 | | Jake Terrell |
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I’ve never been one to keep a meticulous journal — the graveyard of discarded baby books and of untouched leather-bound notebooks gifted to me by optimistic friends and family members are proof of my abject failure. But a few weeks after the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, I was instinctively propelled to record my days, mundane though they may be, in quarantine. |
But it’s the mental health benefits to journaling that have proved most fruitful, especially at a time when I’m six months into sheltering-in-place with my two children, ages 6 and 1, preparing to embark on full-time remote learning with my first grader while working from home 80 hours a week and supporting my partner, an essential worker at an Amazon center on Staten Island in New York. I’m afraid about the upcoming school year. I’m worried that I won’t be able to handle home-schooling, caring for my 1-year-old, and working and maintaining a household simultaneously. I worry that my partner will get sick. I’m worried that my grandparents, living in South Dakota, will die. I’m scared about the future. I’m overwhelmed. I’m anxious. I’m depressed. So, I write. |
“Journaling gives us the opportunity to identify what beliefs are irrational, gives us the opportunity to challenge those believes and then write out more realistic, helpful beliefs,” said J. Ryan Fuller, a clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavior therapy and the executive director at New York Behavioral Health, a clinical services organization in Manhattan. “So journaling is a way to get to where we start asking ourselves questions like, ‘Is it true I can’t tolerate this?’ Or is it more accurate to say, ‘I am incredibly exhausted and worn out and sad, but I also know that I have coped with some things in the past, so I believe I’ll be able to cope with this now, even though it is really, really tough.’” |
Dr. Fuller does suggest that people who believe they’re suffering from PTSD or similar mental health stressors as a result of the coronavirus crisis to avoid journaling without the aid of a trained medical professional, as it could do more harm than good. But when it comes to documenting the era of the continuing pandemic, a journal could help us all better equip ourselves for the long fall and winter months ahead, as well as remind us of what we have overcome and our ability to handle any upcoming challenges. |
“The goal isn’t to think positive thoughts about a bad situation,” Dr. Fuller said. “It’s about having realistic, measured, accurate thoughts about a bad situation. It makes sense to be concerned and to be anxious and to be fearful — those feelings, after all, inform us that there’s a potential threat; there’s danger that we need to prepare for. And we want to know that stuff.” |
Although it may seem beneficial to avoid ~the world~ at large and all it has put us through in 2020, Dr. Fuller says that it’s best to “avoid avoidance.” |
“Journaling gives us the space to come into contact with the scary thoughts and the negative feelings,” he said. “Journaling helps to keep us from detaching, because it gets us to approach the things that we’re scared of — the internal experience; those tough thoughts and feelings.” And it’s when we truly know what we’re feeling, and how we’re processing the continued impact of an unparalleled moment in global history, that we can better steel ourselves for what’s to come — whether that’s hell or another year of online classes. |
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