Thanksgiving works: Gratitude journaling seen to decrease stress and destructive cognitive processes

Dur­ing the ear­ly days of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, many peo­ple suf­fered excessive stress. Peo­ple couldn’t work and confronted finan­cial anx­i­ety, they felt lone­ly and iso­lat­ed, they wor­ried about catch­ing a lifeless­ly dis­ease or giv­ing it to some­one they liked, and their males­tal well being suffered.

For researcher Erin Fekete, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Indi­anapo­lis, the unfold­ing pan­dem­ic was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reply an extended­stand­ing ques­tion about the easiest way to manage in moments of suf­fer­ing. Can we get extra aid by replicate­ing on our ideas and really feel­ings about what we’re going by means of, or from flip­ing our minds to the pos­i­tive issues in our lives?

It’s a good ques­tion, as analysis sug­gests each strategy­es might assist us deal with dif­fi­cult emo­tions. Expres­sive writ­ing, the place you replicate on dis­tress­ing ideas and really feel­ings, has been discovered to low­er our stress and result in guess­ter psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal well being. Grat­i­tude jour­nal­ing, on the oth­er hand, may assist us really feel hap­pi­er and fewer depressed.

To com­pare the prac­tices, Fekete test­ed them with a bunch of 79 par­tic­i­pants dur­ing the ear­ly days of COVID (between April and June 2020), when lock­downs had been com­mon. Peo­ple first report­ed on their phys­i­cal well being, their psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress (anx­i­ety, depres­sion, and stress), and their pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive really feel­ings. In addition they rat­ed how iso­lat­ed they had been, how a lot the pan­dem­ic had cre­at­ed eco­nom­ic arduous­ship for them, and the way grate­ful they have a tendency­ed to be—all issues which may affect their psy­cho­log­i­cal well being.

Then, they had been ran­dom­ly assigned to both an expres­sive writ­ing or grat­i­tude jour­nal­ing prac­tice and immediate­ed to put in writing for 5 to 10 min­utes each day over every week. (A con­trol group was not giv­en writ­ing instruc­tions at all.)

On the finish of the week and one month lat­er, peo­ple had been once more requested about their dis­tress, their pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive really feel­ings, and their phys­i­cal well being. The peo­ple who wrote about grat­i­tude expe­ri­enced a sig­nif­i­cant lower in stress and neg­a­tive emo­tions com­pared to the oth­er two teams, and these results final­ed for at the very least a month after. Even account­ing for individuals’s ages, lev­el of iso­la­tion, pri­or grate­ful­ness, and finan­cial arduous­ship, grat­i­tude writ­ing was sig­nif­i­cant­ly extra ben­e­fi­cial than expres­sive writing.

“Although expres­sive writ­ing stands out as the gold stan­dard for writ­ing inter­ven­tions, grat­i­tude and oth­er types of writ­ing could also be simply as effec­tive or extra effec­tive,” says Fekete. “At the very least on this research, writ­ing about expe­ri­ences in a pos­i­tive approach appeared to assist peo­ple reframe issues and allowed them to manage a bit guess­ter with the stress of COVID.”

Fekete says she was sur­prised that expres­sive writ­ing wasn’t extra assist­ful to peo­ple, giv­en previous analysis. However, she provides, it’s pos­si­ble that COVID was such a singular expe­ri­ence and so out of individuals’s per­son­al con­trol that expres­sive writ­ing was not as nicely swimsuit­ed to the scenario.

“COVID was very unfa­mil­iar, very unpre­dictable, and really stress­ful. So, per­haps writ­ing about it actu­al­ly exac­er­bat­ed some individuals’s emo­tions as an alternative of alle­vi­at­ing them,” says Fekete.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, nei­ther grat­i­tude nor expres­sive writ­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly have an effect on­ed individuals’s temper, anx­i­ety, or phys­i­cal well being. However, says Fekete, that is likely to be as a result of par­tic­i­pants weren’t expe­ri­enc­ing many prob­lems with these so ear­ly within the pan­dem­ic. “There could not have been quite a lot of room for enhance­ment there,” she says.

Do her discover­ings suggest we should always all flip to the pos­i­tives (and never delve into our neg­a­tive emo­tions) once we’re below stress? Fekete can’t say for certain, as her research is only one of only a few com­par­ing the 2 prac­tices. Additionally, whereas the par­tic­i­pants who engaged within the exer­cis­es ben­e­match­ted, some peo­ple dropped out, sug­gest­ing writ­ing just isn’t for everybody.

Fekete want to see extra analysis explor­ing tweak writ­ing prac­tices to guess­ter swimsuit the second and other people’s wants. For examination­ple, she’d prefer to redo her exper­i­ment in a dif­fer­ent stage of COVID when peo­ple below­stand the dangers guess­ter, to see what may greatest relieve their stress. And he or she’d prefer to exper­i­ment with prac­tices guess­ter matched to indi­vid­ual preferences.

“Permit­ing peo­ple alternative within the kinds of inter­ven­tions they interact in could actu­al­ly have a guess­ter impact in professional­mot­ing pos­i­tive well-being,” she says. “It’s impor­tant to have a match between the per­son and the activ­i­ty, and which will range based mostly on individuals’s per­son­al­i­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics or the cul­ture they’re from.”

Nonetheless, she and her staff are excit­ed to see that such a brief, sim­ple prac­tice might assist relieve stress below cir­cum­stances as dif­fi­cult as a world­huge pandemic.

“Dur­ing a really con­strict­ed time, this inter­ven­tion was on-line, rel­a­tive­ly straightforward to imple­ment, inex­pen­sive, and reached a large vari­ety of peo­ple who ben­e­match­ted,” says Fekete. “I feel these outcomes are promis­ing for the longer term.”

— Jill Sut­tie, Psy.D., serves as a workers author and con­tribut­ing edi­tor for Greater Good. Based mostly at UC-Berke­ley, Higher Good excessive­lights floor break­ing sci­en­tif­ic analysis into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. Copy­proper Higher Good.

The Examine:

A Brief Grat­i­tude Writ­ing Inter­ven­tion Decreased Stress and Neg­a­tive Affect Dur­ing the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic (Jour­nal of Hap­pi­ness Stud­ies). From the Summary: