Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. We all grew up on the giving and receiving end of that plea that carried with it a great burden and fear – holders of a secret, or worse, a code of silence.
For decades, unwritten codes of silence plagued the military, police force, politics, corporate cultures and even families, causing unnecessary suffering and injustice. Staying quiet and silence ran deep in our collective consciousness. Thankfully, fueled by courageous women and men everywhere, that’s an idea whose time has passed. #TimesUp indeed.
Bravo to the courageous who share bravely about their experiences and struggles with mental illness. To the ones who stand up to bullies on- and offline, and Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Sarah Silverman and countless other celebrities using their platforms and voices to help de-stigmatize mental illness and combat bullying, THANK YOU. Sharing is caring, and can bring hope and help to those desperately in need.
You matter.
The #MeToo and #TimesUp movement brought a much needed spotlight on the importance and power of using our voices to bring about change and justice. As we collectively lent our voices to a cause the volume increased, whispers became louder, until the volume became impossible to ignore.
We cannot remain silent. Silence can be seen as a non-verbal agreement, and in silence we suffer alone. But we don’t have to. When we stay silent, it can prevent people from seeking the help and support they need. Don’t ignore an urge to speak up about an injustice or truth. You matter and your voice makes a difference. And it can mean the difference between someone suffering and getting support. Promoting greater mental health is everyone’s job.
When you see something, say something.
During a recent Anderson Cooper interview, the Mom whose child died at Sandy Hook stated that “Talk therapy is detrimental to working through trauma and should not be done.”
That’s a bold, sweeping statement. Thankfully we live in a society that affords us the safety to express opinions and in most places, protected choice. It was easy for the mother, an unlicensed mental health professional, to make broad stroke statements about what they think they know regarding treating trauma. Anderson Cooper isn’t a mental health professional either; rather he is a journalist, author, and television anchor and personality, and a good one at that. The roles of the Press include to inform, analyze, question and stimulate debate. Yet during that interview, I watched in surprise as a question, assessment or debate did not ensue following that mothers’ assertion that talk therapy is detrimental to working through trauma and should not be done. Instead, I sat there among thousands of others watching the silence that followed go unchallenged, unchecked.
Silence can be silent agreement: I can’t be silent.
As a trauma expert and psychoanalyst, psychotherapy has been essential in my working through traumatic memories with many to enable them to be better able to more forward in their life and not stuck in old patterns.
Psychotherapy is an essential tool to work through trauma at a deeper level to develop new skills to become free from repeating the traumatic memory.
Trauma is stored differently than other memory.
Just because someone isn’t demonstrating outward signs of PTSD immediately following a traumatic incident, doesn’t mean they won’t. Likewise, just because someone started psychotherapy and didn’t feel better with immediacy, doesn’t mean they won’t.
Traumatic memory is short circuited and stored in somatic sensations and visual images in the amygdala, so that traumatic memory is expressed non-verbally. This makes it more likely to be put into body parts resulting in physical illness or in self-destructive ways acted out.
Speaking up can saves lives.
Psychotherapy with a qualified trauma expert addresses the roots of PTSD and allows the traumatized person at his pace to be able to recall the trauma verbally and begin to have more emotional distance from the trauma.
By eventually working through the trauma with a qualified therapist, the person is less dissociated and better integrated, by being more in touch with the pain and loss associated with the trauma and thereby making it less likely that the trauma unconsciously adversely controls their lives through flashbacks, physical illness, and destructive reenactments.
Psychotherapy, sometimes described as “talk therapy,” has been scientifically proven to help children, adolescents and adults to overcome trauma, achieve greater mental health, and lead fuller, happier lives. So it’s actually the opposite to “detrimental,” which we hear unopposed on television. I wouldn’t stay silent about that. It’s on behalf of the countless lives psychotherapy has helped, and can continue to help for those brave enough to speak up and seek support that I share.