25 Journal Prompts for Treating Your Anxiety Like a Roommate

Anxiety is easier to live with once you stop treating it as a fault and start treating it as a housemate: one who pays no rent, keeps terrible hours and has opinions about everything.

These prompts are for getting to know it. Pick one, answer it honestly, and give it a name if that helps.

The prompts

Pick one. One prompt answered honestly beats twenty-five answered at speed.

1. If your anxiety paid rent, what would it owe you by now?
2. Write your anxiety’s performance review. Strengths: punctuality.
3. What does your anxiety do while you are busy being happy?
4. Name one house rule your anxiety has never once followed.
5. If you evicted your anxiety, what would its reply say?
6. What would you name your anxiety? Why does it suit it?
7. When did it move in? Did it bring anything?
8. What is your anxiety’s favourite time of day?
9. What are its top three topics of conversation?
10. What is its catchphrase?
11. If your anxiety had a job title, what would it be?
12. What does it think it is protecting you from?
13. Write its out-of-office message.
14. What would it order at a restaurant? How long would it take to decide?
15. Which of your friends has it never liked, for no reason?
16. What has it been certain about that never happened?
17. What does it do when you make plans?
18. If it wrote your CV, what would it list under “skills”?
19. What would it post in the group chat?
20. Draft the agenda for its 3am meeting.
21. What is its star sign? Don’t overthink it. (It will.)
22. What would it say in a thank-you speech?
23. Why can’t it just be chill? Ask it. Write the answer.
24. What does it pack for a weekend away?
25. What does it think of your driving?

Want somewhere to write the answers?

These come from the same place as Anxiety, My Old Friend: A Journal for Things That Haven’t Happened. Its section “The Roommate” has six prompts like these with ruled space under each, plus a page for drawing it. The whole journal is a 58-page printable PDF with 60 prompts and ten activity pages.

These prompts are for writing things down and occasionally laughing at them. They are not treatment or medical advice. If anxiety is making daily life hard, please talk to your doctor or a qualified professional.

Get the journal