Why it's healthy for you to open up and talk

If social distancing is impacting your mental health, it’s important to talk about how you’re feeling to someone you trust.

Bottling up your emotions can affect you in more ways than you might think. Whether it’s a tiny niggle or part of a bigger issue, your problems are valid and deserve to be listened to.

We spoke to Lucia from Samaritans about the benefits of sharing.

It can be beneficial to your physical health

Things that might be going on inside your head can affect outside of it too. When you’re stressed, your body releases s hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. These can be helpful in small doses, like when you need to power through an exam, but constant exposure to them can be bad for your health.

This stress can affect your sleep, which can then affect your mental health even more. It can even cause tummy aches and other physical symptoms. Talking about what’s bothering us can be a literal release of that stress.

“It just helps you cope in terms of the day-to-day stuff,” says Lucia. “People are realising more and more that when young adults and teenagers have constant aches and pains and niggles, sometimes it’s something else manifesting itself.”

The NHS says physical symptoms of mental stress can include headaches and dizziness, a faster heartbeat, muscle tensions and pain, stomach problems and even hives on the skin. Talking can help lower your stress, but it’s always best to talk to a GP if you think that you might be experiencing physical symptoms from it.

It can help you find your own solution

Just as the best way to remember your revision is to teach what you’ve learnt to someone else, talking about a problem might be a good way to figure it out.

“Often people don’t want you to tell them what to do,” says Lucia. “But as they start talking about it, the other person naturally asks questions, and you suddenly realise that you do know what you want to do, or how it’s making you feel.”

So instead of being stuck in a spiral of thoughts, by talking you might see a way forward. As you’re able to hear another perspective on what you’re going through, it might help you decide what to do and what the next step to is.

It can help prevent emotional breakdowns

We say there’s no point in crying over spilt milk, but getting upset over something small might be an indicator of something bigger. Lucia says the more you bottle things up, eventually it will have a way of coming out.

“Something just snaps,” she says. “Although something that’s troubling you might be quite big, the actual thing that triggers it might be quite small.”

So if you’re despairing more than you usually would over breaking a mug or losing the remote, it might be time to tell someone what’s really bothering you. Lucia says that tiny first step to talking will help you open up, even if you’re scared.

“It’s a bit like a fizzy pop bottle: if you shake it and shake it and shake it, it builds up, but once the top is off it will come flooding out. Taking that initial step to approach someone and tell them you’re not OK might help your feelings come to you.”

It ‘rewrites’ your brain

Many effective treatments for mental health issues involve psychotherapies such as talking therapy.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a talking therapy which helps you change the way you think - and therefore behave. According to the NHS, it works by helping you break down your problems into separate parts so they become easier to inspect. A trained therapist can then listen and then analyse these parts and to see whether they’re unrealistic or unhelpful.

This can help you think about how each thought affects your mood and behaviour, and what to do to change it. This process ‘rewrites’ your brain into more positive and realistic thought patterns, which can then go on to affect your mental and physical health.

If you are struggling and think your worries are part of a more serious mental health issue, talk to your GP and they can direct you towards the right treatment.

Need someone to listen? Contact a Samaritan here.