Emotion Journal

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/

Emily

05/13/2020

"I started writing this journal to collect my thoughts and put them down in one place so that they wouldn't just be swirling around in my head plaguing my mind. It was helpful to write out how I felt as I felt the feelings. As I read back my emotion journal to myself, I realized that this wasn't the only place I had collected my thoughts. I went through some Facebook posts I had made as well about how this was affecting me, particularly in terms of my school work and my mental state and there are quite a few posts I made about how the pandemic was affecting my ability to function. This item is important to me because it is an example of how COVID-19 impacted people in more ways than one. The uncertainty and fear of the virus sent my mental and emotional health into a whirlwind, and my brain into survival mode. I have struggled with mental health issues in the past, mostly related to anxiety and depression, and the threat of the virus and a global pandemic only heightened and triggered these old feelings. As I noted in my journal several times, I haven't felt this way since high school. Although I will note that I have good days and bad days. I still seem to have trouble prioritizing my school work even on the good days, which is an indicator to me that not only is my depression and anxiety heightened, but my ADD symptoms are harder to control when trying to manage schoolwork from home, with no set schedule to maintain. Surprisingly having less places to be and people to see, destroyed my sense of routine and responsibility and my ability to maintain a set schedule that would assist me in being able to complete assignments, which isn't necessarily highlighted in these journals, but I figured needed explaining to add another layer to this perspective."