What's 'Like Therapy' for Gen-Z in Pandemic Era
Growing up, I was oblivious to how my upbringing led me to develop depression and anxiety, mental health issues I’m actively working to combat. I’ve found this to be a common denominator in a lot of Generation Z. Stigmas we learned from our parents revolving around mental health caused denial that we’ve developed an array of disorders. When it comes to trauma and improving the wellbeing of Gen Z, positive reinforcement allows us to improve upon ourselves more than shunning, doubt, or leaving things in the air for us to decide. We’re a generation that thrives when we have loose guidelines, and support to follow our pursuits.
It feels up to us to undo all problems of humanity. Gen Z shares a fighting spirit that’s unprecedented. If we’re supported by more than words, we may have better opportunities to alter how we function for the better. “More than nine in 10 Gen Z adults (91 percent) said they have experienced at least one physical or emotional symptom because of stress, such as feeling depressed or sad (58 percent) or lacking interest, motivation or energy (55 percent). Only half of all Gen Zs feel like they do enough to manage their stress.”
There’s been a rise amongst Gen Z’s participation in marches, walk-outs, and protests during the pandemic, on major issues such as police brutality and violence against womxn. Controversy and fighting to change the narrative is constantly challenged and silenced by tradition. Actively battling these issues on the front lines of movements while having the majority of older generations on the opposing sides causes us as a generation to feel alone in our fight. Everyone involved faces a toll on their mental and physical health that isn’t taken seriously enough.
“It feels up to us to undo all problems of humanity.”
There will never be an exact tutorial on healing, but we can still work through our feelings as they come rather than suppressing them. Holding out on getting proper care or showing attentiveness to yourself will only lead to sporadic outbursts of emotions. Because we feel alone in our fight and often don’t have therapy available to us, we have turned to the concept of self-healing. Our generation is asking ourselves, how do we guide ourselves through this trauma? Personally, my friends and I turn to music and writing as our go-to’s when it comes to having alternatives to therapy. Using Spotify alone I've listened to 56,220 hours of music this year.
How do You Practice Self-Care?
After having a conversation with some friends I’ve collected these answers to how they’ve been managing their mental health:
Being outside and or being active ie. going to the gym or taking walks
Taking mental health days; self-indulgence ie. taking time for yourself when it’s needed
Finding hobbies to distract yourself from negative thoughts and feelings
Learning from each other is essential rather than isolation and giving into our depression
Keeping in contact with close friends and being open with them / having a connection with friends that you can talk about mental health with is very beneficial as well because you’re not bottling it up
We learn from each other and we heal by trial and error. We’re committed to breaking our cycles of trauma. We’re becoming more emotionally intelligent through learning from social media, books and friends in how to manage our healing rather than relying on traditional therapy. We are casual and experimental in our therapies because we believe the most important element of healing is your intention and your community. As long as you’re still trying, you’re still winning.
The Takeaway
Gen Z uses self-healing to manage our mental health. We often don’t have access to traditional therapies and we rely on self-soothing such as music, journaling, herbs/sage, crystals and interpersonal relationships. We believe it’s part of the cure to wish to be cured.