How to talk about your mental wellbeing
5 tips to start a conversation on how you are feeling
When do you feel at ease? In the zone? Yourself?
For a lot of us, Slowly is our safe haven in a stressful world. A calm space, where we are free to share how we really feel, even when we are on the down side. But often, it’s still difficult to talk about our mental wellbeing. In this post, I’ll share a few ideas that may be helpful.
The importance of speaking up
First things first: You’re not alone!
Deteriorating mental health often goes unnoticed or gets dismissed under our social expectations to ‘suck it up’, ‘fix your problems’, or simply ‘get it done’…
To make things worse, our never-ending chase for an optimised, high-performing lifestyle leaves no breathing space for exploring, sharing and making sense of who we are and how we feel.
As a result, we normalise stress, internalise hurtful feelings, and gradually shield ourselves from opportunities of healing and growth.
The good news?
The more we practice open communication about our mental wellbeing with close friends and families, the better we are at managing feelings, building a habit of trust and compassion through honest dialogues.
Here are a few ideas I always keep in mind:
📮 1 Understand we’re not our negative feelings
It can sometimes feel like we’re drowning, or being overwhelmed. But remember that you are much more than your emotions.
Speaking up openly means we approach our emotions in a way that is not detached, but also not overly attached.
- Putting into practice: It means when speaking up about them, we shouldn’t suppress (leave out details), nor exaggerate (describe things hyperbolically).
📮2 Embracing vulnerability
Vulnerability means to show more facets of your emotions and thoughts. To communicate what you are afraid of; or how you really feel. Some might think this sounds risky. Like it’s showing weakness, or letting guards down.
But embracing vulnerability is only half the story.
Because the more we openly speak about difficult feelings, the more we’re building resilience towards shame and the thought that ‘this is/ I am not worth it’. The rewards of it hugely outweigh the initial worries, and no matter what, you’ll always feel the relief by finally getting things off your chest.
- Putting into practice: It might take the shape of discussing what you want to do in this life with a friend; or asking a special someone out for a date; or sharing that you’re feeling empty recently, and don’t know what to do.
Uncertainty is the standard human state: We don’t know why we’re here, what we’re doing, or what really goes on in the people around us. Sometimes, it’s exactly the same with our own emotions — and that’s downright okay.
📮 3 Set healthy boundaries
It’s unlikely you’re ready to go all-in and spill out every single thing that’s on your mind. Listen to yourself, and find out which lines you don’t want to have crossed. It might feel wrong or selfish in the beginning, but it ensures that you don’t get trampled over. It’s a process, and the lines might change in time, but always at your timing.
Consider also the boundaries of those we talk to about our wellbeing. The challenge, and the art of communication, is grasping the fine line between honesty and oversharing. Examples of communicating boundaries:
“I’m willing to share topic X, but I need more time to see if I can talk about topic Y”.
“Certain things have been affecting me lately. Would you feel comfortable if I share them with you over text?”
“Please let me know if at any point I am oversharing and you feel uneasy.”
📮 4 Let uncertainty happen and give it time
Many times, explaining our emotions simply feels like we’re taking a guess: “I don’t know why I felt frustrated”, “It was hurtful but to be honest, I’m not entirely sure why”…
As humans, it’s okay to be unsure about how we are and what we actually feel.
Uncertainty is the standard human state: We don’t know why we’re here, what we’re doing, or what really goes on in the people around us. Sometimes, it’s exactly the same with our own emotions — and that’s downright okay.
📮5 Expanding our emotional vocabulary
We’re all equipped with the same set of senses for feeling emotions, but expressing them is a whole other story. Expanding our emotional vocabulary means to diversify the words we use in communicating our feelings. It helps us better identify how we feel (instead of feeling ‘bad’, you may feel ‘nervous’, ‘agitated’…), and how we should manage them. It also helps those whom we speak to understand our emotions and experiences with more depth, and in turn allow them to be more confident in providing support.
A reliable reference I always go back to is Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions:
Next time when you want to tell a friend how you feel about a situation, try switching up basic emotional words like ‘angry’, ‘sad’ and see if you can pinpoint it down to something more precise.
Let us take things slow
If you’d prefer to talk about your wellbeing anonymously, or with a slower pace — give Slowly a try.
Slowly offers a platform to start healthy conversations, and it’s proven to be a heartwarmingly positive experience for many (Check out Slowly Story — where countless Slowly users share their unique beautiful stories about people they met).
If you don’t know where to start, let the broad range of topics — or an auto-match — guide you through the safe space. You are always free to share your thoughts and feelings at ease, and at your pace.
Our wellbeing is an important topic. Talking about it is not easy.
It might feel overwhelming or impossible at first, but it gets easier with time. Small steps, and keep in mind that the first one always takes the most courage.
And if you’ve decided to reach out to someone in real life, or a friend on Slowly after reading this: Awesome, I wish you can keep it up, and keep us updated!
What do you personally find difficult when talking about your feelings? Have you met someone on Slowly that you can trust to share you wellbeing with? Feel free to share your story with us, or leave a comment below.
💌 Start a conversation on Slowly today →
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