When I get together with friends, I’ll always have news to catch up on. That’s the way it works right? Work. Family life. Love. Loss. The bad and the good. More often than not, I have a small collection of stories I have to share. As the saying goes, a problem shared is a problem halved. Joy that is spread, just multiplies that joy in my opinion. Not only does getting together with loved ones entertain the soul it cools a boiling pot of emotion. When I find myself ready to tell my story to friends, I have a small voice in my head telling me that I’m self-indulging in their kind words, hugs and nods of understanding. The small voice grows louder as I approach their front door, as I accept a cup of tea and it even starts screaming as soon as someone says, ‘And how are you?’. I often wonder if my tales are important to tell. Why should my problems and woes command their attention when their problems should go first, or be spoken louder or longer than my own?

During the pandemic, during its most terrible and confusing moments, I felt unable to share how very bad my anxiety had gotten. People were dying, people were grieving, kept apart for months at a time wondering when and if they’d see their loved ones again. How did brain rattling anxiety compare? I felt anxious about catching covid, I worried about my loved ones and the world became a very scary place. I honestly thought people would band together more, I sometimes thought of the stories from WW1 and 2, about milkmen that still delivered to houses that were more rubble than homes. In such big ways, people did so much to help others, the children in the school playground singing loud so the nursing home residents next door didn’t feel alone is just one amazing example. This shouldn’t be dimmed by the few that were selfish and were fighting against the rules. But they were out there, and when you have anxiety you’ll often see the one bad person in a crowd of amazing people. 

It’s all too easy to be consumed by how personal feelings affect us when we are shut inside our own homes with no view of the outside world. It is all too easy to text someone and try to convey feelings, make a phone call and try to explain, but ultimately it’s when a friend is in front of you when the mask may slip and it becomes all too obvious that there’s more to the story. Unfiltered, unshrouded truth. And yet there’s a barrier to be found when you feel that your problems are tiny compared to others. Invalidation of feelings.

It was during 2021 that I started exploring the concept of how invalidating your own feelings can be dramatically damaging to your mental health. The most selfish way of explaining it is this: only you feel how you feel, it is happening to you and no one else. You can’t feel how someone else feels and vice versa. 

The more rounded way of describing this is likening it to a physical injury. A papercut is tiny. It slices the skin in an irritating way and stops hurting almost as fast as it happened. Now imagine the first time you got a papercut, you’d think what the actual hell was that! Now imagine the hundredth time, maybe you shrug it off, maybe you don’t. Maybe you catch it later on, snagging it and reminding you of the irritation. Maybe you forget about it and cook dinner and get some lemon, chilli, salt in it. Each situation produces a different response, from different people. Some people are more thick skinned than others and some people bleed like from a tap. 

A closer look at pain, makes me think of pain management in hospitals. They don’t see someone rolled up on a stretcher with a broken leg and categorise it as a 5/10. They ask each person. ‘On a scale of 1-10, how is your pain?’ This is down to how differently each patient can handle pain. If you were to punch me right now, I’d cry, from shock, from a new trauma and then the pain. If you were to punch Mr W, well first you’d have to run and second he’d shrug it off. We have vastly different histories when it comes to that kind of treatment. So why is it more acceptable in society to understand an individual’s tolerance to pain and not understand someone’s sensitivity to their own mental health?

I’ll say this, the pandemic opened up conversations about mental health and for that I am grateful. I’ll also be one of the first to tell anyone out there that their feelings no matter what. Invalidating your own feelings in favour of someone else does not push your feelings aside and out of the way, it pushes them down where they’ll rise to the surface again to harm you once more. It is compassion that dictates the invalidation we put upon ourselves. Where this can be a kindness to others you are doing damage to yourself. And it needs to stop. Once you start to look on others with more kindness than yourself, pushing the nurturing smile to your face and the care into your eyes, you are taking it away from yourself. Believe it or not, you have enough in you to care for both yourself and others. By looking after yourself and validating YOU, you’ll find yourself a mentally stronger person and in a perfect position to be stronger for others. Win win, right?

I know there is so much pain in this world, so much lost, so much feared and felt. I hope we learn to love as fiercely as ever. To protect. To nourish. To heal. Starting with ourselves first. Giving ourselves the changes we deserve. That the world deserves. You’ll never know how much you can change the world, until you change your world. Protect your mind. Nourish your feelings. Heal your heavy heart. Validate you. 

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Photo by Dave Watson

Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com/