Talking And Tackling Conditioned Beliefs

Changing our view on therapy and displaying emotions? 

We have a range of emotions and potential feelings we can experience as a consequence of what's happening in our lives, around us or in our minds. Displaying, sharing, or experiencing them are human, not weak. We are conditioned to hide our feelings from an early age, ‘be strong’, particularly men, ‘man up’, and you’re weak if you show any form of vulnerability. We feel bad about feeling a certain way because of what we’re taught to associate with particular feelings. But all feelings are valid. 

Crying is a release, vulnerability is a strength, a willingness to open yourself and truly give yourself the opportunity to feel and not block, stunt, or suppress what’s inside. As powerful as we are as individuals, we cannot do everything alone. It’s can be scary to reach out at times, especially when you don’t understand what’s going on and you can’t even explain how, why and what you’re feeling. It takes courage and strength. But recovery, change or acceptance, doesn’t mean putting your life on hold, it means holding on so you can live a life. There’s a huge pain that comes with changing, growth and adaptation, but it’s not the same pain that comes with injury. This pain is a pain that can’t break you despite trying to, and a pain that requires pushing through to get to the other side. The side of freedom and liberation. Acknowledge that it’s through experiencing difficult times that we will be able to handle much more in our lives with ease and belief.

I believe we should all be using talking as therapy. Whether it’s sharing feelings with a loved one, cognitive behavioural, counselling or check in chats, it shouldn’t be attached to labels or illness. Finding someone who you are comfortable to talk and share with to provide and assist release, whether that be a counsellor or someone close to you in your life. Although some minds may require greater untangling, all of our minds can tangle no matter the extent of suffering or awareness of it. In the fast pace, high strung society that we live in, we often don’t stop to check in, to check in with how we really think and feel in ourselves. Therapy can be difficult when articulating, understanding and sharing with another, but you don’t always have to understand a feeling to feel it, the understanding comes with the unwinding. It’s a place of release, out of the head and into the air, sharing, connecting, honesty and feeling. It can be raw, but it’s a way of clearing your path to be able to set off again, de-clutter, reorganise and release the heavy baggage you may have been trekking with for miles on end. Free of judgement. We all need that. The stigma around it comes with the idea that therapy means you need ‘fixing’ but this is not the case. This suggests that one is ‘broken’ in the first place, but mental suffering is just another form of pain. Even when you feel ‘broken’, it’s important to remind yourself that it doesn’t define you, you are still ‘you’.

When we feel ill or sick physically, you speak to the GP. When your muscles are sore or pulled, you speak to the Physiotherapist. But when we are struggling mentally, we often expect ourselves to face it without help and all alone. Just as seeking help for physical well-being is a way of growing and returning to health, seeking help for mental well-being can be to. It’s just a taboo as it’s something we push aside a lot more within our society. Asking for help is never a weakness, in doing so you are choosing to put yourself first, considering your feelings, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, facing your demons head on, untangling or understanding ones thoughts and feelings, and deciding to take control. 

They are qualities of nothing but strength, and we should be proud of it rather than look down on it. I believe we should all have regular therapy sessions, or ‘talking sessions’ with someone we trust where we share how we’re feeling. Not to be ‘fixed’, not because we’re ‘wrong’, ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’, but because the mind requires as much care as the body. You may exercise, go to the gym, walk, dance and feel with your body, we should all consider doing the same for our minds as it is an equally important part of our vessel. It’s a muscle that requires training, and like with the body you will release and strengthen in doing so. 

There are huge benefits in talking, interacting with others, voicing to help understand, or speaking up and out to initiate change. Its release for the mind, release of tension, confusion and questioning, of the action it can bring, the outburst it brings and all the sensations with that. It’s assistance in solving, its ability to diminish the taboos that are not ‘odd’ but just not spoken about. The honesty it can hold, its power in facing injustice and inequality, to bring us together, to communicate, to freedom. We all have a voice and should never be afraid to use it. Just like if you cut yourself and protect the wound by using the external source of a plaster, we can help our pain by using external sources of help and assistance. There’s no shame in that. Sometimes it takes help from others to give us to tools to then help ourselves.

But therapy cannot have any potential of being helpful without engaging in it. Some individuals can fight and get through darkness themselves with the support of other factors, allowing feelings to shift and understanding themselves. Talking to another can help untangle and establish understanding, but the crux is that you are the only one with access to your mind, using cognitive behavioural to unlearn, relearn and rewire. Sometimes we can require medication, instead or as well as some from of talking or therapy, just to help the pain and darkness calm a little, a crutch of external sources for the chaos to dull slightly first, before one can think for themselves again and start that personal path. Not everybody requires it, we do not always need medication as support, as we are all different, it works for some and not for others. 
Though they may not always help the root of thoughts disappear completely, they can calm the symptoms. For some, they can work to soften the pain and chaos of the mind. Even if the placebo effect comes into play, it can be a way of soothing. They may be a helpful route for calm and work for some, but even so, they are not always necessary in managing pain, listening to and understanding yourself. Therapy may be your guiding light, you may be able to support yourself with other factors, love, understanding, talking. Medication may be your saving grace, or all together. With or without medication, we have greater control over our minds than we often like to believe. 

Why and what you are feeling may be confusing, it could be an effect your past has had on you, a projection of it, a protection from it or shutting of the fear of it occurring again. Your environment, genetics, the unknown and what could be, a coping defence mechanism from reality whether that be relationships, self, stress, work or life related, it can grow and taint our vision from a variety of places, feelings and thoughts. The root is as important as the symptoms, the cause is as vital to consider as the effects. But coming to term with these can be difficult on your own, while reaching out, opening up and allowing yourself to be honest and vulnerable can be the doors to hope and abundance of light. In accepting change rather than giving up on life, being unnecessarily unkind or judgemental of ourselves, or feeling trapped, hope is always available to us.