Every night, Ebba Gurney sits cross-legged on her bed, the dim light of her lamp blanketing her journal. She writes in a book filled with the thoughts that consumed her during the loss of a parent, the start of high school, the happiest moments of her life, and everything in between.
Growing up during an era of worsening mental health in youth and teens, the young people of today are faced with an important question: How do we help ourselves? According to Mental Health America, in a recent five-year period, the rates of teen depression have risen 2.3 percent, and making it worse, over 1.7 million youth have not been provided treatment after showing signs of depression. There is one simple, inexpensive treatment: keeping a journal.
Studies show that journaling can move mountains for a person in only a little bit of time. It’s been proven to advance healing, especially after emotional traumas. Writing out your feelings in a journal or notebook is private and completely judgement free, and can relieve the weight and stress of coping silently. It’s an outlet, especially if talking is harder for you, that can truly alter your emotional and mental well-being for the better.
“I think [journaling] definitely has improved my mental health,” said Ruby Taylor, a CHS sophomore. “Whenever I’m upset about something, or really anxious about something, I write it down and I can think through it better. I think that makes me a healthier person; it makes me really in touch with myself.”
While journaling is incredibly helpful as a tool to cope with loss or other emotionally tolling situations, it also can also help people with stronger mental health. According to Huffington Post, while writing, you’ll develop a natural urge to find more descriptive and advanced words, boosting your vocabularial intelligence.
Improved emotional intelligence is another benefit of journaling. Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to be aware of, manage, and express one’s emotions well, and handle relationships empathetically. Journaling makes you much more self-aware, and provides a good way to process emotions. Once you familiarize yourself with your own emotions, you’ll be able to easily understand what others are experiencing.
As well as teaching us about vocabularial and emotional intelligence, the Huffington Post also brings notice to mindfulness. Journaling brings mindfulness into your life with ease: It brings you to the present moment and focuses your mind. There is a direct correlation between mindfulness and happiness. It focuses your thoughts on the bigger picture and resolves your anxiety or negativity.
In the past year, many Ann Arbor students have experienced loss in ways no one would ever hope to experience. Attempting to cope with the student deaths in the school district, some students have turned to journaling. “After [my friend] passed, I knew I couldn’t talk to him anymore, so I’d write letters to him in my journal. That definitely helped — I just let out as much as I can,” said Kayla Talampas, a sophomore at Skyline.
Though journaling is a therapeutic way to handle emotional and mental stress by writing down sad or difficult things, writing down the good in your life can be overlooked. According to Psychology Today, writing about gratitude has been proven to increase optimism and lower depression and anxiety in the lives of journalers.
“One of the main things I do is I write all of the positives that happened,” Talampas said. “I tend to have very negative thoughts, so I try to make it as positive as I can. I think that definitely helps me.”
Give journaling a try. You can write every day, once a month, once a year, or anything in between. It all depends on what you need and what will help you the most. “No problem is too big or too small that journaling can’t solve,” Taylor said. “Mental health comes first.”
Teens, especially our generation, can be faced with many emotionally difficult situations. Coping can be really difficult, so here is what we recommend: be grateful, be mindful, and write it all down. You could never anticipate how much the simple act of journaling could change your life.