Self Help Journal Prompts to Cope With Anxiety

Journaling is a highly effective, science-backed self-help tool for coping with anxiety.

Using a journal can help reduce racing thoughts, anxious cycles, cognitive load, racing thoughts and anxious cycles (see my article: Journaling to Help Relieve Stress and Anxiety).

Coping With Anxiety

When anxiety feels overwhelming, writing in your journal helps to externalize your thoughts and feelings so you can look at them objectively.

Journal Prompts For Grounding Yourself in the Moment

You can use the following journal prompts when your anxiety is acute and you feel overwhelmed:

Grounding in the Moment Relief 

Use these prompts when anxiety is acute: 

• Where do I feel the anxiety in my body right now? Write down the physical sensations (e.g., tight chest, clenched jaw) without judging them. What is one thing you can do that would help you to soften your physical sensations (e.g., square breathing)?

• Look around the room: List 5 things you see, 4 things you can physically touch, 3 things you hear, 2 things you smell and 1 thing you can taste (this is the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Method).

• Describe anxiety as a passing weather pattern: Describe the storm, but remind yourself the sky remains intact beneath the clouds.

Challenging Your Anxious Thoughts

Use these prompts to challenge irrational fears and worst case scenarios:

• What is the worst case scenario going through my mind? After you have written down your worse case scenario, write down the best case scenario and the realistic middle-ground outcome.

• Am I confusing my fearful thoughts for facts? Write down observable evidence for and against this worry (see my article: Thoughts Aren't Facts).

• Look back on past challenges: When have I felt this anxious before and still managed to survive or get through it? What helped me to get through it back then?

• Are my thoughts productive or unproductive? Am I actively problem solving or am I overthinking things?

Identifying Triggers and Patterns

Use these prompts when you feel low-level anxiety and you're not sure where its coming from:

• Divide a page into two columns: "In My Control" and "Out of My Control" and then categorize your worries into these two buckets.

• What story is my anxious mind trying to tell me? Who is the villain in that story and what am I trying to protect myself from? 

• What have my energy levels, sleep habits and routines looked like over the past week? Are there physical triggers compounding my mental stress?

• When was the last time I felt safe, calm or content? Specifically, what made me feel that way and how can I recreate that today?

Developing Self Compassion and Healing

Use these prompts when your anxiety is paired with a harsh inner critic, guilt or perfectionism:

• If my best friend came to me feeling the same way I feel now, what would I say to them? Write down the comforting words for yourself.

• Write a letter to your anxiety. Treat your anxiety like an overprotective, deeply misguided entity. Acknowledge its intent to keep you safe, but tell it why its panic is no longer needed right now. 

• What would unconditional self acceptance look like today? How can I give myself permission to be a flawed, anxious, healing human being?

My Next Article: 

In my next article, I'll discuss how to develop a deeper understanding of your anxiety and the underlying issues that might be involved.

Get Help in Therapy

If self-help strategies aren't helping you to cope with your anxiety, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who can help you to go beyond the surface to overcome anxiety.

Rather than struggling on your own, working with a skilled psychotherapist can help you overcome anxiety so you can lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, IFS, EMDR, AEDP, EFT couples therapist, Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

Before setting up an appointment, I provide a free 10-15 minute phone call.

You can contact me by calling (917) 742-2624 or by emailing me.

Also See My Articles:

What is the Difference Between Anxiety and Fear? 

Debunking Common Myths About Anxiety 

How to Quiet Your Overthinking Mind

Journal Prompts to Cope With Perfectionism

As I discussed in a prior article, Journaling to Relieve Stress and Anxiety, journaling is a powerful tool when you want to make changes in your life.

When you're struggling with trying to be "perfect", journaling can help you to soften your perfectionistic tendencies, including calming down your inner critic (see my article: The Cycle of Perfectionism, Procrastination and Paralysis).

Writing in a Journal to Cope With Perfectionism

Journaling can also help you to understand the root of your problem and also develop self compassion for the critical part of yourself (see my article: Making Friends With Your Inner Critic).

The act of journaling gives you a safe space to explore your feelings.

The other benefits to journaling about perfectionism include:

• Explore the Roots of Your Problem and the Triggers - Understanding the origin of your problem can also help you understand how perfectionism became a survival strategy and coping mechanism.

