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Stress is something that I never quite understood until I got to high school. I believe this is the case for many kids. Growing up, not many of us are taught how to manage stress or how to avoid it. I know most people probably think the best answer to managing stress is doing your homework early or writing in a planner, however stress comes in other forms as a teenager. It could be from pressure to do well in a sport, making perfect grades, stress stemming from insecurities, and much more. For me, my stress and worry seemed to team up with one another giving me a horrible feeling of unease and discomfort. This all began with something I have been dealing with since the day I was born, an overactive imagination. My mind likes to constantly cycle between stress overloading and worrying about certain situations. Especially as a highschooler, I liked to obsess over problems that would occur with other people, making situations seem much more extreme in my head. The older I got, the more this became my main cause of stress and worry. My stress looked different than most highschoolers because it wasn’t academic related anymore. I didn’t like knowing someone was upset with me or that I had done something to upset someone. Even after situations were essentially put to bed, I still dwelled on them making it difficult for me to function or focus on anything else besides that specific issue. This became exhausting and made me feel like a prisoner to my own mind. Although this mindstate of mine seemed to be unbreakable, one day I was finally able to find a way to break myself free from my endless stress and worry. It happened one evening my junior year when I had so many things going on in my mind at once that I didn’t know what to do or how to get them out, so I decided to write them down in an old notebook. I’ve never been too fond of journaling, that was until I used it as a time to give my problems to God. I was able to write down everything I was feeling, making me feel relieved and releasing me from my feeling of unease. I used it as a time to talk to the Lord deeply about my issues. I enjoyed looking back at what I had written months later and seeing that the problem I was obsessing over, meant nothing to me anymore. Journaling can be used to release any form of stress, not just the kind I was dealing with. It allows us to properly learn how to cope with stress and worry by writing it down and essentially giving it to the Lord and asking him to relieve you of those unwanted feelings. Psalm 42:5 says,  “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God”. Challenge yourself to meditate on this verse during the times when your mind begins to take over. In the end, only the Lord is capable of relieving our stress and worries.

Jessica's Thoughts On: Stress and Worry

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