateful for” for a reason. It is the last thing your head reads before the light goes off.

Then close the book

10. What can wait until morning? Everything on the list that has not got a time yet goes here. Draw a line under it.
11. What is one soothing thing I can do in the next ten minutes? Then do it. From the coping playlist page in the journal: what is the song you would listen to to fall asleep?

Then put the pen down. The list will still be there when it is light, and you may be a different person reading it.

If you are still awake an hour later

Lying there fighting it tends to teach your body that bed is where the fighting happens. The NHS suggests going to bed only when you feel sleepy, and doing something calm and dull for a while if sleep will not come (NHS, insomnia). Reading a paper book by a low light, colouring, or a page of the journal’s creative section all count. Then try again.

If this is most nights, and it has been for weeks, that is worth a conversation with your GP. Poor sleep and worry feed each other, and there is help for both.

How the journal is built for nights like this

For years I made my own journals by hand to get through my own anxiety and low days. The Self-Soothing Journal is that journal, printed properly. The calming skills sit up front where you can find them in the dark (5-4-3-2-1 grounding, mindful breathing, the Worry Tree, the emotions wheel), then the journaling pages, each starting with “how am I feeling?” and ending with “I am grateful for”. It lies flat, so it stays open on the bedside table at the page you left it. Printed for you when you order; the price and delivery are on the shop page.

If you would rather start on your phone, the Worry Tree is free, private and works offline. Turn the brightness right down first.

It is educational self-help, not therapy or medical advice. If tonight feels heavier than a few lines of writing can hold, please talk to someone. Samaritans are awake all night on 116 123. The helplines at the bottom of this page are there for exactly that.