Time to Talk Day

Time to Talk day comes around once per year and is aimed at promoting good communication with a view to supporting our own mental health. It’s a time to consider your wellbeing and what support you have around you if you need it.

Why is it important?

How can encouraging open communication not be important? It encourages us to take responsibility for our own wellbeing to make sure we don’t deteriorate. Ask yourself how much of your worries, concerns, stress, low mood, fears, and doubts you are keeping to yourself. The old adage “a problem shared is a problem halved” is a good way to look at considering communicating your difficulties. The problem still remains yours but it gives you an avenue to discuss it rather than trying to figure it all out on your own. It’s not necessarily about asking for help, it’s simply asking for someone to be there for you talk it through with.

The people around us are usually happy to support us, in fact they would want you to approach them if you were struggling. We tend to worry about burdening others with our ‘negative talk’ and how this will affect them but turn it around, wouldn’t you be ready and willing to listen if someone wanted to talk to you? Wouldn’t you give them the time they need to get it off their chest and just listen? 

People aren’t always seeking answers and they may not always be able to offer answers, but it doesn’t take away the enormous benefit of just simply saying things out loud, of letting someone know what you’ve got going around in your head, it puts it out there and allows it to be heard and it can significantly shift the weight you are carrying.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times a client has said to me after their first session “I feel better already” and all they’ve done is share the things they’re struggling with in their lives at that moment. All I’ve offered them is a listening ear and an acknowledgement that I’ve heard them and understood how they are feeling.

Saying things out loud also gives you the opportunity to hear it yourself. Sometimes this simple action can dramatically change how you view it yourself. There’s a drastic difference between thinking it in your head and hearing yourself say it out loud.

When is the right time to talk about your needs?

Quite simply, the right time is all the time. If we get things off our chest as we go along, it doesn’t have the chance to build and consume us and we can deal with it much more effectively. We need to look at it as constructive talk rather than ‘moaning.’ Yes we are offloading but we’re not necessarily looking for anyone to do anything about it, in fact we can even implicitly ask someone to simply listen to us whilst we figure it out for ourselves. It then becomes about communicating it in the right way. 

How do I start the conversation?

When the subject matter feels difficult to disclose, it can be a daunting prospect as we don’t know how someone might react. We may want to talk about something we’ve kept to ourselves for a very long time and therefore it will feel strange to consider letting someone else in. It’s therefore extremely important to find someone you trust and decide how to control the conversation for yourself. 

Decide how much you want to initially share and build trust as you go along. In the counselling world, therapists are prepared for clients to offer a little at a time until a relationship has developed as trust is a key component in ensuring you feel safe to fully open up and reap the benefits of sharing your innermost thoughts and feelings with someone else.

Consider how you might put it across. When we plan for the conversation rather than allowing it to take place because we can’t cope any more and it has to come out, we are more in control of our emotions and can ensure we get what we need from the conversation. It can be very important to talk about the situation in terms of how you are feeling about it, otherwise people may simply start offering you suggestions of what to do about it (if this is what you’re looking for then great but if you’re needing to work through your emotions, then you need to explicitly express them). Have you considered this yourself? If you could write down all the emotions you are feeling on a day to day basis, this can give you a good starting point to work from.

Who should I speak to?

This will depend on the content of your thoughts and feelings, who you have around you, and who you feel you can trust. This may be a partner, a family member, a friend, a colleague, a manager or supervisor, a tutor or teacher, or it may be a complete stranger – I can’t begin to tell you how many strangers have divulged content to me about terrible challenges they are experiencing in their lives when I’ve been sat on a park bench or at a bus stop. They don’t want anything from me, they just want to be heard. And no, they don’t know that I’m a therapist. Sometimes it can feel safer to say things out loud to a stranger you will never see again. This is also relevant in therapy as the therapist is completely uninvolved in a client’s situation and therefore can offer their full focus to the person in need and offer an outside perspective where appropriate. The information can be, metaphorically speaking, safely left in the counselling room after each session and at the end of therapy. In my opinion, we can never ‘overshare’ we can only find the wrong people to share with. If someone doesn’t want to hear it, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share it, it means you need to find the person that’s willing to listen and has the capacity to take it on board.

Where can I find help?

It can be difficult to know where to turn if you don’t feel you can find the right support from the people around you. If you are in desperate need of help or are suicidal, there are emergency helplines to offer you immediate support. You can find some of these here.

If you have a lot to talk through, or have a significant issue that may take some time to work through and you don’t feel you can ask for long-term support from the people closest to you, then there are professional services you can turn to. Your GP can refer you to therapeutic services, though bear in mind there may be significant waiting times so you may want to seek something more immediate.

If you’d like to read more about the difference between talking to someone you know and talking to a therapist, you can find more information in this separate article.

If you’d like to speak to one of our therapists, you can find our list of therapists here.

They are here to listen and support you to work through your innermost difficulties with a view to helping you explore these challenges and to empower you to find a resolution that works for you.

Ready to get things off your chest? Reach out today. You can contact us here.