When we face a period of stress and/or anxiety, it is easy to feel trapped. Many people find it hard to focus and/or concentrate on the topic at hand. This begins to bleed into personal and professional life. Before long, anyone can find themselves weighed down by the intensity of their stress and anxiety. With that in mind, it is important to look at potential solutions to help manage stress and anxiety better. One solution that has worked for many people, though, is writing.
Writing is in itself an excellent form of mindfulness. Even writing for as little as 20 minutes per day can be a good way to free the mind. You can even find that writing something as simple as how you feel in the moment can be useful. When we allow thoughts to reside in our minds, it can be hard to see the solution. By writing down our thoughts, they become easier to organise and even to argue against.
Many times, seeing your problem written down can make a solution shine through. You remove the issue from the mind and instead put it on a screen or a piece of paper. It now becomes something you can more readily deal with.
However, sometimes the best thing to do when writing is to break away into an entirely new topic. Find a topic or a theme and start writing something on that topic. It can be a great brain teaser, which is good for keeping our minds fresh. It also takes your mind off the stressful topic, making you feel more comfortable about creating a solution.
Even something as simple as writing down a list of why you think you feel a certain way can be quite liberating. From writing a particular piece on a randomly generated topic to writing down your inner train of thought, you can liberate yourself from a busy, stressed-out mind.
What should you write?
An easy way to come up with a writing topic to help you get back on track is to look for a simple quote. For example, academic essay quote generators can be a great place to start. They give you a very specific quote or topic to think about covering. This makes you go inside your mind to look for a potential solution. When you do this, you focus your mind on a specific topic. This has the benefit of aligning your thoughts on a topic outside of what is stressing you or making you anxious.
A good place to start is with a GAMSAT quote generator (such as https://gradready.com.au/gamsat-quote-generator). This works very well because it gives you topical quotes across various themes. The quote can come from all manner of topics and leaves you with a slightly philosophical question to try and answer.
This can be great for reducing mental stress and putting you on the path to thinking clearly about your situation. Many times, simply breaking away from the current stressful situation can be enough to improve your own decision making. After writing, returning to the issue giving you stress and/or anxiety feels easier. You might even find that you now have a solution to your previous problem that was obfuscated by a stressed mind. By moving on to a new topic, you can unblock your mind and see a clearer solution.
Alicia Saville did her degree in psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She is interested in mental health and well-being.
