How To Get Comfortable Talking About Mental Health

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While we encourage people to talk about their mental health often, it’s not something everyone can do easily. In fact, most of us are quite uncomfortable talking about our internal experiences. Due to stigma, shame, and distancing, we have learned to hide our struggles. Society doesn’t reward people for being open. Stigma is still rampant, and so being able to talk about these things takes a lot. It takes courage, honesty, and a certain fearlessness.

So there’s no wonder people are slow to the mark. While our culture is now encouraging people to talk, the uptake is slow. These things don’t change over night. We’re trying to undo generations of conditioning, so it won’t happen quickly. Rather, it will take generations to go from a society that never talks about mental health to one that talks about it consistently.

With that said, there are some things I’ve done in the pas to help me become more comfortable talking about mental health.

It will come as no surprise that writing about these things is my biggest tool. I’ve done this blog for ten years, regularly sharing in writing some of my biggest challenges. In the beginning it was scary to do this, being so vulnerable, even in writing. But the more I did it, the less daunting it became. And now it doesn’t affect me at all. Writing about it put some distance between me and what I was writing about. It felt easier for me to share through writing than to talk about it. I didn’t have to watch people’s reaction in real time.

On top of that, writing about these things, even without sharing it publicly helped me to get used to the subject matter. I wasn’t avoiding thinking about it. I was expressing the words. Writing about depression, sadness, loneliness helped me to accept that I was feeling this way. And so, when I eventually did work up the courage to talk about it, the subject wasn’t a new one. I had been writing about it for months. So I knew what I wanted to say – I had written it down often enough.

That’s been the biggest help for me. Writing about it first to get used to the idea of even talking about it. Another thing that helps is listening to and reading other work by people who talk about these things. People like Bressie, Blindboy, The Two Norries have been pivotal. Absorbing how they talk, understanding that their lives didn’t fall apart just for being open. This was encouraging. It taught me that the stigma surrounding mental health isn’t as powerful as it used to be. So if you’re thinking about talking about mental health, but are feeling scared, listen to other people who do it well.

There’s no big secret to it. The first time you talk, or write about this stuff will feel scary. And the second time will feel less scary, and so on. and suddenly you’ll be ten years in, and you’ll be confused when people call you brave, because it will no longer feel brave to you.

It will just feel like any other conversation.