A Broken Record Story of My Life All Over Again
By all external factors, the evening was an Instagram-worthy snapshot. At that place was a heart-stopping sunrise in the distance. Kids were playing our national pastime in front of the states, their parents cheering them loudly while maintaining appropriate social distance. Sitting beside my wife, nosotros watched one of our children'southward endless sporting events this spring. In between innings, we started a surface-level chat most the game, our plans for the calendar week ahead, and the parental tasks on our never-ending to-do listing.
Merely I felt compelled to have the conversation to a much deeper place,
"I'm very depressed this evening."
For the past 10 years or and then, since I was first diagnosed with a mental health disorder, I've worked at being more comfortable and confident in expressing – openly, honestly, sincerely – about my internal conflict with low. I've come a long manner on my journeying. Putting those words out there that evening was far less scary than at other times in my life when the stigma around mental disease kept me from saying anything about it.
Sarah responded, as she almost oft does – with kindness, empathy, compassion, and her full back up. She did it past listening.
I wonder, though, how many others don't have 'someone to tell it to' in their lives? I wonder how solitary each of those "Someones" (as we telephone call them within Someone To Tell It To) must feel this month of May – Mental Health Sensation calendar month.
As I reflected on that night, I was reminded of a story Michael (my Someone To Tell It To Co-Founder) and I shared in our first volume, Someone To Tell Information technology To: Sharing Life's Journeying . By re-sharing the story here, we are modeling the aforementioned message nosotros hope to impress in this blog. The bulletin is this:
We need to proceed telling (and re-telling) our stories with those who will listen. Nosotros need to keep telling them until nosotros can figure them out; until nosotros can understand and observe clarity through the stories.
This story is true:
I was co-leading a class for people undergoing trauma in their lives. One woman conspicuously needed to share her story, and it was a story filled with pain and fear. During a break in the class, she pulled me aside and started to tell me almost herself fifty-fifty though I had already heard virtually of information technology already during the class discussions. A few minutes into the re-telling, 1 of the class co-leaders walked by and heard what she was saying. He stopped, looked at us, and said to the woman, "You've already told me and several others this; you don't need to keep telling it. Don't waste product his time."
I was stunned by his insensitivity. As he walked away and was out of earshot, I indicated to the woman that it was okay; she could share whatever she needed to share.
And it actually was okay.
It was necessary for her, as she struggled with a life-threatening state of affairs, to get it out, to talk about how she was feeling and how information technology affected her.
She felt lonely. She was scared. She was tired of it all. She simply needed someone to know how she was feeling. She needed to keep telling her story until she had candy it completely and didn't need to tell it anymore.
My co-leader didn't understand that. He didn't have the patience or compassion to listen and let her to seek the emotional and spiritual healing she needed. Several times he chastised me for my "patience." He indicated that it was non a virtue. But even though he did not value my agreement of empathetic patience, I refused to exist dissuaded from doing what I have always idea was right—to give others the time and the focus they demand to help them detect their fashion through dark and discouraging times.
Since Someone To Tell It To's start, our squad has often been asked the question,
"How practice you respond to people who say the same things over and over and over again?"
Someone once again asked this question during one of our most recent At The Table training seminars. Still, those who ask this don't realize that they sound similar broken records to u.s.a., too.
Over the years, we heard the same question over and over again.
"How often practice you meet with 'Someone', and volition you keep meeting (fifty-fifty if) you keep hearing the same things repeatedly?"
"Are there parameters you lot set with folks?"
"What do you do when there doesn't seem to be any movement"? Such as, what if the 'Someone' you are listening to doesn't seem to be doing what (I) call up the person should be doing?"
I'thou interested in how the language we apply reveals our deeper values and cultural frameworks. Take, "You lot audio like a broken tape."
I suppose I'1000 a lilliputian flake like the character David on the hit show Schitt$ Creek who asks his dad to explain every idiom he uses in conversation, which, of course, he is unable to do. Watching him bollix his way through an explanation is null brusque of brilliant humor.
I did some enquiry on where this phrase comes from. According to grammarist.com:
To sound like a cleaved tape means to repeat something over and over in an annoying manner. The phrase comes from certain characteristics of a vinyl record, … When a vinyl record has a scratch or a divot, it may either skip over a section while playing or repeat the same section over and over over again until the needle is manually moved beyond the record.
Every bit a millennial, fifty-fifty though I may not be every bit familiar with vinyl records every bit the Boomer generation, I am still accustomed to hearing the idiom used as function of common vernacular. Today, streaming music through Pandora, Itunes, Spotify, and other mediums has largely replaced records, although some music enthusiasts nonetheless prefer the rich sound generated by vinyl. Even with its tendency to skip and repeat the aforementioned thing over and over and over again, there is a beauty to the sound, just as at that place is a beauty to each one of u.s.a.. Even if we demand to repeat and repeat, we still need to be heard, to know that we're heard, and to know that others believe our thoughts and feelings thing.
The purpose of Mental Wellness Awareness Month is to raise awareness and brainwash the public almost mental illnesses and reduce the stigma and shame too often attached to them. eighteen.1% of Americans alive with some course of depression , schizophrenia , or bipolar disorder . Events and publicity during this month highlight the realities of living with these weather and offer strategies for wellness and accessibility to mental health care. This month likewise aims to draw attention to suicide which is often precipitated by mental illnesses. Additionally, Mental Health Awareness Month strives to reduce the negative connotations and misconceptions that surround mental illnesses.
I want to focus on this one simple phrase for a moment.
I wonder how many others have thought that I am the one who sounds like a cleaved record – replaying, repeating, restating the same words, phrases, or stories over and over and over, especially when it comes to mental illness (on top of all of my other "issues" like fibromyalgia, post-concussion syndrome, self-doubt, etc.)? Could information technology exist that I'grand the one on repeat, dealing with the same bug, trauma, hurts, and woundedness?
I've thought about this topic in recent months because, over again, I'm fortunate to have others in my life who go on on listening to my internal conflicts. But what most the scores of folks who lack truthful social connection? I recently finished reading a volume about a teenage rail star who took her own life as a result of her mental illness. I'yard certainly not going to point fingers at anyone for their responses (or lack of response) to her internal conflict — however, it seemed similar people may have stopped listening to her considering she may have sounded like a broken tape to them, replaying, repeating, and restating her views (near non wanting to be a runner in college after accepting a higher scholarship to run, and others non understanding her decision).
I will add –and I call back information technology'south really important to exist clear almost this — mental disease is a biological upshot. However, I do believe when others mind with compassion, empathy, understanding, and support, the fear can be erased, the stigma can be lessened, and light can pierce the darkness.
So what is our response to those types of questions about what to do when 'Someone' keeps telling the same story over and over and over? The reply is a elementary ane: ya' go on listening . If 'Someone' keeps telling their story, it's probably for ii reasons:
- People still aren't listening to them
- They need to retell their story to continue to work towards agreement their traumas, feelings, and ongoing issues related to their story
LET THEM TELL It!
In reality, we are all a bit of a broken record, too, dealing with all types of internal conflicts. Let's remind ourselves of how we'd like others to respond to us when nosotros are virtually vulnerable. It's the Gilt Rule of Listening. Think nigh how you desire to exist treated in conversation — with dignity and respect — and vow to treat 'Someone' else the same mode.
Photo by Benjamin Suter on Unsplash
Source: https://someonetotellitto.org/you-sound-like-a-broken-record/