Post-College Depression: Part 5 - Writing Away the After College Blues

This is the fifth post in a series of entries I will be writing on Post-College Depression.

In the first post of this series I talked about what post-college depression is and typical symptoms and causes. In the second post we discussed how a lack of a sense of control over one's life can result in millennials and emerging adults from Generation Y developing post-college depression. In the third we talked about how the tyranny of choice and high expectations can lead to stress, anxiety, and depression after college. In the fourth we  talked about how you can use positive psychology techniques to combat postcollege depression, anxiety, and stress. Today we will talk about how you can use journal writing to conquer the postcollege blues.

Have you ever used a journal to write down your thoughts and feelings when you are feeling down. If you have, then you have used one of the most effective ways to drive away post-college stress, anxiety, and depression.

When you think of writing in a journal we usually think about writing about daily events and usually see them as personal diaries. However, a great deal of psychological research shows that writing about how you feel is one of the best ways to cope with negative feelings.

Whenever you feel down about some part of your life, one of the first things you usually want to do is talk about what’s troubling you. However, you may have difficulty expressing how you feel because you don’t think people will understand, or you may be scared of what other people will think of you. As a result, you end up keeping your feelings locked up inside and never let anyone know what you’re truly experiencing. It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to put up a front of being happy to save face in front of other twentysomethings.

One of the major consequences of this saving-face phenomenon is that you may never have an opportunity to fully express how you are really feeling. These emotions gradually get buried deep inside, which blocks you from thinking about what you’re experiencing in a broad and integrative way. By keeping your feelings bottled up, you struggle with a part of you that wants to express itself, creating a tug-of-war within your psyche that can make you even more stressed out.

Creating an Expressing Outlet With Journal Writing
Using a journal provides you with an outlet to express all that you’re feeling and gives you an opportunity to better understand your experiences during your twenties. When you write down your thoughts and feelings, you start the process of coming face-to-face with the negative events in your life and begin confronting the thoughts and emotions you are feeling in response to those events.

Using a journal gives you an opportunity to acknowledge what you are experiencing, which eventually forces you to rethink the events that have happened. This will help you understand your emotional response from a more realistic and rational perspective.

When you write about experiences that you’ve been keeping inside, you will learn to translate those events into language. Once they are language based, you make them more concrete and can figure out ways to do something about the situation or how you are feeling.

As Matthew McKay and Catharine Sutker describe in their book The Self-Esteem Guided Journal, "Journaling offers a way to better understand and learn from your emotions, feelings, and thoughts. The process of putting words to paper elicits truths you may not even realize you possess. Writing gives you a certain distance and perspective, allowing you to better understand yourself. The ingrained patterns of self-perception become clear and visible on paper."

Expressing yourself through journal writing can improve your self-esteem through increasing your self-confidence. Expressive writing can help you master the way you experience negative events by increasing your ability to tolerate fear and reduce other negative emotions. As a result, your self-efficacy will increase because you begin to see yourself as having the ability to handle negative emotions effectively.

When you're able to see yourself as having greater control over your emotional experiences, your negative moods will tend to dissipate much more quickly. Believe it or not, expressive writing can also help you get a job!

In an interesting study by psychologist Stefanie Spera and colleagues involving three groups of men who were recently laid off, one group was asked to write for thirty minutes a day for five consecutive days about their thoughts and feelings of being laid off. Another group was asked to write for the same period of time about how they were using their time while being unemployed, while the last group did not write at all and served as a comparison group.

The researchers found that the men writing about their thoughts and feelings expressed the humiliation and outrage they felt about losing their jobs along with other intimate parts of their lives such as marital problems, illness, financial difficulties, and fears about the future. These men reported feeling better immediately after writing each day.

At the end of three months, 23 percent of the men who wrote about their thoughts and feelings landed jobs compared with less than 5 percent of the men in the time management and no-writing comparison group. As the months progressed, 53 percent of those who wrote about their thoughts and feelings had jobs compared with only 18 percent of the men in the other conditions. What is particularly striking about the study was that the men in all three conditions had gone on the same number of job interviews. The only difference was that those who had written about their feelings were offered jobs.

