By: Advika Anand
Opinion Editor
As the school year kicks off, students fall back into the routine of balancing demanding classes, extracurriculars, sports, jobs, and more. Beyond their commitments, high schoolers face immense pressure regarding friendships, relationships, family, and the future. With so many requirements competing for students’ energy, teenagers often feel overwhelmed or anxious. Having an outlet for these emotions is vital to regulating stress. To manage stressors, LGHS students should prioritize daily journaling to create a space where they can check in with themselves, decompress, and process their emotions.
One of the biggest advantages of journaling is that it gives teenagers a private space to understand their thoughts on paper. Kaiser Permanente Hospital recommends writing as a healthy way for teens to manage stress, noting that putting thoughts into words can help people work through things that are bothering them. Beyond pouring problems on a page, keeping a journal can help identify the key sources of stress or anxiety. Once the causes are clear, devising a plan will help to resolve the problems at hand and balance stress.
NIH research also supports the connection between expressive writing and mental well-being. A 2023 meta-analysis examining 31 experimental studies found that meaningful writing had a significant effect on reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety. Another study focused specifically on adolescents discovered that expressive writing produced considerable improvements in areas including emotional distress, social adjustment, and school participation. Beyond emotional and mental health, expressive writing provides significant benefits for individuals with a variety of medical problems. Self-reported physical health outcomes of expressive writing have included improved liver function, reduced blood pressure, improved immune system functioning, and enhanced athletic performance.
However, students may wonder why journaling should be their go-to method of relieving stress. Unlike many other stress-relieving activities, journaling is time-efficient, inexpensive, and accessible to almost everyone. More importantly, journaling is personal; allowing an individual to be completely honest about their emotions without worrying about judgment.
The most important thing when journaling is to start somewhere. There is a wide variety of journaling — stream-of-consciousness journals, gratitude journals, bullet journals, reflection journals, and more. With so many options, students do not have to force themselves into a style that does not appeal to them. For those that constantly feel they must jump from task to task and never have time to reflect on themselves, journaling is a useful method of taking a few minutes to decompress and understand the emotions they experience on a daily basis. LGHS students cannot eliminate every source of stress in their lives, but they can control how they respond to it, starting with a blank page and a pencil.
(Sources: Kaiser Permanente, NIH, University of St. Augustine)