Journal Prompts for Overthinking
Let’s be real: if you’re here Googling journal prompts for overthinking, you’re probably not having a fabulous, totally chill, everything is working out for me day….right?
Maybe your brain has been on a hamster wheel for hours — spiraling through hypothetical conversations, worst-case scenarios, and “what if” rabbit holes that somehow always end with you messing everything up, alone forever, and emotionally unwell in a Forever 21 parking lot. (Too specific? Thought so.)
First of all, take a breath. You’re not broken. You’re just processing hard things in real time, and your nervous system is trying to protect you — maybe a little too much.
Overthinking isn’t a flaw. It’s a signal. It often means your system is trying to get control, closure, or clarity… but it’s doing it through worry, perfectionism, or mental rehearsal. Which means you end up exhausted, disconnected from your body, and even more uncertain than when you started.
Which is why today’s post is all about…
Journal Prompts for Overthinkers
Journaling can help those of us who struggle with overthinking — not because it magically solves our problems, but because it slows our thinking down to the speed of a pen. It gives our minds structure. It lets our nervous system breathe.
The 20 prompts below are here to walk you through that process: from tuning into what’s really going on, to regulating your energy, to deciding how you want to move forward — without all the noise.
You don’t need to do all of them at once. Start with the ones that speak to you. This is about gently coming home to yourself, not fixing yourself like a project.
🌀 Step 1: Name What’s Bubbling Underneath
One of the biggest misconceptions I hear about anxiety is that it’s a bad thing. Too much anxiety, sure, that can have a negative impact on our lives but we actually need some anxiety to help activate us when there are things in our lives that need action. Overthinking, being a symptom of anxiety, is a signal that there’s something going on underneath and step one is to figure out what that is.
So before we can calm our thoughts, we want to know what they’re trying to say. Most overthinking is a cover for some form of fear - fear of failure, rejection, being misunderstood, losing control - and these fears are triggering our nervous system into an anxious, fight-or-flight state. The first step is just to notice.
What’s the one thought I keep circling back to? What’s the underlying fear in this situation - loss? failure? rejection? or something else?
Where in my body do I feel this tension right now? What might it be trying to tell me?
Your body often knows before your brain does.If I had to guess, what am I actually afraid of that might go deeper than the presenting questions?
What do I think will happen if I don’t figure this out right now? Get curious about the urgency. Where is that pressure coming from?
Is there actually a decision to make here or am I just trying to feel more in control? We can often do our biggest overthinking when we’re trying to feel in control of something that we can’t actually control.
When did this type of overthinking first start showing up in my life? Does it sound like somebody else in my life? Is it particularly loud about specific topics? These might be clues as to a deeper root that’s getting activated here.
🔎 Step 2: Separate Thought from Truth
Once you’ve named what’s swirling around, the next move is to help our mind slow down. I know how impossible that can feel when you’re in the thick of it but remember that overthinking usually has less to do with the situation at hand and more about our body’s reaction to some deeper fear. The answer then is to try to ground ourselves. Overthinking thrives in ambiguity — in all the “maybe” and “what if” and “I don’t know” spaces. These prompts will help you stay out of the spiral and come back to reality.
Is this fear based on facts, or am I filling in blanks with assumptions? Am I assuming that something’s going to go wrong when the reality is that I just don’t know what’s going to happen? (Bonus points if you journal out what might happen if things go right?)
What about this situation is within my control? What is within my influence? What is fully outside of my control? How would my thoughts change if I only focused on the part that’s in my control? Can I just accept that I cannot control the other parts of this situation?
What would I tell someone I love if they were thinking this? Am I making things worse by how I talk to myself?
What’s the worst that could realistically happen? And then what? And then what might happen after that? Now at each step of this downward spiral, are there things I could do to stem the tides? Naming what we’re most scared of and remembering that we are not deciding every single one of our future actions right now helps us bring the current situation down to a manageable size.
🧘 Step 3: Regulate + Recenter
Remember overthinking doesn’t just live in your brain, in fact it’s actually a symptom of something going on in our body. So we will not fully manage down the overthinking if you don’t address your nervous system in the process. Journaling is still primarily a mindset activity so make sure to take a moment after you finish your journaling to reset physically with breath, calming movements, vagus nerve exercises, whatever works for you. You’re almost there!
When was the last time I felt safe and calm? What helped me feel that way? How did my chest feel then? My hands? My head?
What would it feel like in my body to just be okay for now — even if nothing changes today? Can you tune into where you might be holding tension in your body and start to imagine physical shifts toward calmness.
What’s one small thing I could do right now to lower the volume in my head?
Stretch, walk, delete the 47 tabs. Brainstorm things you could do (and then bonus points if you go do them). Even the act of brainstorming can help you feel more in control.If I put this down for 24 hours, what would I do with that energy instead? Sometimes the best thing we can do is just decide not to come to a solution but to keep our brain from spinning, give it another task.
🎯 Step 4: Choose Intentionally
If you’ve gotten this far, check in with yourself. If you’ve slowed down your thoughts enough to actually do some productive brainstorming, then we can take a next step. These prompts help you move forward from alignment, not anxiety.
What actually matters to me in this situation — and what’s just noise? Am I giving my energy to what other people think, ego or things that won’t matter in a year or two?
What’s one value I want to honor in how I respond to this? What version of me do I want to show up as today — regardless of the outcome? What would someone who embodied this value do next in this situation?
What’s one step — not the whole plan — that would feel like forward motion?
What would it look like to choose peace over control today? What can I remind myself to accept rather than fight the parts of life I can’t control? You don’t need to have it all figured out to be okay right now.
How to stop overthinking: some thoughts
Overthinking isn’t who you are. I often refer to overthinkers, but in reality, it’s not an identity, it’s just a symptom of our body being activated. If you’ve lived with this pattern popping up in your life, you know how draining it can be but we have to remember that it’s just a signal from our body trying to stay safe.
If your brain is constantly in overdrive, it doesn’t mean you’re weak or dramatic or “too much.” It usually means you’ve learned — somewhere along the way — that staying ahead of everything might protect you from disappointment, rejection, or failure.
But here’s the truth: overthinking doesn’t protect you. It just wears you out before the real work even begins. It keeps you scared and cautious and prevents you from going after great things in life.
Overthinking convinces us that if we just think through things one more time, we could potentially figure out how to avoid pain or prevent imperfection in our life. It’s a lie.
No amount of thinking can eliminate the possibility of you being rejected, disappointed or feeling like a failure. That’s just a part of life. But overthinking can lead you to making decisions from fear, undermining your own potential and a whole host of other damaging things.
The key is to remember that overthinking is a symptom and coming at it with compassion. Over time this will help you to separate from the overthinking, not to get carried away by the spiral of thoughts and to bring yourself back down to a productive state. Over time, the more you do this, the more you’ll recognize patterns of what tends to send you spiraling and you’ll pick up on patterns of what can help calm you down.
Every time you slow down and meet your thoughts with honesty and compassion, you’re changing your internal wiring. You’re building trust with yourself. You’re creating the kind of safety that no amount of mental rehearsal can give you.
And that’s a skill you’ll carry for life.
You’re not broken. You’re just ready for a different way of being with your thoughts.
Grab your journal. You’ve got this.
