Bell Let’s Talk Day is coming. It is just over a year away. Oh, yes, there is one next Wednesday, January 30th, but I’m more focused on the next one, because we have some work to do.
Alexander Graham Bell is remembered primarily because he invented the telephone, but that is not what he set out to do. His mother became increasingly deaf during his later childhood, and he would tap out conversations in a form of ‘finger language’ so she could know what was being said. He also sometimes spoke to her forehead and she could hear the vocal vibrations. This led his very active mind to an interest in acoustics.
Bell’s initial interest in helping his mother hear, soon turned into an interest in how to help people talk. At the end of the day, though, he was an active mind who would leave his own company to spend more time in Cape Breton surrounded by boats and flying machines of his own invention. It is said he viewed the telephone as an intrusion and refused to have one in his own study. He wasn’t against the telephone, but he knew to get some space from it when he wanted to get things done. Smart man, all around.
So the man that wanted to help the deaf talk invented the telephone and started a company that bears his name to this day. Now that company sponsors Bell Let’s Talk Day, to help break down the stigma of mental health, share understanding of mental health, raise money for mental health and hopefully help people get the help they need.
There is nothing at all wrong with Bell Let’s Talk Day. It is a good initiative by a company that, for the last 150 years, has been connecting people to talk to each other. Good for them.
Unfortunately and ironically, Bell Canada is increasingly giving people reasons not to talk to each other. Now they also connect people to watching TV and they connect people to texting each other and to looking at pictures of kittens. This isn’t entirely Bell’s fault, but it does make Bell’s Let’s Talk Day seem like something maybe they owe to society. It is ironic also that you can’t connect to Bell themselves and talk to someone who is able and willing to actually help you without a great deal of work or luck. Unless of course you want to upgrade your cell plan.
The idea of working to break the stigma of mental health and encouraging people to talk about it is a good one. The most successful element of this is likely famous people. For once famous people can do something useful by leading the charge and talking about their own mental health, thereby helping to modify social attitudes towards mental health and towards talking about it. The strength and courage of people like Clara Hughes who started talking about this publicly and prominently at a time when others didn’t is inspirational.
Another piece of the puzzle is listening. Talking only makes people feel better if someone is listening, and they feel like someone is listening. That is tough in the era of Twitter and Facebook and other social media, which are places people go to talk far more than they go to listen (sorry, but checking up on the Joneses does not really count as listening). Bell Let’s Talk Day knows that, but I don’t think it can be said enough.
Perhaps the day after Bell Let’s Talk Day should be Let’s Listen Day. It could be sponsored by Rogers – as in “Roger that – I hear you”. Only in North America in this decade can we all listen the day after we all talked, but such is the case when we find every communication option we can to avoid actually speaking to one another in real time. We act like it is an affront to our liberty to be stuck in a direct conversation.
That is a joke, but this is not a joke in a time when we are sometimes losing deep connections in favour of many shallow ones, and when we are heading towards having social skills poorly adapted to direct and deep conversation due to lack of practice. Talking about mental health needs to be a deep conversation to be useful. All of us typing into the ether in the hopes of being heard, heeded and helped is a recipe for making people feel more hopeless in the face of their mental health challenges.
Many of us, especially those with certain mental health challenges or conditions, aren’t sure who to trust to talk to about something so personal. Friends? Maybe. Family? Maybe. Most people have access to a general practitioner – your basic doctor who is the gateway to the medical system. They used to be called the family doctor, but that is less and less true. Our connections to doctors, like our other social ties, are thinner and more widely spread. Do we think of them and trust them to manage our mental health?
Let’s Talk Day is great. Did I say that already? It is. It gets me thinking about what it takes for something like this to be successful, though, and I think the first step is to listen well. In a world of distractions, that is harder than it used to be. How often do we simply listen to each other. You know, with eye contact? Without a lit phone in our hand, or a tablet, or a TV on, or a computer screen in view?
Transactionally, when someone talks to us about the weather, or the funny thing that happened on the sidewalk, or the plot of some TV show last night, do we really need our full brain to listen to that? Probably not. But if we don’t listen intently and don’t look like we are, is that person going to feel invited to say something more personal? Some people may be willing to dive into meaningful and personal matters by text or in conversation while the ‘listener’ is looking elsewhere, but I’m not sure even most millennials will do that unless what they need to say is bursting out.
We don’t want people’s troubles to burst out, as I’ve talked about before. Mental health is not just something for people with mental health conditions – diagnosed or undiagnosed. Mental health needs to be for everyone, just like physical health is not just for the injured. Mental health needs it’s versions of stretching, exercising, massage, and ice packs. We don’t know what those are, I don’t think. For starters, then, we need to listen to each other early and often.
So Let’s Talk – and listen – more, and more deeply. 365 days a year. That doesn’t have to be about mental health, it can be about anything. What makes you happy? What are you afraid of? What do you think about news item X? What are you feeling strongly about? What worries you for the future?
If we take a year and build those skills to listen intently (and look the part), then we will be ready. If we strengthen connections and perhaps even trusted relationships, then we will be ready. If we look for opportunities to communicate more deeply, then we will be ready. We will be ready next year when Bell Let’s Talk Day comes around to talk, and to listen, and to support and to find support.
If you need help, don’t wait – talk to someone and visit the Bell Let’s Talk help page now. But mental health is not just for those in crisis. Mental health is just a largely invisible component of general health. Healthy people usually work to stay healthy. Mental health needs the same attitude. Communicating is the running shoe of mental health: it is hard to get healthy and stay healthy without it.
Not all mental health can be fixed and maintained just by good communicating and support from friends and family. Some can, and some can be handled better, and the rest can benefit from us having the skills and being one of the places people can go. To Talk.
