By Gill Seaton Jardine, Counsellor/Psychotherapist

Over the last few years the general awareness of mental health has grown enormously. One of the advantages of this is that many people now notice if someone is struggling with mood changes or the demands of day to day life. People may now approach someone if they are tearful, snappy, quiet or grumpy, particularly if these behaviours are different from their norm. A change in someone’s behaviour may suggest there has been a change in their circumstances. Just as when someone experiences a joyful event, they may jump up and down, laugh out loud or enthusiastically tell you all about it, so too, when they experience a sad or difficult event, they may go quiet, withdraw or cry. Our behaviour can tell others how we are, what we may be feeling and if a significant change has occurred in our life.

Changes in our behaviour could indicate that we need an outlet for our feelings and perhaps want to voice them and share what we are experiencing with another person. But do we all always want to share? Perhaps not and certainly not with just anyone and/or everyone. With this increased awareness of mental health and the culture we are fostering of reaching out to those that may be in need, how can we manage our boundaries and ensure we only share when we want to and with whom we feel comfortable sharing with? As we become more aware of each other’s behaviours and, in particular, changes in our own behaviour, it seems to me that we could do with a way to ensure we each feel safe with one another before we share. What we do with our increased awareness will differ from person to person. We can’t hope that everyone is or has become aware of a change in our behaviour or what that may mean, nor that all those we interact with feel compelled to approach us about it to try and help, but some will. For those that do want to help, a decision may need to be made about whether approaching us is appropriate or not. Would that person appreciate our intervention or would we be poking our noses in where we are not wanted? Very difficult questions to answer. It seems to me we would all benefit from a way of measuring both how we are feeling and how we think other people might be feeling. What we need is an emotional barometer – an instrument that could measure depth of feeling thereby offering information to each other about whether intervention would help or hinder us in any given moment.

There are different ways we could create a barometer. We could use words, numbers or perhaps colours. A simple one to ten method whereby one is an indication that we are feeling extremely low and ten that we are feeling perfectly happy might provide us with a good way to communicate to others how we are. Colours could be used almost like a mood wheel where perhaps white is happy and black is as low as we get with many in between indicating varying emotions. A third idea and perhaps the simplest to communicate would be using emotion words such as sad, content, happy etc. The best method will be the one that makes the most sense to you as an individual. Before communicating this emotional barometer to others and connecting it to whether intervention is desired or not from other people, we need to have a firm understanding of it ourselves and indicate which numbers, colours or words mean we would like to share our emotions with another. That way when we analyse in ourselves where we are on our emotional barometer we can also ask ourselves if intervention, for example, is helpful when we are at a number 3, colour blue or sad. If not, we have an idea that perhaps keeping our own counsel at this time may actually be more beneficial than sharing. As a counsellor I have observed that sometimes feelings must simply be sat with, stillness exercised and thoughts noticed before we seek counsel from another person. Sometimes, in order to understand our feelings and where they have come from we need quiet time, calmness and yes even to be alone. Of course that doesn’t mean to say that reaching out is not also helpful, but I do wonder how helpful this culture of talking everything through with everybody is? Sometimes we just need someone to sit next to us in our sad moments. We may not have the words to talk it through yet. And that’s perfectly okay. We can be there for each other without breaking through another’s personal boundaries. 

The emotional barometer could be used to gauge your own emotional condition but also others around you. Perhaps you and one good friend or family member could synchronise your barometers and use these to let each other know when you want support and to share with each other and when you do not. As you become more used to the idea, you will become more adept at helping each other at the right time and learning how to simply be there quietly when needed.

Good luck.