Pretty ProgressiveMental Health Awareness Day: The health benefits of writing your life story
StoryTerrace discuss why documenting our life stories can be good for mental health
This year’s Mental Health Awareness Day is more apt than ever with millions of us dealing with more challenges right now than the rest of our previous years combined. From job losses to extreme loneliness due to working from home, over a third of Brits have said that Covid-19 has negatively affected their well-being.
As we exhaust pamper days, cut out caffeine and do everything else we can to give our minds a rest from anxiety, many people are turning to self-reflection through biography writing. Countless studies have shown that journaling is a therapeutic and calming way to boost your mental wellbeing, help solve problems and feel more in-tune with your emotions.
Personal biography writing service, StoryTerrace have put together a few of the benefits of writing and recording your life story.
Reflect and learn
Journeying back through our life’s ups and downs allows us the unique opportunity to analyse our decisions, learn from them and formulate a plan for the future. With much anxiety developing from the fear of the unknown, giving yourself a grasp on who you are and the path you wish to take, gives you a steady foundation for your mental happiness to grow. But, in order to devise and envision our future, we must reminisce and dig deep into our past, understanding why we take certain actions and use this to make better decisions.
Realise your resilience
It’s often not until we reminisce back on difficult periods of our lives, that we realise how much we have learned. When consumed by issues and conflicts, it’s difficult to see what we’re learning from a situation. By looking back on our most trying periods, and journaling the experience, we begin to understand just how far we have come and how resilient we truly are. It’s this clarity of past adversities that strengthens our ability to cope with challenges in the present.
Communicate with others
Self-reflection doesn’t just come in the form of internal reasoning; many studies have shown that communicating to others is a great reliever of stress. Sharing a burden with someone not only lessens the extremity of the issue in our mind, but also helps us form a relationship – someone to share the journey with. Many people who have written their life stories with StoryTerrace have said that the experience has brought them closer to their loved ones, who now have a greater understanding of who they are and the choices they have made.
Words of wisdom
Although we may not know it, the experiences we have faced throughout our life present great opportunities to pass on knowledge to those who are yet to tackle such hardships. By turning our self-reflection into a book which showcases our life, we are providing others with the ability to learn from our mistakes. It’s during times of difficulty, when our mental wellbeing may be suffering, that we take pride in our capacity to help others and give ourself the strength to carry on.
Rutger Bruining, the CEO of the biography writing service StoryTerrace, discusses the health benefits of writing our life stories:
“At StoryTerrace, we document thousands of people’s life stories. I often hear about how this unique process has improved the relationships and mental wellbeing of those whose stories we write.
Often life can become overwhelming, and with the year we have had it’s no wonder there’s a widespread issue of mental strain, but self-reflection and journaling our life stories presents a real opportunity to drown out the noise. The StoryTerrace process provides a way to reflect on our past and gain clarity on our present.”
About StoryTerrace
StoryTerrace is a service that connects ordinary people with professional writers via an online portal, so that everyone can have their life stories documented in a beautifully designed, professional book. StoryTerrace has a network of over 600 ghostwriters across the world, and provides a range of packages to suit any story.
