Name your stressors, notice their impact, and leave with a small plan for the week ahead.
Nothing is saved, sent or seen by anyone, including me. Print your plan before closing the tab.
List the things currently taking up room: deadlines, decisions, money, the thing you have been avoiding. Short phrases are enough. Start with one; aim for three to eight.
This is a working version of the stress-mapping exercise from my corporate training workshops, in five short steps.
Imagine you have been given two urgent tasks for the same afternoon. This fictional example shows how to turn a broad worry into a specific next step.
The walk may help you settle. The workload still needs a conversation. If exhaustion keeps returning, read about burnout recovery or explore psychotherapy for burnout.
Some things need a next step. Others need a conversation or support.
For each stressor, be honest about whose it is. Stress research has rested on this distinction since psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman mapped it in the 1980s: solve what is yours to solve and tend to yourself where it is not. A lot of energy is lost trying to control what is not yours.
A note before you sort: stress is never purely an individual responsibility. Workload, systems and other people create real stressors that no personal habit can fix; social psychologist Christina Maslach's four decades of research place the roots of workplace stress in working conditions, not in the worker. This step exists precisely so those stressors land in the right column.
Add at least one stressor in step 1 first.
Everyone has early warning signs. Tick the ones you recognise; noticing them early is half the work.
Notice what feels familiar. You can leave any of the choices blank.
Pick the two that fit the week you actually have. You can swap them at any time.
Small practices work because they survive real life and because the body needs them. Health educator Emily Nagoski and conductor Amelia Nagoski call it completing the stress cycle: a demand ending on paper is not the same as the stress ending in the body, so the body needs a physical signal that it is over. Pick the two that fit the week you actually have. If grounding is new to you, this gentle guide walks you through it.
0 of 2 practices selected
Some of what you listed is not yours alone to fix. Naming it out loud, to a manager, a partner or a team, is often the step that changes the most.
Sometimes the worksheet reveals a load that has been heavy for a long time. A free 20-minute discovery call is a low-pressure place to talk about what you found and whether steadier support would help.
Your worksheet answers are not included in your enquiry.
This worksheet is the self-serve version of an exercise I facilitate in stress management workshops for organisations: same map, plus the conversations about workload, systems and what the organisation owns. If the maps in your team keep filling the "not mine to carry alone" column, that is a finding worth acting on.
This is a mental-health tool, so you deserve to know what it stands on. None of these steps are mine alone.
Psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman, whose 1984 appraisal model still anchors most stress research, showed that stress is not the event itself; it is the meeting between a demand and what you believe you can do about it. Writing the demand down and deciding honestly whose it is changes that appraisal, which is why the map comes before the practices.
Coping that targets the problem works best where you have real influence and coping that tends to the body works best where you do not. Problem-solving energy spent on what is not yours drains you without changing anything.
Health educator Emily Nagoski and conductor Amelia Nagoski describe completing the stress cycle: the body needs a physical signal that a demand has ended, separate from the demand actually ending. In a randomised Stanford Medicine trial led by neuroscientist Melis Yilmaz Balban, five minutes a day of exhale-weighted breathing lifted mood and lowered physiological arousal within a month and outperformed mindfulness meditation in the same trial.
Workload and systems create stress that no personal habit can fix. Social psychologist Christina Maslach's four decades of workplace research and the World Health Organization's classification of burnout as an occupational phenomenon both place the roots in working conditions rather than personal weakness.
Yes. You are welcome to use it with a team, a class or clients, with a mention of where it came from. It is adapted from the stress-management module of my corporate training work; if you would like the full facilitated version, workshops and talks are on the training page.
No. This distinction matters. Plenty of stress is created by workload, systems and other people. No breathing exercise fixes a structural problem. The worksheet deliberately separates what is yours to influence from what needs naming and boundaries because treating a system problem as a personal failing is itself a source of stress.
The structure follows published stress research rather than my preferences: the naming and sorting steps rest on Lazarus and Folkman's appraisal model, the practices draw on stress-cycle research by the Nagoskis and a Stanford Medicine breathing trial, and the systems guardrail reflects what Christina Maslach's workplace research keeps finding. The full sources are listed in the evidence section on this page. A worksheet is still a starting point, not treatment.
No. Everything you type stays on this page while it is open. Nothing is stored, sent or seen by anyone, including me. Print your plan before you close the tab if you want to keep it.
Stress that stops responding to rest and recovery is worth taking seriously; it may be edging into burnout territory, which repairs differently. Reading on the difference is a good next step and so is a conversation with a professional. If you are in crisis in Singapore, call 999, the Samaritans of Singapore at 1767 or national mindline at 1771.
Adapted from the stress-management module of Rui Psychotherapy's corporate training programmes. If the load you are mapping has stopped responding to rest, the difference between stress and burnout is worth understanding: what burnout feels like, and how psychotherapy helps. This page is educational and is not a substitute for psychotherapy or medical advice.
Share a little about what you're going through. I'll respond within 24-48 hours. Sessions available in English or Mandarin.
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