• Your Early Influences: Did your parents, teachers, mentors or other people in your life exhibit perfectionist behavior?

Writing in a Journal to Cope With Perfectionism

• Your Earliest Memories: What is your first memory of feeling the urge to be "perfect"?

• Your Current Triggers: What specific situations trigger your inner critic and perfectionist behavior (e.g., family, relationships, work, fitness etc)?

• Your Cultural Pressure: How do your cultural and social circles influence how you feel about past achievements and future aspirations?

• Your Past and Current Survival Strategies: How did perfectionism act as a survival strategy in the past and in current situations? How is it hurting you now?

• Have Dialogues With Your Inner Critic - Perfectionism often shows up in extreme ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. You can challenge rigid rules and reframe distorted thoughts and unhelpful feelings and behaviors:

• Define "Good Enough": What internal or external benchmarks do you use to decide if a task or project is "good enough" and complete? (Perfection vs. Good Enough).

• Expose the Hidden Rules: What unconscious rules do you live by that keep your anxiety and perfectionism high?

• Consider the Worst Case Scenario: If you were to fail at your current goal, project or task, what is the worst thing that could happen?

• Choose Alternative Self Talk: What is a harsh thought about yourself that you had recently? What is a kinder, more realistic alternative that you can tell yourself instead?

• Redefine Failure: What is your current emotional relationship with failure? How can you see it as useful information for you instead of failure?

• Release Control and Embrace Failure - Letting to of perfectionism allows you to focus and feel free about the process:

• Loosen Your Grip: Where in your life are you trying to control the outcome the most?

Writing in a Journal to Cope With Perfectionism

• Try an Experiment: What is one small thing you can intentionally do imperfectly this week just to see the outcome?

• Lower the Bar: Which of your deadlines or unrealistic self-imposed standards can you safely lower today?

• Learn to Enjoy the Mess: What would you enjoy right now if you weren't concerned about making it "perfect"?

• Reclaim Your Time: What would help the perfectionist part of yourself to relax and soften to give you some free time back?

• Celebrating Progress and Self Compassion - Shift your focus to the personal growth you have developed and not on what you have left to do:

• Focus on Past Desires: What do you currently do or possess that you wanted in the past? Ten years ago? Five years ago? One year ago?

• Focus on Boundary Wins: What demands are you now declining that you used to  accept out of guilt or shame?

• Recognize Unseen Achievements: Write down three wins from this week that have nothing to do with external productivity--no matter how small they are.

• Recognize Your Unconditional Self Worth: Aside from your accomplishments or hoped-for accomplishments and regardless of productivity, what qualities do you possess that make you an inherently valuable person?

Writing in a Journal to Cope With Perfectionism

Quick Tips For Journalers Who Are Perfectionists

People who have perfectionist tendencies often struggle with journaling because they get stuck in certain areas. This is usually because they:

• Want to pick the "perfect" book or online site to use to journal.
• Believe their journal should be "flawless" with no scratch outs or scribbles.
• Believe that whatever they write should be very insightful all the time.

If this sounds like you, you can try these quick tips to see if they're helpful for you:

• The "Ruin It" Strategy: If you're writing in a journal book, you can start your journal with a big intentional scribble to break the distortion in your thinking that your journal must be "perfect".

• Time Your Writing Sessions: Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and stop writing when the timer goes off--even if you are in mid-sentence. This can help you to overcome the habit that what you're doing must be completely finished.

• No Editing Allowed: Use a pen. Don't cross out mistakes. Don't tear out pages from your journal. Allow the journal to be messy.

Get Help in Therapy

These journal prompts and tips can help you to cope with perfectionism.

However, if you want to overcome perfectionism, you might need to do deeper work with a licensed mental health professional who can help you to overcome the problems that are holding you back.

Get Help in Therapy 

Rather than struggling on your own, IFS Therapy is particularly effective at helping clients to overcome perfectionism and other problems (see my article: IFS Therapy is a Gentle, Evidence Based Therapy).

I will write more about how proactive and reactive parts develop from an IFS therapy perspective.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, IFS Parts Work, EFT Couples Therapist, Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have helped many individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

I provide a free 10-15 minute phone call before setting up an appointment.

You can call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or you can email me.

