Let’s talk about talking- Part 1

Image courtesy of @rosemcgowan/Instagram

Social media allows us to connect with each other everyday. In recent years, conversations have been started about sexual assault, feminism and gun violence. In this two-part piece, we question why its taken us this long to open up about the issues and important topics in today’s world. Let’s talk about talking.

In the process of gathering content for INC, we’ve come to learn that people aren’t always open to talking to us about topics such as mental health, sexual health and other big issues. In response to this, and to provide you our readers with the engaging and interesting content that they deserve, we’re challenging everyone including ourselves to think about the effect of keeping quiet and refusing to talk.

Perhaps our difficulty to open up about world issues, could come from our cautiousness when talking about our personal problems. Although there’s a clear difference between global problems and that of our own, perhaps a difficulty talking about one, influences our ability to talk about the other. Psychotherapist Olivia Djouadi, explains that “people do have problems sharing at first because trust is needed, and people share things that have hurt them.” So maybe, like personal problems, we collectively struggle to open up to the rest of the world about issues such as mental health, because it’s harder for us to feel trust towards a global community.

But what happened to ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’? If the issue is shared- such as a global issue- then surely this would be easy for us to talk about. With topics such as mental health or abuse, openly talking about them may seem tricky as we don’t know what others have been through and there is therefore a fear of upsetting someone. Or you yourself may have been effected, by for example mental health or abuse, and what was once a global issue and an open conversation, becomes a personal conversation and respectively private.

Having said this, conversations have been started recently about global issues such as sexual assault, mental health and gun violence. Mental health and suicide prevention charity Samaritans states in their 2016/17 annual report, that someone contacts the Samaritans helpline every six seconds. Using the hashtag #smalltalksaveslives, their aim is to raise awareness that talking can be a welcome and friendly distraction for those who may be experiencing mental health issues, and could potentially be preventative in the case of suicide.

Image courtesy of Samaritans.org

Equally the conversation surrounding sexual assault has, over the past year, become increasingly open with the #metoo campaign across social media. Kick-started by the Harvey Weinstein scandal that shook Hollywood in 2017, men and women across the world and multiple industries have come forward to reveal their stories of sexual assault and harassment.

Additionally, proving the issue much bigger than we might have thought. Film photographer and founder of Cheer Up Luv, Eliza Hatch began a series of portraits of ‘everyday women’ accompanied by their stories of sexual assault and harassment, to show the impact of their stories and the magnitude of the issue. Her portraits are to be shown in an exhibition Girl Behind the Lens from 27 April at The Horse Hospital, London. Holding the conversation through these various mediums makes it accessible and open to everyone around the world.

These conversations were started eventually. So what’s our point? Click through to part two to learn why our current way of talking is no longer working, and what we can do to change it.