Reflection Paper On Negativity

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After experimenting with three of the offered “ways to decrease negativity,” I am very excited to write this journal entry! I tried disputing negative self-talk, using a healthy distraction, and doing a media fast. I feel as though all three helped me take out at least some of the negativity in my life. Typically, I live my life in a positive fashion, but I do struggle with anxiety. I feel like each of these suggestions helped me deal with that in different ways.
The first activity I tried was disputing negative self-talk. This was a really interesting topic for me, and it is one that I have had experience with before. Last year I participated in a three week Body Smart (a company on campus) activity called “Love Your Body.” It was an opportunity for females to sign up and discuss their body issues, how society affects how we feel about our bodies, and how to deal with these issues in an emotionally healthy way. I had never experienced anything like it before. It gave us the opportunity to express and explore how truly critical we are about our bodies. I had never noticed that I engaged in negative self-talk regarding my body, but the more we talked about it, the more I realized how much I actually did. As many girls and women in today’s society do, I don’t have the most positive body image. Being conscious of how we regard ourselves, and how we use self-talk to talk about our bodies was a really enlightening, and important lesson for me. I noticed how much my close girlfriends engaged in this distressing activity, and tried to steer myself and my friends away from it. This seemingly minute step helped me feel so much more positive about my body. Unrelated to the body related negative self-talk, I noticed after reading the exampl...

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...have found that this is particularly helpful, and when it comes to me in particular, I find that social media is the most stress-inducing. In my life, I try already to avoid violence or distressful pictures/noises/media, which can be difficult, but manageable. However, what I decided to do was avoid social media for a couple of days. Every once in a while I delete Facebook (the only real social media that I use consistently), and I find that the clarity from this to extremely satisfying. Not only do I get a break from the bombardment of other people’s lives, but I also follow many news sources that can be distressing. Weirdly, I get a lot of my news from social media based sites. I found that I was a lot more relaxed and happier the last time I deleted Facebook for a period of over two weeks, and it makes me think it might be worth it to get rid of it altogether.

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