Also See My Articles:

Overcoming Your Fear of Making Mistakes

Overcoming Recurring Patterns of Self Sabotage

Fear of Change 

What is a Growth Mindset vs a Fixed Mindset? 

What is Somatic IFS Therapy? 

Coping With Perfectionism in Relationships

 

Why Chasing Happiness Doesn't Work

People often feel discouraged in their pursuit of happiness because the more they chase it, the more elusive it feels.  

Chasing Happiness Doesn't Work

Chasing happiness creates an emotional paradox which often pushes true well-being away. 

Psychological research reveals that transforming happiness into a rigid, primary goal often creates stress, disappointment and exhaustion instead of fulfillment.

The Illusion of a Final Destination to Happiness

• The Hedonic Treadmill: People often assume there is a fixed finish line--like achieving a specific career rank or purchasing a luxury item. But the truth is that once this kind of goal is achieved, the brain quickly adapts to the new baseline. This, in turn, can spark never-ending desires in the hopes of achieving happiness.

• Time Scarcity: Actively working toward a vague goal of "being happy" makes people extremely aware of time. This causes people to feel they never have enough time in the day which can cause panic and dissatisfaction.

• The Perfection Standard: Treating positive emotions, like happiness, as the default sets unrealistic and unmanageable expectations. When life inevitably brings real challenges, an "expectation gap" forms leading to severe disappointment and discouragement (see my article: Coping With Life's Inevitable Ups and Downs).

Flawed Emotional Management

• Constant Self-Monitoring: Chasing happiness forces people into a constant state of internal evaluation. Constantly asking, "Am I happy yet?" pulls people out of possible immersive, joyful experiences--also known as a flow state (see my article: What is a Flow State?).

Chasing Happiness Doesn't Work

• Suppression of Reality: People often mistakenly try to push negative emotions under the rug. But natural human experiences, like grief, sadness and frustration, are meant to be felt. Trying to suppress these feelings creates an unstable, exhausting psychological foundation.

• The Achievement Deficit: High achievers frequently replace true life enjoyment with strict struggles to achieve success. They treat hobbies or relaxation as a waste of time, which leaves them feeling empty.

Evolutionary Hurdles

• Survival Over Satisfaction: From an evolutionary standpoint, the human brain didn't evolve to be constantly happy. It evolved to survive, reproduce and scan the environment for threats.

• An Inability to Predict What Will Create Happiness: Researchers have discovered that humans have an inability to accurately predict what will make them feel fulfilled in the long run.

A Shift in Focus
To reduce a sense of discouragement, shift your focus away from direct happiness. Instead aim your focus on meaning, resilience, gratitude and deep emotional connection which can allow contentment to happen naturally.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), IFS, Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

What Are Peak Experiences?  

A "Happy Life" vs a Meaningful Life 

Becoming Your True Self 

Healing From Moral Injury

Moral injury is the profound psychological, social and spiritual distress that occurs when someone perpetrates, witnesses or fails to prevent acts that violate their deeply held moral beliefs and values.

Healing From Moral Injury

Moral injury was originally studied in military veterans returning from war. Now, it's seen as a widespread phenomenon affecting healthcare workers, first responders and everyday individuals.

The consequences of moral injury is that it has a negative impact on a person's conscience, shatters their sense of self worth and erodes their trust in institutions or leaders. 

What Are Core Causes of Moral Injury?

A moral injury is triggered by a Potentially Morally Injurious Event (PMIE) which usually break down into the following categories:

• Acts of Commission: Doing something that actively violates your moral code (e.g., a soldier either accidentally or following orders to harm civilians in a combat zone).

• Acts of Omission: Failing to act or prevent harm when your ethical compass dictates that you should (e.g., as a bystander you fail to stop an assault).

Healing From Moral Injury

• Betrayal: Witnessing individuals in authority or institutions act against what is moral and just, especially in high stakes situations (e.g., an executive ordering employees to hide serious defects in a product that can do harm to consumers).

• Bearing Witness: Observing atrocities, extreme cruelty or systemic injustices without the power to change the outcome (e.g., care workers or visiting relatives witness bed-bound residents suffering from severe bedsores, malnutrition and prolonged isolation due to corporate understaffing and regulatory failures).

What Are the Symptoms and Manifestations of Moral Injury?

