How to strengthen your child's psychological immune system
1. if something is bothering you, write it down
What happens when someone describes what is bothering them for 15 minutes on five days, giving free rein to their feelings and thoughts? Research on expressive writing shows: a lot!
This simple exercise improved mood and well-being. Furthermore, researchers were able to identify a number of additional effects that would be almost impossible to believe were they not so well documented: A strengthening of the immune system and fewer visits to the doctor were even noted over a year after the writing week.
Expressive writing helps to find a different way of dealing with stressful experiences.
Students who took part in the experiment wrote better grades and unemployed people found a new job more quickly. Writing even alleviated the symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Negative feelings increase during writing. However, the positive effects are not long in coming.
A life-changing experience
Expressive writing is an effective way of turning your full attention to stressful experiences and feelings and actively processing them. It helps to find a different way of dealing with them or to come to terms with difficult episodes. Try it out: All you need is a pen and a piece of paper or the computer. Children can also make a drawing.
The example of Erin Gruwell shows what a life-changing experience writing a diary can be for young people. At Wilson Classical High School in California, the young teacher taught a class of young people who came from the most difficult family backgrounds.
Many had already committed offences. The young people's everyday lives were characterised by gang wars, shootings and drugs. Most of them had already lost an important person to violence. Erin Gruwell used diary writing, among other things, as a way of helping the young people to process their experiences.
If you want to inspire yourself and your children or pupils to write a diary, we recommend the book Dear Freedom Writer: How a young teacher and 150 at-risk young people changed themselves and their environment through writing. Those who don't like reading might be inspired by the film adaptation starring Hilary Swank.
2. counter unnecessary worries with a psychological trick
Sometimes we have to deal with really stressful events. However, we all make ourselves worry unnecessarily in our everyday lives, where we have to say in hindsight: «I really shouldn't have made myself so crazy - I could have saved myself all that worrying.»
At night in bed or when we feel tired, exhausted or anxious, we are tormented by worries that we would hardly take seriously in a sober moment. We are accompanied by negative thoughts such as «If I can't do this, I'll be a total failure», «Why does this have to happen to me?», «I couldn't stand it» or «What if xy happens?».
Write down your worries, self-doubts or fears on index cards.
On closer inspection, most of these thoughts are exaggerated and one-sided. But they can still get to us, prevent us from sleeping and make us feel helpless and hopeless. Depending on the mood in which we think about a difficult situation, it looks completely different.
As soon as we are in a slightly better mood, we suddenly realise that we are not as alone, weak and helpless as we felt a moment ago. An effective psychological trick is to write down your negative thoughts when you are feeling down and deal with them a little later - in a neutral or positive moment. This is particularly worthwhile for worries that repeatedly affect us and our children.
Successfully reduce stress and helplessness
And this is how you proceed: Write down the worries, self-doubts or fears that plague you or your child on index cards. Take a new index card for each individual thought. For example, if your child expresses thoughts such as «Nobody likes me anyway!», «I'm too stupid anyway» etc., you can put them on paper. Just listen, don't argue against them. Write the thoughts down for later.
In a better moment, you and your child take out the thought cards. Both of you draw a negative thought and tackle it. You will no doubt come up with many arguments as to why this thought is exaggerated or even wrong.
The question «What are you looking forward to today?» can sweeten our whole day.
Write the counterarguments on the back of the card. For example, on the front you could write «Nobody likes me» and on the back the names of the people who like the child and the endearing aspects of the child. You do the same for one of your stressful thoughts.
Once you have done this for two or three thoughts, the challenge comes: you or your child pull out a thought and the other person has to argue against it as quickly as possible. With a little practice, the counterarguments come to mind in increasingly difficult situations, reducing stress and helplessness.
3. start the day well
The question «What are you looking forward to today?» can sweeten our whole day. It helps us to identify small islands of happiness in our everyday lives and to savour them. These can be very mundane things: the walk to school with your best friend, a lesson with your favourite teacher, your favourite series on TV tonight.
Especially if you or your child have a stressful or tiring day ahead of you, it is worth making yourself aware of such moments in advance. This automatically improves your mood and gives you more energy to tackle the unpleasant points.
Sometimes this short exercise also makes you realise that there aren't enough good moments waiting for you and that you should incorporate a few more of them. The question «What would make today better?» can also spice up grey days.
