What have you got to say for yourself?

The strong, silent type. The stoic one. The one whose heart is not on a sleeve or other visible portion of clothing.

These have been our heroes, from Westerns to romances; in literature and film and sports; in real stories of our own families.

For people who can’t stop tweeting, posting, commenting, liking, sharing, emoji-ing and LOLing, where does this adoration of silence come from?

Talking about the pernicious nature of secrets last week left me with a half-glass feeling. It was not about belabouring the point – not more hand-wringing over dark, broody secrets and how holding on to them can lead to anxiety, depression, physical illness, even suicide. (Point properly belaboured now.)

It was more a matter of: So what are the alternatives?

At the time of writing, I thought that was a truth self-evident: you must speak.

Now, I feel less sure. I think I underestimated how deeply entrenched is our culture of secrecy and how little we think of opening up to others, be they friend or professional. Would there was something we could call a "profriendonal." Best of both worlds, right?

So now it will be said plainly: we have to talk about things. We have to stop hiding our illnesses and sadness and insecurities. We have to ask about things, because there is so much misinformation and malinformation at large, we can’t be sure about anything we read.

Even here. Even in a space that’s trying to be measured, fair and sound in its research.

Go read something else on why talking helps. Or find out if in your case it won’t.

We are complex people with complicated lives holding fast to the antediluvian idea that there is shame in talking about our problems.

Talking about our mental health or emotions is not a show of weakness. It is the opposite. It shows strength. Because it is not easy to do something different. It is not easy for everyone to say they need help.

How would you ask for help? And from whom?

Talking is not prescription medicine or a bush bath. It is not comeuppance for the people who hurt you. It’s not a spell to cast out the demons of your pain. What can talking do?

Talking in therapy helps, I think, precisely because it is none of those things. Rather, it traffics in one of the truest things: language.

If you can speak a truth that has been the cause of your pain, you can start to externalise it. Now it’s no longer festering in you, walking through your brain ringing a bell chanting, “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Now you are taking charge.

By creating a vocabulary for your pain, you set the parameters. And, like all language, this one is also fluid. You get to do the defining. Perhaps the biggest success story of this is: “I am not a victim.” We’ve been using this one to empower ourselves for years now.

And with the language comes the gradual acceptance as the meaning of what you’re saying starts to wire itself into your thinking. Increased self-awareness is good. There is so much we can’t possibly understand, why would we go out of our way to ignore what we can?

I don’t pretend to understand wilful ignorance or self-deception, but the minute I do, the soap box will come out.

There’s also the understanding that talk therapy, over time, grows from something episodic – like when you have a session – to become a way of processing and dealing with information and situations.

We learn to sit with the thought, discuss, revisit, talk some more, pay attention, find new ways of describing it and a host of other small acts. But if we keep practising it, it becomes second nature. We take the tools from formal therapy into our everyday lives.

There is one instance I’m aware of in which talking does not help.

It’s when we use it to keep the pain on the front burner. Here, we’re not talking to get past the hurt, we just want to keep telling its story, allowing it to remain fresh and in the moment. If we are not trying to put it behind us, we’re doing more harm than good.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.