When an individual's ethical boundaries are crossed or when they are placed in a situation where they violate their own moral beliefs and values, it alters their worldview.

Common symptoms include:

• Sustained Guilt and Shame: Feeling a persistent sense of remorse or believing "I am a bad person."

• Social Isolation: Withdrawing from loved ones, peers or community activities due to feeling unworthy or that they will "contaminate" others.

Healing From Moral Injury

• Loss of Trust: An inability to trust authority figures, organizational leadership or systems.

• An Existential or Spiritual Crisis: Questioning long-held religious or spiritual beliefs, faith n a higher power or the fundamental goodness of society.

• Anger and Disillusionment: Directing profound bitterness toward a system or the people that forced an impossible choice.

What is the Difference Between Moral Injury and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

While moral injury and PTSD often co-occur, they are distinct psychological concepts:

Whereas moral injury is primarily a guilt, shame and values-based condition, PTSD is a mental health condition after experiencing of witnessing a deeply traumatic, terrifying or ife-threanting event or ongoing events. 

Primary Triggers

• Moral Injury: Ethical transgressions or a betrayal of core values

• PTSD: A life threatening, psychological event (or series of events) that overwhelms an individual emotionally and psychologically

Core Emotions

• Moral Injury: Guilt, shame and deep remorse

• PTSD: Fear, horror, helplessness or panic

Biological Impact

• Moral Injury: Identity disintegration (i.e., a shattering of a person's core sense of self, moral identity and personal narrative)

• PTSD: hypervigilance, visual replay (e.g., visual replay, present-moment distortion, flashbacks, body memories and so on) and a heightened startle response

Clinical Status

• Moral Injury: Recognized as a moral problem and clinical focus, but not a separate diagnosis

• PTSD: A formal psychiatric diagnosis

What Are Current Examples of Moral Injury in Everyday Life?

There are many current examples including but not limited to:

• Healthcare Resource Triage: A doctor or nurse is forced to triage care by rationing ventilators or critical ICU bed during a pandemic which, effectively, determines which patients will live and which will die.

• Family and Caregiver Burnout: A family member caring for a relative with severe dementia becomes completely exhausted and places the relative in an understaffed nursing home. This results in a deep sense of abandonment.

• Navigating Marital Separation and Divorce: A parent files for divorce to escape an unhappy marriage, but they experience profound guilt over the emotional distress and disruption caused to their children.

How to Heal From Moral Injury

Since moral injury is a wound of the conscience rather than a fear-based disorder (like PTSD), conventional trauma treatment focused only on anxiety reduction might not be enough.  Recovery requires specialized multi-dimensional support including:

• Meaning Making: Processing the event to contextualize actions within a chaotic or impossible situation.

• Self Forgiveness: Moving away from persistent self punishment and developing self compassion.

Healing From Moral Injury

• Communal Recognition: Speaking the truth to a supportive group of peers who understand the unique pressures of the situation.

• Moral Repair: Engaging in altruistic actions, volunteerism or advocacy work to reaffirm personal values.

• Psychotherapy: Therapy helps to heal moral injury by providing a structured, nonjudgmental place to process guilt and shame, deconstruct impossible standards or responsibility and rebuild a functional moral identity.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, IFS, EFT (for couples), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

 

Cinema Therapy: How Can Watching Movies Improve Your Mental Health?

Watching movies with complex characters can be beneficial to your mental health. The practice known as cinema therapy (also known as movie therapy) is a growing therapeutic technique which uses the narrative arc and depth of films to foster psychological growth.

Cinematherapy Can Improve Your Mental Health

When you engage in multi-layered, three-dimensional characters, rather than flat, predictable archetypes, it stimulates specific cognitive and emotional processes that can directly support well being.

Watching complex characters can benefit your mental health through several key mechanisms:

Safe Emotional Distance and Projection

Discussing or processing your own personal pain can sometimes make you feel vulnerable  under certain circumstances. In cinema therapy complex characters in a movie provide an emotional buffer that includes:

• Safe Exploration: You can project your own fears, unvoiced struggles or internal conflicts onto a character.

Cinematherapy Can Improve Your Mental Health

• Objective Detachment: This allows you to process intense themes, including grief, trauma or confusion, with enough distance to evaluate them objectively without flooding your nervous system.

