Self-Care Journal Prompts

Journaling can be a very helpful self-care practice. It can help to let your thoughts out, get to know yourself better, and manage stress, anxiety, and mood. Read my previous blog The Joys of Journaling for more benefits of journaling.

Sometimes, it can be hard to know where to start with journaling. A blank page can feel overwhelming. You might feel stuck and unsure about what to write.

Below I share 36 self-care journal prompts related to the issues that I see most frequently in my therapy practice. You’re welcome to use these prompts for your own journaling, and they may also get your creative juices flowing to come up with your own prompts to use.

General Self-Care

1. What are your current self-care practices? How do you currently take care of yourself?

2. In what areas of your life can you take better care of yourself? How can you start taking better care of yourself in those areas?

3. Describe how you feel when you take care of yourself compared to when you don’t take care of yourself.

4. What is one self-care practice that you really want to try? Make a plan to try it soon.

5. What’s stopping you for doing more self-care?

6. How can you create more time for self-care? When you’re busy, how can you take 5 or 10 minutes for self-care?

7. How do you take care of your physical health? Your mental health? Emotional health? Spiritual health?

8. What do you do when you want to recharge?

9. Name 10 things you’re grateful for.

10. Why do you need to take better care of yourself?

Anxiety Self-Care

1. What does your anxiety feel like? How do you know when you’re feeling anxious?

2. What helps you feel calm and peaceful?

3. What are your thoughts on using mindfulness for anxiety management?

4. How do you or can you use physical activity to manage anxiety?

5. What can you do to reduce anxiety before you go to sleep? When you wake up in the morning? During your work / school day?

6. Write three affirmations to use when you feel anxious.

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Stress Self-Care

1. What does stress feel like for you? What are the physical and mental symptoms that tell you you’re stressed?

2. How do you take care of yourself when you’re stressed?

3. What’s one thing you can do today to reduce stress?

4. What self-care practices are most helpful for managing stress?

5. What practices, habits, people, places, things, etc. increase your stress levels?

6. Have you ever been burned out? What was that experience like? What led to that burnout? How did you recover from it? How can you prevent future burnout?

People Pleasing Self-Care

1. What boundaries do you need at work? At home? With friends? With family and significant others?

2. What boundaries have you already set? How did it go when you set those boundaries?

3. What’s your biggest struggle with setting boundaries?

4. How can you start speaking up for yourself more confidently?

5. In what ways can you start prioritizing yourself? In what ways do you need to prioritize yourself?

6. Describe your identity in detail. Who are you? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Perfectionism Self-Care

1. Keep track of your thoughts that you believe contribute to perfectionism.

2. Keep track of the negative self-talk you experience this week and practice reframing those thoughts to positive self-talk.

3. Why do you feel like you need to do everything perfectly? What will happen if you don’t do it perfectly?

4. Perfectionists often feel like they’re never done working on something because they’re searching for an unreachable goal of perfection. If you’ve experienced this, how do you deal with this feeling?

5. Make a list of five things you like about yourself.

6. Create two affirmations to use when you feel like you’ve made a mistake or failed at something.

I hope you enjoy this list! Let me know which prompts were most helpful for you. Happy writing!