Suffering in silence is an option that many people unwillingly take because they cannot overcome mental health stigma. However, to overcome mental health stigma, suffering in silence is not the way to go. You don’t have to tell everyone. But don’t be ashamed to admit that your are struggling.

How it Feels Suffering in Silence

This spring, on a quiet evening, I decided to listen to a song that I had not listened to for a while. I like the song, but this one evening it spoke to me in a different way. It got me thinking about those people that suffer in silence with regards to mental health. They bear the pain in silence and solitude. They hide their pain from other people, hoping and praying that the people around them will not see or notice their pain. It’s as though one hides from the people around until the wound stops bleeding.

The reasoning here is that as long as no one sees the bleeding, then no one will know my pain or suffering. They do not seek help for whatever reasons. They simply live in hope that it will all go away when they wake up the next morning. But with each rising of the sun, the problem is not any different, if not worse, to what it was with the setting of the sun. They may attempt to drown it in alcohol, cry themselves to sleep, pretend that it’s not there, or ignore it altogether. Their best attempts do not seem to yield the desired results.

This can be exhausting and frustrating. This is not easy to do as it may give a feeling like one is being dragged down the abyss by the pain. The fear that you are losing control may grapple you so much that you feel like a captive with no power to set yourself free. You want it gone but don’t know how.

Is it ok to suffer in silence? This is the sad reality that mental health stigma does. It makes one to opt to suffer in silence . My call to you is that you don’t need to suffer in silence. Having to deal with the difficulties is hard enough for you to add to it the extra work of hiding your pain. There’s no need to hide your pain. We all have pain of some sort. It’s just that yours is different. But it’s still pain.

3 Steps on How to Stop Suffering in Silence

You do not have to suffer in silence. You can seek for help. There are three steps that I would suggest to anyone who wants to step out of suffering in silence. I won’t say that these are guaranteed solutions to mental health stigma. They are simply suggestions. Getting out of the situation requires hard work and commitment. It’s not something that will simply happen by following these three steps. There will have to be more involved in each of the three steps than what I have written. This is more like the bullet points of a PowerPoint presentation.

The first step in how to stop suffering in silence is to acknowledge that you have a problem, and that the problem needs to be resolved. Hiding away will not resolve your problem. What is likely to resolve your problem is you acknowledging that you have a problem that needs resolving, and most importantly, you need to get to work on resolving your problem. It just won’t disappear in thin air. I would like to believe that you have tried to work on it but not yielded any positive results. This can be frustrating and discouraging.

My one message to you is that don’t give up just yet. The fact that what you tried didn’t work doesn’t have to spell doom for you. Why don’t you try a different approach, or a different therapist. I am not promising that this will work with absolute certainty. But it might. And if it might, then there’s no harm in trying…. again.

The second step is to build and hold on to the anchor of hope. I understand and sympathise with you that hope is what kills you right now. The hope I am asking you to build is that which confidently expects that it can get better. The hope is that it might not be completely eradicated but it will get better. There is research and techniques that have been developed to deal with mental illness. So, the hope is not built on mere hype but sound and tested knowledge on how to deal with mental illness. There are effective approaches and techniques to deal with depression, anxiety, low mood, and other mental illnesses.

You need to believe that you can experience something different. Yes, this applies to those who have tried many times and haven’t seen any better. I know it feels like I am asking for too much from someone who feel that they have tried the best they could but without any success. I wouldn’t ask you to hope if I didn’t myself believe that change is not guaranteed but possible.

The final step is to seek professional help. It’s perfectly fine to be sceptical about seeking professional help. It could be that your experiences with such individuals haven’t been a pleasant one. Or it could be that you didn’t get what you wanted. To that end, you are disappointed and have lost faith in professional help.

All I can tell you is that not all people are the same. Just think it this way, in our daily life we meet a lot of people, but we don’t fall in love with everyone, I’d hope. We may admire a lot of people but there’s only one that sweeps us off our feet to want to be with them. One we call a good fit. You may find your good fit therapist if you tried seeking help. One that understands your pain to make it bearable.

Conclusion

Suffering in silence can at times feel like trying to salvage a hopeless situation. It can give a feeling like you are ever on a sliding slope slowly going down the hill without anything to clatch onto that would stop the downward slide. You may convince yourself that someday in the future the pain will go away. But mental health problems do not have to make you feel the need to suffer in silence.

Let me close this article by using the analogy of a speed bump. The main purpose of a speed bump is to slow down traffic, to create a safe environment for the pedestrians. Driving at low speed can also minimise the damage to the cars if they were to be involved in an accident.

We are not meant to learn how to land safely, or fly passed the speed bump while driving at high speed. Rather, they are meant to slow us down. In like manner, mental health problems or illness is meant to tell us that there is something that requires your attention. Hiding or suffering in silence is like driving past a speed bump at high speed with the hope that in time you will learn to land safely. Don’t hurt and hide. You don’t have to suffer in silence.