When the bough breaks........

The wife weeps quietly as her husband is lifted in to the ambulance. Her two children cling to her legs as she gently whispers:"Dad will be alright, he will be alright". They stand in front of their house watching the flashing lights as the ambulance drives away into the night. The neighbours withdraw into their own houses as the wife and her children silently go back into theirs. When the children finally are asleep, the wife sits down at the kitchen table and weeps. Her mind is confused, questions swell like an ocean and she has no answers. She asks herself if she ever really knew her husband, how she could have missed his pain, how did she miss the signs? Her heart is heavy and her body exhausted.          What do you do when the bough brakes?

Do we ever really know what another human goes through, what plagues them, what keeps them awake at night or what prevents them from telling others of it? "Talking therapy" as it was called once, was often, and still is, seen as a bit of a nonsense. What can possibly be achieved by just talking about something, better to take action some may say. Yet there are many who will say that speaking with a psychologist, therapist, psychiatrist, a good friend, have changed their lives for the better. "A burden shared, is a burden halved" some say and I tend to agree. So why is it so hard at times to tell others of our concerns, what is the resistance that so many of us face?

I can think of a few such as : lack of trust, fear of rejection, fear of humiliation, fear of becoming too vulnerable, fear of seeming weak, fear of seeming like a loser, fear of having love withdrawn etc.

Hmmm.......no wonder we find it hard to share our concerns. So we bottle it up. We probably have an inner coach telling us: "come on now, you don't need anybody, just walk it off, you can sort it yourself, don't show the kink in your armour" and so on, with the result that the "bottle" keeps being topped up until finally there's no room left and the bottle explodes, or "the bough breaks".

And for the bystanders who have no knowledge of all the "bottling up", the explosion seems like a mystery, out of character, odd and they are left with confusion which often leads to guilt and self-accusations of not having noticed the others inner turmoil.

"Why didn't he/she say something?" "How could I have been so blind?" "Does he/she feel that I wouldn't listen?" "How can I help if he/she doesn't tell me what's wrong?"

We may pendulum between anger and remorse, guilt and righteousness, hope and despair, ignorance or acceptance, or maybe all the above. Possibly it may be helpful to just go through all the different stages, allow the thoughts and emotions to just flush through, noticing them but not staying stuck there. When someone we care for's "bough breaks/bottle explodes",  then we are needed...not as judge and jury, but as fellow humans. For whatever reasons a person may have for not sharing their burdens,.... when the bough breaks, they need to be loved, nurtured and listened to, even if they say not one word.

We show our love and support, we hold back our desire to "fix" the problems, and we wait.

But most of all, we remain there, available, so when a time comes when our friend/partner/lover feels safe enough to share their inner most thoughts,

we hear them.