Ask Jigsaw: Don’t want to stress parents
Ask Jigsaw: Don’t want to stress parents
Monday, 20 July 2020
I feel like if I talk about my problems right now it’ll stress my parents out, and that maybe I’m just over reacting. What should I do?
-Xeron
Hi Xeron,
It’s not unusual to feel apprehensive about speaking to family about the difficulties we’re facing. There are lots of reasons why we might retreat inwards and hold all our feelings to ourselves. We can feel like we are protecting ourselves from the judgement of others. Maybe we feel guilty about causing worry, or we want to be able to handle it alone. It takes courage to recognise that we all need support sometimes and we can’t face all our challenges alone.
At Jigsaw, we continually hear from parents that they wished their young person had told them what was going on. Young people who use our service are often surprised at the positive response they get from parents when they do open up. Although it might seem that you will stress your parents out, they may feel more stressed if your mental health gets worse because you haven’t been able to talk about what’s going on for you.
Problems that affect our mental health can be particularly hard to tackle on our own, so I’m glad that you are thinking about getting some support from your parents. There are lots of different ways that you can go about doing this, depending on how comfortable you are speaking to your folks. Read more about starting a conversation about problems. Keeping everything inside can make us feel pretty alone, so I hope you can take the brave decision to share what’s going on for you.
It might be the case that you chose to speak to someone other than family, like a trusted friend. There are also free listening services like the Samaritans, or you might like to access Jigsaw’s online chats.
Take care,
Joanna, Jigsaw Clinician
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