Some people just aren't writers. If writing doesn't come easily to you or if you just don't enjoy it, keeping a stress journal won't be productive. It will just become a source of more stress, one more thing lingering perpetually on your to-do list. If this sounds like you, you might be more comfortable drawing a map of your stress. Mapping your stress is like writing in a stress journal, but instead of using words, you'll use pictures, symbols, and signs.

Draw your stress map as if it were a map of a city. Each building is a stressor. Each region is an area of vulnerability. Each street is a link between stressors, such as the link between your lack of exercise and your joint pain, or the link between your financial problems and your lack of willpower when it comes to spending. One-way streets represent direct cause-and-effect stressors (insomnia → sleep deprivation, knee injury → chronic pain).

Don't worry if you aren't much of an artist. Your map can be a simple picture of basic labeled shapes. Or, if you so desire, it can be a work of art. The point is to find a mode of expression with which you feel comfortable, and that will best help you discover or visualize the way the stress in your life is interconnected, where individual stressors originate, and how some stressors are merely the effect of other stressors. By eliminating or effectively managing a single stressor, you may find you can eliminate several other stressors, too.