How to Stop an Anxiety Spiral: The Journaling Practice That Helps Me

Hey friend,

What do you do when your thoughts won't stop and your body is already exhausted from carrying them?

For me, the answer has almost always been the same:

I write.

I do not and never have had some beautifully curated journaling routine or a perfect wellness practice. I started writing out of desperation. A few years ago, I found myself sitting with a fear so big I didn’t know what to do with it, and putting words on a page was the only thing that brought even a little relief.

I had just found out I had a goiter and thyroid polyps. The doctors ordered a biopsy, which was brutal enough on its own, but the waiting afterward was worse. Days felt like weeks. I sat with a question I couldn’t answer no matter how many times I turned it over in my mind.

And my anxious brain did what anxious brains do.

It skipped straight to cancer. It wrote the ending before the results even came back.

I was terrified in a way I couldn’t fully explain to anyone around me, so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I opened my journal and started writing letters to God.

Not polished reflections. Not gratitude lists. Just raw, unfiltered honesty.

I’m scared.

Please don’t let this be cancer.

Please let the tests come back okay.

Getting the fear out of my body and onto the page was the only thing that quieted the spiral, even temporarily. I didn’t know it then, but writing would become one of the ways I learned how to stop an anxiety spiral from completely taking over my thoughts.

And here’s what I’ve learned about spiraling, after living through more of them than I can count:

Your mind is not trying to torture you. It’s trying to protect you. It believes that if it prepares you for every possible outcome, you’ll somehow be safer.

The problem is that it only prepares you for the worst one.

It rehearses catastrophe on a loop until you’re exhausted, overwhelmed, and convinced the hardest outcome is the only one waiting for you.

Writing interrupts that loop.

Not because journaling magically fixes everything. It doesn’t.

But putting words on a page forces your brain to slow down long enough to form an actual thought instead of endlessly recycling fear. You go from drowning inside the feeling to looking at it from a small distance.

And sometimes that distance changes everything.

How to Stop an Anxiety Spiral With Best-Case-Scenario Journaling

What I’ve also learned is that venting on the page only takes you so far. At some point, you have to intentionally redirect your mind. You have to gently pull it away from the worst-case scenario and give it somewhere else to go.

That’s where best case scenario journaling changed things for me.

The concept is simple: instead of allowing your mind to endlessly rehearse disaster, you intentionally write toward the best possible outcome.

Most likely outcome? Maybe not. Guarantee? Nothing in life is guaranteed. Absolute best case your imagination can muster? Golden!

What if this turns out okay? What would that look like? feel like? Describe the moment. Be descriptive, let your imagination run freely.

It sounds almost too simple, but that’s exactly why it works.

When you’re spiraling, your brain is already scanning for danger and preparing for pain. Best case scenario journaling doesn’t ignore that instinct. It simply gives your mind equal time to imagine something gentler.

You’re not bypassing fear. You’re balancing it.

Here’s how to try it the next time your mind won’t slow down:

Open to a blank page and write the date.

Start by writing out the fear. Name the thing your mind keeps circling back to. Don’t soften it. Don’t censor it.

Then create a new section and write the absolute best outcome you can imagine. Be specific. Describe it in detail. Write about how it would feel if things worked out. Write as though peace is possible.

There are no rules. No perfect prompts. No right way to do it.

Just write toward possibility until your nervous system remembers it doesn’t have to live entirely inside fear.

You don’t even have to fully believe the best-case scenario.

You just have to allow yourself to imagine it.

Eventually, my biopsy results came back benign. I remember exhaling in relief for the first time in weeks. But not long after that, I learned the recommendation was still to have my thyroid removed.

The spiral didn’t end with good news. It just changed shape.

That’s life sometimes.

Writing didn’t change my thyroid. It didn’t erase uncertainty. But it changed how I carried the waiting.

And for those of us who spiral, that matters more than people realize.

So if your mind won’t slow down today, open a page.

Skip the worst-case scenario for a moment and write the best one instead.

It may not be guaranteed, but your nervous system deserves a break from the story fear keeps telling it.

Thank you for spending a few quiet moments here with me.

I hope you leave feeling a little lighter than when you arrived.

Until next time,

keep writing.

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Today’s Reflection

NOTICE

What situation has your mind already written an ending for—even though you don’t actually know how it will turn out?

EXPLORE

If fear didn’t get to write the ending, what else might be possible?

CARRY FORWARD

When you catch yourself rehearsing the worst-case scenario, don’t argue with it. Add another possibility: “That could happen. But what else could happen?”

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