Talking brings about hope in the future.
It is a strange thing, the power of talking about feelings.
According to the Counselling Directory, across our planet, 615 million people suffer from anxiety or depression with 1 in 4 people experiencing at least one diagnosable mental health problem in their lifetime.
Difficult emotions and feelings are experienced by everyone regardless of who they are. After all, to experience emotion is fundamental to how we interact with the world around us.
How we feel about ourselves is crucial in the process of unlocking potential. The more we feel vulnerable and hide how we feel, the more we focus on protecting ourselves rather than focusing on living our best life or developing hope for the future.
As a ‘talking therapist’ I have seen how opening up about difficult emotions and feelings helps my clients to feel less overwhelmed with life. Talking about feelings doesn’t change the circumstances of life but it does help one to better manage the challenges that come with difficult experiences.
Let me give you an example related to grief and the loss of someone special.
Losing a loved one is inevitable for most people, devastating for many and the resulting grief will be a reflection of how special that person was. It is painful and it can affect how one chooses to live with that grief. Many people do not realise that grief is a natural emotional response, but so often people avoid facing it as it is so painful. To be lost in grief could mean to lose sight of hope, however it doesn’t need to be this way moving forward.
Clients that talk with me about grief get to know their grief, they get to understand what they are feeling and become familiar with how they are feeling. They start to learn to live with their grief so that they can recognise it for what it is and so not feel so overwhelmed by it. “It’s OK, it is only grief.” is a phrase that means that we accept our response and acknowledge that we can also start to accept that we can laugh again, love again, grow again and hope again as well as still experience those feelings of grief.
Grief will dominate for a while because this is the process of getting to know it because we are so often unfamiliar with these feelings, but there is hope and life beyond grief and for that matter any other difficult feelings or emotions that we are experiencing, but that process of living again is slower if we don’t open up and talk about it with someone we trust.
I believe that it is indeed hope that brings about positive change for us and if we can avoid closing down emotionally then we can start to open up to the opportunities of life.
I recommend talking with trusted friends and family members about difficult emotions and feelings but if you feel that you would benefit from talking with someone who can sit with you, without agenda, without judgement then engaging with therapeutic counselling could be useful to you.
If you would like to find out about how therapeutic counselling could be useful to you then simply click the button and send me your questions and I will be happy to help.
#hopewithhicks