Why is it over a year on, I still find it difficult to talk to people about my heart attack ie get fumbly, emotional,etc yet if someone asks me via text or email I can write an articulate essay on what it was like and the subsequent journey.
why is that?
We have a much stronger emotional connection to speaking our words rather than writing them.Giving a voice to our story reminds us that it was real and had a real impact on us mentally as well as physically, not just a list of events , dates and diagnosis.
People don't realise just how hard a big health event in our lives is on our mental health and our confidence.
We all experience the health variant of post traumatic stress to some degree, even the strongest of us.
Partially that is because of the event itself. Partially it's because we feel so much relief after surviving that it takes time to catch up with the rollercoaster of emotions.
Not enough thought is given to helping people cope with the mental health changes we will feel when we get our treatment and afterwards during recovery. Often, even if information or counselling are offered, we can still be in such a fog that we don't think we will have problems and just want to get home.
But having a big health event is much like having a Bereavement.
Everything happens so quickly, we feel numb, or, we aren't often honest about how upset or scared we are, usually because we don't want to worry people whom care for us . And we don't want to say that we feel so bad out loud because when we do we can't keep a lid on our grief.
Yes, I say grief, because in some ways we feel like we have lost something of ourselves forever.
Much like after a bereavement we do not feel the real impact of our feelings until weeks or months after the whirlwind of events , and then we find it hard to talk about things because everyone around us feels so happy and expect that all we should do is feel happy too and put it all behind us and get on with things.
But, people don't realise that just because we are out of hospital that, that does not mean that it's all over.
We have to recover, we might need to get used to new medications, the look of our scars if we had surgery, the feeling of devices if we had them, and the change in our activity and energy levels . And we need to come to terms with how we feel about our " New Normal".
We might feel a niggle , a pain , indigestion , a rapid heart beat or breathlessness.
All things that we might have felt and brushed off before but now we give them other meanings , we remember our attacks and worry it could happen again.
We feel understandably, less confident to do things, less strong , we feel anxious but we often don't have someone to talk to about it because we don't want to share our worries.
Bottling up all these feeling and just trying to carry on means that when we do finally talk about what happened the reality the spoken words makes our feelings flood back , it makes it raw and we get upset in our thoughts.
So we become fuddled as we speak because it's hard to speak casually when you are feeling so many things.
It's why it can help us all to join a face to face local heart support group , especially in the first year after the heart problem, and talk, and listen, regularly to others whom understand what we've been through. Because the more we put it into words and we are honest about our feelings the easier it becomes. Writing about it and talking in online groups are great too, but sometimes we need that verbal communication to really get a grip on his we feel.
It's also important to be honest with friends and family too.
You don't have to think of this as doom and gloom.
Use simple positive words.
Like , I know it's been a year but I still find it hard to think of talk about my attack.
I appreciate your support because I still feel a bit anxious sometimes , I think I still need to accept some feelings and need to get my confidence back.
I didn't realise how emotional it feels until I think about it.
How do you feel , do you still worry?
When you open the door it gets easier to talk and you will probably find when you ask the last question that your loved ones will have been keeping things in too, because they don't want to talk about it and upset you.
At least you know now that it's all normal , and in time you will be able to talk about it and not get fuddled , take care , Bee
Thank you Bee for that lovely reply. ❤️
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