THE JOURNAL
Illustration by Mr Donghyun Lim
Silence is like a room with no window or door. Inescapable, dark, lonely and claustrophobic. To have no voice is strangulating. I found my voice on London’s Harley Street. A man called Gordon gave me that voice. It’s like that film, The King’s Speech, only I didn’t wear a crown, but a pall of shame. The inability to speak, to express myself and who I am can be explained with a simple phrase: I’m gay.
Growing up in the 1990s, and being queer, I got into the habit of silence. It protects you, but stifles you. To be gay was a slur thrown around and was as hurtful as a football to the face. So, I shut my mouth. Pretended to be someone I wasn’t. Though not very successfully because I had an excessive liking for Steps and memorised the dance routines from the Spice Girls. But still my mouth was like a dammed river. I never truthfully said who I was.
It took me years – and lot of hard work in therapy – to open that sealed mouth. First, I was able to say I was gay, to friends and family. Then, two years ago, I was able to say I was abused as a child. All of this came out through talking. It is like a life ring to a drowning man. And drowning I was. And what I was drowning in was vodka, cider, gin, wine by the box and every cocktail concocted by man.
Men are now three times more likely to go to therapy than they were 15 years ago. And yet, they are still also three times more likely to die by suicide than women. In 2022, 4,179 men in England and Wales died by suicide.“One of the reasons for that is the barriers men face in terms of expressing their emotions,” says Dr Khinezar Tint of Greater Manchester Mental Health. “They might not have friends of relatives that they can sit down with and actively talk about their feelings. The sharing of male emotions is considered weak. And there are loads of ways men are forced into a strong, silent position. But they are much more likely to complete a suicide than women.”
Verbalising saves lives. It saved mine. Dark thoughts have sometimes passed over my mind. They came like rain clouds, unwanted but undeniable. I shrink from those memories now. “If you put a name to your emotions and your feelings and what’s been happening to you, it helps,” Tint says. “And without that it’s hard for a lot of people to process things that have been going on in their life.”
This year, Mind and Rethink Mental Illness’ Time To Talk Day falls on 1 February. It was first launched in 2014 and has, over the years, helped people around the UK talk about mental illness. It’s a campaign to encourage people to reach out to friends and discuss their mental health. Because one in four of us every year will have a mental health issue. But most of us do not reach out for help.
“One of the reasons for that is the barriers men face in terms of expressing their emotions”
Mind’s latest report showed that the resilience within communities comes widely from people talking to each other. Whether that’s a cup of tea at a church or with friends. Talking, it turns out, has always been helpful – even our friends in ancient Greece and Egypt could see the value of spilling your heart out. The oral tradition prevalent at the time was not just a means to pass on stories, but to give wisdom and comfort.
Psychotherapy as we know it today, though, was properly kickstarted by Professor Sigmund Freud. He would have his patients recline on a chaise lounge and, with his beady eyes set on them, he would ask them to talk about their childhood memories, dreams and family.
“Having a support network you can talk freely to is perhaps more important than going to see a therapist”
The process was lengthy, as Freud said. But from it he felt by talking and by questioning, the patient would gain insight that would in some way heal their wounds. It wasn’t always a perfect process. And never can it be. But sometimes the action of talking has profound effects. And the main one is knowing your emotions.
Knowing my emotions was certainly key for me. And Tint agrees, especially when we don’t talk. “What ends up happening if you can’t identify your feelings, and what’s wrong with you, is that they start to manifest in different ways,” she says. “Through anger, violence, or through drug and alcohol addiction. People have even gone blind through repression.”
To have a voice is to live. The truth does actually set you free. By talking, all the strain, all the self-hatred and doubt start to seep through the soles of your shoes, until, over time, it weighs less heavy. But that vow of monastic silence you made to yourself when you were younger is hard to shake. But the binds do loosen.
There’s a meme going around that says you don’t need a girlfriend or boyfriend, you just need therapy and sex. “I don’t agree with that meme,” Tint says. “Because what therapy and sex misses out is love. Everyone needs love.”
Tint says that having a support network, “you can talk freely to is as important if not perhaps more important than just going to see a therapist”. Help can be found if only we reach out our hand for it. To talk is to know you are not alone. And to know you are not alone is to survive.
