It turned out that the method that worked best against stress was when a person gave a brief description of an unpleasant situation.
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Everything makes me angry, even my loved ones irritate me, and work issues are perceived as “what do I need these hats for”? There may be too many stressors in your life. Researchers at Macquarie University in Australia have shown that keeping a journal for just 15 minutes a week can effectively help you cope with everyday stress.
THE SECRET OF THE DIARY – ANTI-STRESS
Scientists took 254 people and divided them into three groups. One group was tasked with writing down events that made them feel depressed or angry. And the main thing was how they coped with them. Another group was to write down incidents they couldn’t handle. And the third simply kept a diary of everything bad that happened to them that day.
It turned out that the method that worked best against stress was when a person gave a brief description of the unpleasant situation that had happened to him, and also wrote in detail his own methods that helped him overcome this difficulty.
The rules for keeping a stress diary are as follows:
1. If the period is stressful, you can make notes every day in the evening, as if drawing a line under the events of the day. In calmer times, a summary post at the end of the week may be enough. Don’t write novels, don’t try to speak beautifully. 15 minutes a week is enough for this practice.
2. It is best to start by writing down your stressful situations in your diary every day – this will teach you to mark them, notice them and record them.
3. It is better to write by hand, in a notebook or a notebook. By connecting motor skills (finger and hand movements), we will help our brain to concentrate on the task and not be distracted by unimportant things. This means that the process of processing the traumatic situation will be started. In addition, something written by hand is remembered better than something written on a computer.
Algorithm for creating each entry:
-Write down what exactly happened?
– How did I react: how did the situation make me feel, what did I do?
– What are my goals in this situation? What do I want to achieve?
– Do my actions in this situation bring me closer to my goals?
– If something like this happens to me again, what will I do to deal with it?
– What else can I try next time? (Maybe even something that is not typical of me, but what I like in the behavior of others. Let these be the people I would like to strive for) /
– Where and who can I go to for advice in a similar situation?
This method of keeping a diary helps to understand everyday difficulties at work and school, in communicating with loved ones and with a wider social circle: colleagues, classmates. And not to accumulate tension, but to process it and develop resistance to stress, says one of the authors of the study, Dr. Psychologist Monique Crane, who has been studying the psychophysiology of stress for 12 years.
“Since challenges occur in our lives every day, they are a daily opportunity for us to analyze how we responded and try new possible ways to cope with stressful situations next time,” says Monique Crane.
WHAT ARE THE OTHER ADVANTAGES OF THIS METHOD?
– You can read the journal and see the patterns of how we behave in difficult situations and what progress we have made over time.
– By writing down our complex feelings (sadness, anger, envy, shame) on paper, we distance ourselves from them, which means that they no longer capture us as much as in the stressful situation itself.
– In this way, we create an encyclopedia of our own ways of combating stress, which we can turn to in difficult times.
– A great option in case a difficult situation repeats itself is to write a letter to yourself. Write it by hand. There you write down an algorithm in case it seems like everything has gone to waste. Also, warm words of support, that you value and love yourself. Put the envelope in your diary. This way, you will always have a reserve of emergency support in case problems come like an avalanche or something particularly difficult happens.
