Welcome back to my blog where today I’ll be writing about one of the struggles I faced during this past week of learning. This week we started looking at terrorism and different forms of terrorism throughout time. This is a very heavy topic and I knew that going into it. The first literature note and rabbit hole I looked into was the actual logistics of terrorism as I feel like that part is often left out when terrorism is being taught. I wanted to know how much actually goes into it. I found out wow, really interesting information, even though it wasn’t easy to find many sources talking about it. 

After my group of Jordyn, Alex, and I presented us, along with the whole class, were told to narrow our ideas. Everyone had gone too broad so in our second literature notes we had to tie them down to one situation or own thought to research about. I was very fascinated by the IRA Brighton Bomber in class so I decided to do a literature note on how he was affected by having that life.

When I got home I found a documentary called “The Other” talking about his side of the story and decided to watch that alone. Long story short 2 or 3 minutes into the video I started to cry and then became very emotional and had to stop it. The topic had just become too heavy for me and the feeling of these major issues from the past still being around today made me really sad. This breakdown is actually a good example of a topic I had thought about when making my craft notes. When does learning about and educating yourself on societal issues, terrible history, and other tragic things become too negative for your mental health?

On one hand it’s super important for people to form their own opinions and have a voice in the world and to do that you should really understand all the issues and be politically aware. However there is so many depressing and negative things in the world it can become really hard to carry all that weight on your shoulders. I believe this is especially bad for teens when there’s so much pressure from social media to know everything, and also you’re at a point in your life where you’re starting to open your eyes to everything in the world.

Some tips to help this overwhelming feeling are to remember it’s not about you, find better news, and stick to your day. Although this comes from a place of privilege if you can’t make a difference at the time there’s no point in harming your mental health. Below is a video I found about helping your mental health during a tragic event (it used the Manchester bombing).

This is something I’ve run into a lot in the past year with all the dramas of COVID-19, the George Floyd protests, the American election, and other big news stories. I’ve become so aware of many things in the world and while I’m super passionate about it and love learning about it, it’s important to check in with myself regularly and make sure I’m doing ok.