Catharsis and Emotional Regulation
Bottled up feelings can lead to anxiety and pent up stress.  Complex stories act as an emotional pressure valve:

• Controlled Release: Watching a character face existential dilemmas or deep emotional pain provides a structured container that invites you to laugh, cry or feel anger in a safe way.

• Neurochemical Reset: This cathartic release can trigger a drop in cortisol and an increase in dopamine which can lower physical and emotional tension.

Cognitive Flexibility and Shattering Binary Thinking

Flat characters teach us to view the world in black-and-white terms (good vs evil). Complex, morally ambiguous characters force your brain to stretch:

• Brain Activation: Neuroimaging studies show that watching complex characters activates the parts of the brain that handle perspective-taking and the management of cognitive conflict.

• Nuanced Realism: Seeing a character who is deeply flawed yet capable of profound kindness helps you to reject harsh, binary judgments about yourself and others, which builds tolerance for life's natural ambiguities.

Building Inner Resources and Resilience
When characters navigate complicated psychological terrain, they model coping mechanisms and self discovery:

• Inner Resources: Watching a character struggle to find their authentic self amidst social pressure or personal crisis can awaken forgotten internal resources and coping skills as well as help to build resilience.

Cinematherapy Can Improve Your Mental Health

• Active Reflection: It inspires post-viewing reflection, which is the mental integration that happens after watching the movie. It can help you to apply the character's breakthroughs and gained wisdom to your own life.

Universal Experiences and Reduced Isolation

A core part of many mental health problems is that you feel alone with your experience and that no one else has ever experienced what is happening to you, so watching movies with complex characters helps you to realize you're not alone:

• Validating the "Hidden Self": Complex cinematic portrayals capture the messy realities of the human condition. An example of this is putting on a happy public persona while struggling on the inside (see my article: Looking Happy on the Outside But Feeling Broken on the Inside).

Cinematherapy Can Improve Your Mental Health

• The Power of Shared Humanity: Seeing those hidden, complicated parts of yourself reflected on the screen helps you to realize that many problems are universal. This can help you to realize that your struggles are a normal part of being a human being.

How Does a Psychotherapist Use Cinema Therapy in Therapy Sessions?

A psychotherapist uses cinema therapy (or movie therapy) as an emotional bridge to help clients to discuss personal issues. 

The therapist uses a structured framework where clients watch the movie, discuss the movie and process their own real-life experiences which are similar to what the characters dealt with in the film.

How Therapists Use Cinematherapy With Clients

Talking about fictional characters can feel less threatening than if clients talk directly about their problems. 

The therapist will often ask questions like, "Why do you think the main character made that choice?" or "What would you have done in this character's place if you had the same dilemma?"

The therapist can also explore with clients what it was like to watch the movie and to realize they aren't the only ones who have these types of problems. 

They also ask questions like "Would you have handled this problem in the same way or in a different way?"

After clients have processed their thoughts and feelings about the movie with the therapist, the therapist can also ask what it was like to discuss the movie with her. This is called metaprocessing.

This can help clients to open up to discuss their own problems and reflect on their therapeutic relationship with the therapist.

What Kind of Movies Can Help to Improve Your Mental Health

There are so many movies that can be beneficial.

Here is one example that can be beneficial for individuals and couples to watch:

The Before Trilogy: The Before Trilogy is a highly acclaimed series of three romantic dramas by Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. The three films in the trilogy are:

• Before Sunrise (1995)
• Before Sunset (2004)
• Before Midnight (2013)

The trilogy follows the evolving relationship between an American man named Jesse and a French woman named Celine. This series, which was filmed in real time over several years, is famous for its naturalistic conversation-driven format.

What Can You Learn From Watching the Before Trilogy? (No spoilers)

The Before Trilogy teaches that long term relationships require active continuous choices rather than relying only on romantic fate:

• Love changes over time
• Communication predicts survival of the relationship
• Love requires constant effort
• Time can alter your perspective

When I assign this trilogy to watch over a period of a few weeks, I use the films to help the client reflect on their personal struggles and how the characters in the movie dealt with similar struggles.

If I assign it to a couple, I ask them to watch the movies and discuss it afterward in terms of the characters and the dilemmas the characters faced in an effort to stimulate deeper communication between them and a deeper understanding of their relationship.

