{"id":44,"date":"2007-01-10T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-10T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html"},"modified":"2007-01-10T13:30:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-10T13:30:00","slug":"use-your-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html","title":{"rendered":"Use Your 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. <\/p>\n<p>On 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.)<\/p>\n<p>He responded defensively. &#8220;Of all the things I&#8217;ve done for you,&#8221; he said, &#8220;you have to concentrate on that?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>I 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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Dad,&#8221; I asked, &#8220;would it be possible for you not to drink around me?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>He followed through&#8211;by excluding me from family trips, where my sisters and he bar-hopped all night.<\/p>\n<p>If 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. <\/p>\n<p>Part of my recovery has been to not look back so often, and to become more assertive in communicating my feelings because depression is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcmanweb.com\/anger.htm\">anger turned inward<\/a> (at least at some level). <\/p>\n<p>It&#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.<\/p>\n<p>But silence isn&#8217;t the solution&#8211;not if you want to keep your <a href=\"http:\/\/depression.about.com\/od\/causes\/f\/cortisol.htm\">cortisol<\/a> (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","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":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Use Your 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\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Use Your 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\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-01-10T13:30:00+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":"Use Your 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\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Use Your 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\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2007-01-10T13:30:00+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\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html","name":"Use Your Words - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-01-10T13:30:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-01-10T13:30:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/9a07cb215ebbbdc185d2b2a55131e7a2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/01\/use-your-words.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Use Your 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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