{"id":1961,"date":"2009-09-23T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2009-09-23T09:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html"},"modified":"2009-09-23T09:00:45","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T09:00:45","slug":"why-we-should-use-our-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html","title":{"rendered":"Why We Should Use Our Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m always telling David and Katherine to use their words (instead of whining and screaming), but I&#8217;m often afraid to use them myself. Unlike Eric, who vocalizes a resentment before it&#8217;s had time to fester and start a family, I hate confrontation so much that I&#8217;ll befriend the resentment&#8211;dress it up, take it out on the town, hang out with it for years&#8211;anything to avoid conflict.<br \/>\nOn some level, I fear that any conversation of substance will end the same way as the one I had with my dad almost two decades ago&#8211;when I conjured up the courage to tell him how hurt I was that he missed my high school graduation. (He was golfing.)<br \/>\nHe responded defensively. &#8220;Of all the things I&#8217;ve done for you,&#8221; he said, &#8220;you have to concentrate on that?&#8221;<br \/>\nI tried one more time, a year later, to tell him I wanted a better relationship with him. Newly sober, I was struggling with all the drinking in our family.<br \/>\n&#8220;Dad,&#8221; I asked, &#8220;would it be possible for you not to drink around me?&#8221;<br \/>\nHe followed through&#8211;by excluding me from family trips, where my sisters and he bar-hopped all night.<br \/>\nIf I were an emotionally healthy, chemically-balanced woman, I might have let go of my hurt long ago. I certainly should have cremated it with my father&#8217;s body when he died. But I&#8217;m an extraordinarily sensitive manic depressive with an excellent memory and a hearty menu of issues.<br \/>\nPart of my recovery has been to not look back so often, and to become more assertive in communicating my feelings because depression is anger turned inward (at least at some level).<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s not easy. Because when you use your words, you learn a lot about a person and his priorities&#8211;you invite responses that are downright ugly and difficult to hear.<br \/>\nBut silence isn&#8217;t the solution&#8211;not if you want to keep your cortisol (the stress hormone) levels low. The trick is using your words with absolutely no expectation of what kind of response you&#8217;ll get (yeah right). You say them for the sake of expressing them, not for anything you hope to hear. If that&#8217;s at all possible.<\/p>\n<p><i>*&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.feedburner.com\/fb\/a\/emailverifySubmit?feedId=611738&amp;loc=en_US\">Click here to <\/a><b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.feedburner.com\/fb\/a\/emailverifySubmit?feedId=611738&amp;loc=en_US\">subscribe to Beyond Blue<\/a><\/b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.feedburner.com\/fb\/a\/emailverifySubmit?feedId=611738&amp;loc=en_US\">!<\/a><\/i><i> And <\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/thereseborchard\"><i>c<\/i><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/thereseborchard\"><i>lick here to follow Therese on <b>Twitter<\/b><\/i><\/a><i>. And <\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/beyond_blue\"><i>click here to join <b>Group Beyond Blue<\/b><\/i><\/a><i>, a depression support group. Now stop clicking.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m always telling David and Katherine to use their words (instead of whining and screaming), but I&#8217;m often afraid to use them myself. Unlike Eric, who vocalizes a resentment before it&#8217;s had time to fester and start a family, I hate confrontation so much that I&#8217;ll befriend the resentment&#8211;dress it up, take it out on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationships"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why We Should Use Our Words - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why We Should Use Our Words - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m always telling David and Katherine to use their words (instead of whining and screaming), but I&#8217;m often afraid to use them myself. Unlike Eric, who vocalizes a resentment before it&#8217;s had time to fester and start a family, I hate confrontation so much that I&#8217;ll befriend the resentment&#8211;dress it up, take it out on&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-09-23T09:00:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why We Should Use Our Words - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why We Should Use Our Words - Beyond Blue","og_description":"I&#8217;m always telling David and Katherine to use their words (instead of whining and screaming), but I&#8217;m often afraid to use them myself. Unlike Eric, who vocalizes a resentment before it&#8217;s had time to fester and start a family, I hate confrontation so much that I&#8217;ll befriend the resentment&#8211;dress it up, take it out on&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2009-09-23T09:00:45+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html","name":"Why We Should Use Our Words - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-09-23T09:00:45+00:00","dateModified":"2009-09-23T09:00:45+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/09\/why-we-should-use-our-words.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why We Should Use Our Words"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. 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You may find her at her personal blog, her website, or you may follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.","sameAs":["http:\/\/thereseborchard.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/tborchard"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}