Saying It

There must be something to what people say about journaling, uh, blogging I mean. It does help you to sort things out. I realized today how important it is to be able to talk about what's going on with me and with other people. Maybe it's the most important thing. I can remember walking into the office and feeling something. Not being able to name it, just feeling it. My mood changing to match it, whatever it was. Or sometimes my mood affecting other people the same way. Later on, paying more attention and being able to separate what came from me and what came from other people. Trying not to let it affect me, keeping my own mood but noting that there was something else there.

Sometimes that's enough. Just letting people be. But sometimes you need to say something. You need to break the code of silence and ask a question. Reach out. Say something like, "What's up? You seem sad (or mad or distracted) today." Most of us will do that when another person is obviously in distress. But the most important time to do that is when you have the irresistable urge to talk to a third person about how someone is acting, because that's always destructive. When two people talk about another person, they ostracize that person, create a secret that must be kept from them, and make whatever is going on worse because, if the other person is involved, they're never going to solve the problem without them.

Sometimes it's just really hard to remember to talk about what you're thinking, to let other people in on all that stuff going on in you or to ask what's going on in someone else.