Ben May

The art of conversation and taking control of your mental health. 

If something is simple, we would like to think that we have evolved enough to recognise it. However often it is the simplest things that we are unable to do. 

While we have evolved community, society, industry and technology, we have not been able to recognise the most basic of human behaviours to help ourselves evolve further and create a better, more compassionate existence for ourselves and for future generations. 

Often we hear of horrible actions by humans and wonder how or why it is that someone can treat another person that way, although, in many cases, the trajectory of behaviour is clear and the warning signs exist for a long time before the escalation of something deplorable. 

When I was younger, I often found myself struggling in relationships. One thing I remember being common in my friends was hearing how they would allow their relationships to fall apart beyond repair until their partner would leave them. Putting all the emphasis on the woman in the relationship and leaving the man to not have to deal with his decisions. This was considered normal and it stems from men being unable to hold space and speak openly with their partners. 

I found, very regularly, that my behaviour would worsen very quickly. I would become distant and when challenged I would be verbally abusive as I was unable to communicate my true feelings and emotions. This comes from having never been taught how to express myself. 

I speak often about the environment that I was raised in, one that didn’t allow for fragility, honesty and openness and instead favoured aggression, violence and a masculinity that we would now consider to be toxic. This, of course, is a culmination of thousands of years of human behaviour coming together to create a hostile and unmanageable situation. 

Though to put the emphasis solely on men, though much of the world's problems start and finish here, the inability to open up is a problem throughout many communities. 

I often receive messages from people telling me about their experiences with their own journeys of self discovery and how they are still not able to open up and speak amongst their friends, families or peers. In fact, such a small percentage of people in the United Kingdom seek space to speak or know how to open up. 

As few as 1 in 5 adults in the UK have sought professional help and only 1 in 8 have gone one step further and actually spoken with a therapist or peer support group. These are alarmingly small numbers and, at a time when people assume we are becoming more open, it is clear that not enough people are confronting their traumas. Confronting our trauma is incredibly important for a number of reasons, most of all for the progression of behaviour.  

One very important thing to take from these statistics is that many people acknowledge they need to speak to someone only when they reach a crisis point. Though this is exactly what happened to me, by the time I reached my 5th or 6th crises, it strikes me as strange that people are not more aware of themselves and the help around them. When I sought help it wasn’t as readily available as it is now and social media, and the world at large, hadn’t recognised the importance of taking care of ourselves. The pandemic has made people acutely aware, for the most part, of themselves and what is happening to them. However, herein lies part of the problem. 

Social media has a toxic relationship with mental health. A space used to show off the best bits of our lives, it also has the same attitude towards toxic positivity surrounding mental health. It is easy to share an infographic that shows you are in support of progressive behaviour towards self reflection, but the moment you share this it feels like you have done your part. 

An excellent example of this way of behaving was Black Out Tuesday. Many people shared a black tile but the question to be asked is what did those millions of people do the next day? Did they read books, listen to podcasts, learn the history of slavery or stand in protest? 

If I share a tile on my Instagram telling you that I am striving for better for myself, what are my actions? Humans are fantastic at making pledges to themselves to do better but often we lack the ability to see it through. Why? Because there is always a distraction. Have you ever set yourself a New Year’s resolution and let it slip by the wayside? 

Focusing our energy back to ourselves and understanding how we can better achieve the things we want for ourselves comes, simply, in the art of conversation. 

By finding a space where we are able to speak, openly and without judgement, we are able to start to explore the things in our lives. Things that are actively happening, things that have happened and things that are causing us stress. If we do not acknowledge these stresses, or traumas as they are, then they will manifest in ways that are generally uncontrollable, reaching a chaotic crescendo with serious consequences. Instead, by simply talking we are able to create an environment within ourselves that recognises these things and learns how to give space to, and ultimately understand, what is happening to us. 

It seems simple to me that we would want to do this. As an example, imagine that you are have a very busy time at work and people keep asking you to do things that are adding to your stress. You keep saying yes and the stress keeps building, as does the workload, until you are unable to keep going and you reach a level of burnout. This not only causes problems with your work but it all effects your sleep which in turn effects your relationship with people around you. If you are tired then you are irritable, this means you can become short or perhaps even rude to the people you care about. Do you see where this is going? By having no boundaries for ourselves we are unable to set them and can therefore be pushed beyond our limits to dangerous levels. 

To progress we must learn to speak to one another. To do this, we must first find space where we can learn to have conversations. Speaking to therapists or peers can help us understand how to do this, how to take conversation forward and what it can do for us and the relationships around us. 

Whenever I think of the possibility of human evolution of behaviour and what we could achieve I think of communities that are open, a world that respects one another regardless of who they are, their identity or their heritage and a place where we can all prosper collectively. For this to be a reality the first thing we must do is learn to speak, learn to communicate and begin to understand our trauma. 

Take the opportunity when you feel in control of your life, don’t wait until you reach your crisis point. Find the space you need to explore your trauma, safely, in conversation. 

By simply having and holding conversation we are able to progress as a world towards a better future. 

Benjamin May

The New Normal Charity