In this week’s mental health column, a few words on talking to others and needing to say things – even when you can’t.
Isn’t it just the worst when you have things you need to say to someone, but you just can’t?
Sometimes it is because we don’t always understand what we are feeling or experiencing, or perhaps we are afraid of judgement from other people. Or maybe we can’t find the words. Worse still is when we feel embarrassed, ashamed, or even scared to reach out to people for fear of being a nuisance, even though we shouldn’t.
I struggle with pretty much all of the above, and more that I can’t fully identify. I know I have friends and family who would want me to reach out to them when I am in distress – realistically, before it reaches that point – and yet, I just can’t bring myself to do it.
I want to tell my sisters that I feel excluded by them, a lot. I want to tell my Mum that there are certain things I wish we didn’t discuss. I want to tell one friend that I miss him and wish I knew why our friendship drifted, and tell another friend how I truly feel because I think things got weird. And I want to tell a certain magazine editor (*cough cough*) that I wish I was better at writing, because I feel like I just don’t have the right knowledge, voice, or ideas to offer him.
There are so many words and emotions trapped inside me that I suspect they are the real reason for my excess weight, and not the multiple chocolate bars I ate this week alone.
So why can I not bring myself to actually say these things directly to the people necessary to help me ease this stress? (Well, that is an easy one to answer: Trauma.)
It is conceivable, then, that I need to find a different outlet and just hope for the best. Since hitting my 40s, I have learned to be more open and honest with myself which has led to some revelations, and over time it has become surprisingly easy to have these conversations with myself. Whether I daydream the conversations, write them, or spend time in Facebook groups giggling at relevant memes to my situation, they are all ways of acknowledging an issue which is a step in the right direction to resolving them.
But, like it or not, some situations just need another person. We need someone who will offer support, or understanding, or to shoulder some of the responsibility. “A problem shared…” and all that.
We need an alternative outlet for when the reality of needing to vocalise our concerns to other people is too uncomfortable.
Personally, I have a few options. Recently I started my first ever journal; it is part bullet journal and part junk journal, and it allows me to express myself in ways many other people wouldn’t understand. Poetry is another outlet for me. It’s not always good poetry, but it does what it needs to do, and on occasion (pre-pandemic, at least) it has been performed to audiences in Leeds and Manchester. I have a multitude of music playlists for different moods, as well as some based in interest. ‘Musicals’ may not be the ideal playlist for when I’m angry, but a bit of Andrew Lloyd Webber can lift the spirits.
Yet, somehow ‘talk to the person’ still seems to be the most logical way to communicate your concerns. So, the big question is; how do we say the thing? We can’t bottle it all up, forever.
Honestly, being a human is overrated, sometimes. Give me some other ideas, please, because talking words with my mouth in the presence of another person is just… it’s just a big old ‘no, thank you’.
Huge thanks to Sarah for writing this piece, and very much looking forward to more of her writing.