Spera and her colleagues believe that the key to these findings was that those who had explored their thoughts and feelings were more likely to have come to terms with the anger and hostility they felt about their old job and toward their previous employer. Most of the men in the study had felt betrayed by their previous employers. Even during the initial interview for the study, the researchers often found it difficult to stop the men from venting their anger.

The theory is that when most of them went on their job interviews, many tended to let down their guard and talked about how they were treated unfairly. Those who had written about their thoughts and feelings, on the other hand, were more likely to have come to terms with getting laid off, and during their interviews, these men came across as being less hostile and more promising employees.

The Journal Writing Process
In Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, psychologist James W. Pennebaker, a leading researcher on journal therapy, suggests that it’s not necessary to write about the most troubling things that have ever happened to you. What seems to be more important is focusing on the issues that you’re currently dealing with.

Exploring both the objective experience (what happened) and your emotional response to it is what’s key. You should feel that whenever there’s something you want or need to express, you can always take a pen and paper out and just write it all down. When writing, make sure not to censor yourself in any way.

You want to express everything that’s going on in your head, just letting go and writing everything you feel. In addition, it’s not necessary to always write about negative things. Studies have found that focusing and writing about positive thoughts and feelings can have a similar therapeutic effect by acting as a buffer to the negative emotions you are feeling.

When you sit down to write, you will want to set aside about twenty to thirty minutes to allow enough time to explore your deepest thoughts and feelings. When actually writing, don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or sentence structure. If you run out of things to say or reach a mental block, just repeat what you have already written and keep the process flowing.

A former writing teacher of mine always emphasized the value of a good pen. I have found this extremely helpful in my journal writing because it allows my thoughts to just flow on to the paper without having to worry about pressing down hard to write.

Where and when you write will depend on your circumstances. Pennebaker suggests that the more unique the setting, the better. However, it’s always good to find a place where you will not be interrupted or distracted by any sounds, sights, or smells.

You may wonder if you need to write every day. Well, people seem to derive the same psychological benefits when writing simply when they feel like it. People with diaries often write every day, but most of those entries don’t grapple with major psychological issues. What is important is the content, not the frequency. On the flip side, try not to write too much if you’re using writing as a substitute for taking action or as some type of avoidance strategy.

A common question about fully expressing yourself on paper is what you should do with it after you’re done. Pennebaker notes that anonymity is an important part of expressive writing. Many people will be inhibited and not fully express themselves if they think that others may read what they have written.

Although this may be hard for you to do, I destroy most of what I write (unless I’ll be using it for some future purpose). This allows me the opportunity to write whatever comes to my mind without worrying about anyone finding out what I am thinking or feeling. But do whatever you need to do to create a feeling of safety and anonymity.

Finally, while you can derive many benefits from expressive writing, it’s not a panacea. What expressive writing can do is help you develop a better understanding of what you are experiencing during the turbulent twenties, which can then help you formulate a plan of action on how best to deal with what is troubling you.

As McKay and Sutker explain, "Each day you’ll learn how to notice positive qualities about yourself, begin taking on positive feedback others offer, and take note of evidence that points to your strengths and abilities. You’ll develop a broader picture of yourself that includes a more accurate and healthy self-perception. You’ll learn to avoid judging yourself so harshly."

Six Steps to Getting Started with Your Journal Writing Process

1. Set aside twenty to thirty minutes in which you will not be disturbed.
2. Focus on a difficult issue you are currently dealing with.
3. Write about the objective experience—what actually happened—and your emotional response to it.
4. While you do this, don’t censor yourself. express everything going on in your head. don’t worry about grammar. just let it all flow out.
5. Next, try to look at what you wrote and pick out the positive aspects of your situation. ask yourself what good can come out of the situation.
6. If you run out of things to say, keep repeating something positive until more things come to mind.

Questions to Comment On:

• Have you ever used journal writing to make you feel better?
• What do you usually write about
• Do you see the benefits to journal writing?

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Comments

[Mariah]

A lot of people recommend writing down 5 positive things that happen to you each day. I think Oprah first suggested it and it's supposed to be really good for changing one's outlook. I've modified the idea for myself in a way I think could be good for others. That is, I tend to be really hard on myself, only remembering the mistakes I made in a given day rather than all of the successes I've had. So, I try to keep track of everything that I've "done right" in a given day. I think it's helped me feel good about the progress I've been making towards my various goals.