Karen March Counselling & Therapy Services

KAREN MARCH
M.Soc.Sc.(Counselling),
MACA(Professional)

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It's not uncommon during the first consultation, for a client to say that this is the first time they have expressed out loud what's troubling them.

Equally interesting is their reaction to hearing themselves articulate their feelings and their account of the problem history. Such a simple action as talking aloud seems to create a shift within and a perspective of the problem they have never seen before, which often turns out to be immensely helpful.

So why are we so afraid to put into words, the thoughts that are troubling us?

It seems when we become stuck in negativity, we are often unaware how internalising our thoughts feeds the problem.

What we may notice is some or all of these four common symptoms:

MONKEY MIND:we flit from one thought to another. It's as if we're randomly searching through the hard-drive of our brain clicking on one link after another and losing where it all began and how we've got to where we are now. Regrets about the past morph into worry about the future, often accompanied by self-criticism and self-doubt.

HABITUAL THINKING: the same old ideas, preconceptions and judgements become stuck on "repeat". They become the natural default through which we see the world.

RIGHTEOUSNESS & BLAME: we become consumed with self-justification, taking offence and being right. There is little room for understanding and forgiveness

HELPLESSNESS: we believe that because we think certain things that we have no choice in how we feel or how we respond. We fail to see that we have the ability to choose and that there is more than one possible path.

The common thread through these conditions is that they are going on in our heads and rarely, if ever, expressed out loud even to ourselves.

For example, if you often denigrate yourself in your mind, try putting your self-criticism into words and say it out loud to yourself. You may find that on hearing yourself say what's in your head, it may seem to have less basis or even sound silly.

If you are worried about something, put your fears into a sentence or two and say them out loud. Your concerns may appear to lose their power because, on saying them aloud, they don't seem quite as scary or may even sound far-fetched.

So why should putting our feelings and problems into words make any difference?

Recent brain imaging studies by researchers at UCLA have revealed why speaking about our feelings eases the intensity of anger, sadness, worry and pain.

The study looked at fear responses in a part of the brain involved in emotional reaction, called the amygdala. Two groups of participants were shown photographs of angry and fearful faces. The group who were encouraged to put a label to the facial expression they were seeing (e.g. angry), exhibited a much lower fear response in the amygdala than the group who merely viewed but did not verbalise what they were seeing.

In another study, participants who did not label the emotion but instead gave a name to the face (e.g. Harry), did not exhibit the same benefit.

Articulating the emotion seems to decrease the emotional response to the image. In short, when feelings are put into words, we are pulling brain activity into the pre-frontal region (the part of the brain that makes decisions and moderates our behaviour) and deflecting it from the reactive emotional centre.

If you would like to read the full findings of the UCLA study you can find it here

So, research to date seems to suggest that putting our feelings into words and defining our emotions, could result in us feeling less fearful, less sad, less angry.

Perhaps the pure act of talking about our problems to someone is in itself a therapeutic act and can go a long way to helping us heal.

The old adage "A problem shared is a problem halved" may in fact have a very sound scientific basis.

Karen March Aldinga Medical Surgery 17 Old Coach Road, Aldinga SA 5173
Mobile: 0409169115 Email: karmar@chariot.net.au

ABN 51440 722 091