Conclusion

Cinema therapy is an expressive therapeutic modality where a mental health professional assigns a certain movies to help clients process emotions, gain new perspectives and heal. Therapists can also use TV programs or other types of videos.

Cinema therapy works by using carefully selected movies as a "third person" tool to mirror real-life struggles, encourage empathy and prompt breakthroughs.

It can be beneficial for individual adult clients or couples.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), IFS and Ego States Parts Work, Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist

I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

How to Set Boundaries With Friends If They're Texting You Too Much

There are some people who enjoy texting back and forth with their friends all day long and it's mutually satisfying for all the texters involved.

Setting Boundaries With Friends About Texting

But if you're not one of those people who enjoys constant texting and you have a friend who likes to send you lots of texts, rather than letting resentment and emotional distance grow, you can tactfully set a limit with your friend (see my article: Do You Feel Entitled to Set Boundaries With the People in Your Life?).

In a world where people can reach others in a flash by texting, a lot of people find it gratifying to express their thoughts and feelings in texts and enjoy the dopamine hit when their friends text back.

People who have problems understanding boundaries can text all day long without considering whether the person they're texting has the time and emotional bandwidth to deal with a barrage of texts (see my article: Do You Feel Overwhelmed By Your Friend's Problems?).

If you haven't set a limit, you can give your friend the benefit of the doubt that they might not know you don't like a lot of texts and that you don't have the time or emotional bandwidth for it. Therefore, it's up to you to communicate this to them so you take care of your time and mental health.

Why Do Excessive Texts Create Stress and Anxiety?

Here are some of the most common reasons:

• Pressure to Respond (Expectation of Availability): You might feel pressure to respond immediately. This often leads to stress and anxiety when you can't or you don't want to respond immediately.

• Digital Burnout and Overstimulation: Constant notifications can break concentration. The ongoing distraction can lead to mental fatigue.

• Lack of Personal Space: Excessive non-urgent texts throughout the day can feel like an intrusion on your privacy and downtime.

• Anxiety Trigger: A high volume of text messages can induce anxiety and a feeling of being overwhelmed.

• Disruption to Workflow and Personal Tasks: Constant interruptions can make it difficult to focus on work or personal tasks.

How to Set Boundaries With a Friend Who Texts Too Much

Here are some suggestions that might be helpful:

• Shift the Focus from Their Behavior to Your Own Needs and Boundaries: First, recognize that you have the right to your feelings as well as the right to set boundaries. If you can't set boundaries with others, you're going to feel frustrated and you'll probably have ongoing interpersonal problems due to the lack of boundaries. Assuming you want to maintain this friendship, you can say, "Having to check texts many times per day makes me feel anxious. I'm trying to check these notifications less."

• Express Appreciation For Their Friendship: Assuming you want to maintain this friendship, express your appreciation for your friend and the things you like about them so that you're not just focusing on something that bothers you about their behavior. 

Setting Boundaries With Friends About Texting

• Shift Time Spent With Your Friend From Texts to In-Person Visits: Suggest to your friend that you would like to know what's going on in their life, but you would prefer to do it in person. Then, suggest a time when you're free to meet in person. 

• Let Them Know When You're Available: Let your friend know when you're reachable and manage their expectations about when you're free to respond to texts. You can say something like, "I don't have time to check texts throughout the day, so I only check them after work" or "I've been so busy lately that I haven't had time to check personal texts." Then, as previously mentioned, you can suggest meeting when you're both free.

Setting Boundaries With Friends About Texting

• Let them Know You're "Unplugging" to Manage Your Stress: Let your friend know that, as part of a new lifestyle change, you're taking time to "unplug" from your phone and computer. You can tell them that, as part of your digital detox, you're cutting back on the time you spend reading email and texts. You can also tell them that if they don't hear from you for a few days, this is the reason.  

• Evaluate the Friendship: If your friend doesn't understand that you don't have the time and emotional bandwidth for a lot of texts in a day, you can evaluate whether the aspects you like about this friend outweigh this problem. If you have communicated your boundaries and they don't respect them, there might be other areas where you'll find they will cross your boundaries. At some point, you'll need to decide whether you want this friend in your life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego State Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have over 25 years of experiencing helping individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.