Talking About The Difficult
By Tyler White, MA, LPCC on Saturday, March 22nd, 2025 in Cognitive Behavior. No Comments
I’m a die-hard Seattle Seahawks fan. I was raised just outside of Seattle, and rooting for Seattle sports teams was engrained in me from a young age. Regardless of who you root for, sports fans are generally taught to celebrate their successes, but avoid their failure like the plague. We’ll celebrate beating the Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII, we still commemorate Shaun Alexander winning the franchise’s first MVP in 2005, and we remember the Hawks comeback vs the Packers in the 2014 NFC Championship. BUT we never talk about Russell Wilson’s last-minute interception against the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX. This is an area of pain and hurt for us that we avoid at all cost. What good can come from speaking about that?
Often, I think we treat mental health a lot like how we treat our favorite sports teams. We’ll celebrate when we’re doing well. There’s no issue sharing with people what is going right in our life, when emotions like joy, happiness, and excitement are where we find ourselves. But if we’re struggling? If depression, anxiety, grief, or something of the like feels closer, God forbid we talk about that and be open about it. Think about it, when was the last time you heard anything from a Cleveland Browns fan?
The issue with this way of thinking is that we are silent about the very things we need to talk about most. Our areas of hurt and pain are not meant to be locked away and never discussed, they are actually the very key to growth. In my practice, the clients who have grown the most are the ones that have been willing to open up the areas of pain. When things are not spoken, they cannot be healed.
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