Talking about feelings does not make you a snowflake | Deborah Orr

Prince Harry spoke over the weekend about the emotional cost of suppressing his grief over his mother’s death when he was 12 years old. Prince William followed up by saying that his work as an air ambulance pilot made him aware of the large number of people, mainly men, who attempt suicide. The two of them, along with the Duchess of Cambridge, have launched an awareness campaign that aims to highlight the dearth of good mental health provision in Britain.

For some, all this means is that – disappointingly – the royals have joined the “snowflake generation” of young people who are simply too sensitive to little things like “feelings”. For others, including myself, their Heads Together initiative is admirable, not least because in itself it calls attention to the ludicrously basic level at which the building of “awareness” needs to begin.

Imagine how weird it would be if this trio were sticking their necks out to raise awareness of physical health, pointing out that you don’t just carry on, yelling that it’s only a flesh wound if you’ve made a gash in your hand. Clean it, at the very least. Put on a plaster. If it won’t stop bleeding, see a doctor. These are things everyone is nowadays expected to know. Yet, not so long ago, humans had no understanding at all of the implications of leaving a physical wound untreated.

We’re not far beyond that point with “mental health”. For a start, this is a huge, catch-all term. In Harry’s case, normal emotional distress was left untreated, and festered into something more serious. And yet … expressing his distress? Having it addressed? That, in some people’s eyes, would have made Harry a snowflake. This dangerous attitude is particularly fostered in men and boys. It’s not masculine to show your emotions – though they tend to show in other ways, in anger, aggression, self-harm or depression. I daresay that in at least some of the cases to which William refers, men bottled up their distress until it became overwhelming.

Very often a “mental health problem” starts out as mere emotional distress, a natural, healthy part of life. It’s when that distress isn’t sensibly addressed that it can grow into something that can be labelled a problem. Simply being aware of one’s emotions is the first step towards regulating them. Telling a whole generation that they’re “snowflakes” for having such awareness is actually an awful thing to do.

Which is not to say that every manifestation of emotional distress should be indulged or validated. That, I think, is what makes people talk of “emotional incontinence”. There’s a tendency among some to start believing that if a view or opinion upsets them then it is wrong. On the contrary, that’s usually a sign that the distressed person has difficulty handling conflict. What’s really going on with the “snowflake generation” is that people are becoming more aware of their feelings and needs, but don’t have the knowledge or experience to understand what those reactions are telling them about themselves.

In January this year, Theresa May announced that schoolchildren will be given greater access to NHS mental health workers. She has also praised Prince Harry for helping to “smash the stigma” around mental health and reassuring people that they are “not alone”. (She’s also called a snap general election, of course, which isn’t going to help anyone’s mental health.)

But this too is evidence of the crudity of our thinking. What is actually needed is far more sophisticated emotional awareness, so that people can recognise and manage their own emotions and, just as importantly, interactions with others who may have unhealthy or abusive emotional agendas themselves.

The good news is that all this is not actually as difficult or complex as it may appear. Emotional awareness could easily be taught in schools. It should be seen as just as necessary as PE. Already people are doing amazing and cost-effective work that can have a huge impact in helping people understand and care for themselves and those around them. Last week, for instance, I took part in a conflict workshop run by youth charity Leap. Around 20 adults who had never met before became fairly emotionally intimate with each other over just a couple of hours.

Emotional awareness should be taught in schools, and seen as just as necessary as PE

Some declared they’d achieved insights that they were going to apply within their marriages. Someone who’d worked for years with the most troubled young people announced she was “blown away”. Yet the room was full of people who didn’t even know that conflict was a problem in their lives.

And that’s the thing. People soldier on, unaware they have a problem. Worse, that problem becomes familiar; it feels safe, even comfortable, because it’s what they know. It’s why people make the same mistakes again and again, abusing others or allowing themselves to be abused without even knowing this behaviour isn’t “normal”.

There’s a tendency to see the “snowflake generation” as narcissistic, demanding constant attention and validation, wrapped up in their own needs and unaware of those of others, refusing to take responsibility for their choices or mistakes, playing the victim. Yet these critics are themselves being typically narcissistic in denying that the youngsters they berate have any right to their own feelings and perceptions, let alone might need or deserve some help in untangling them.

If anything, I believe, this generation is suffering because generations before it were as narcissistic as any that ever lived. If you think that’s far-fetched, take a look at Donald Trump, elected King of the Baby Boomers.

Talking of kings, there’s not a lot that’s more narcissistic than the concept of monarchy. When the youth of that institution say there’s a problem, then you really, really know there is. And that it’s a big one.

Talking about feelings does not make you a snowflake | Deborah Orr

Botox use is on the rise – but are some using it to freeze their feelings? | Anouchka Grose

Dannii Minogue has admitted to using Botox at difficult times in her life in a subconscious attempt to mask her feelings. Not only might she literally have been disabling her capacity to frown, she may also have been acting things out on her body in order to fend off her own emotions.

It’s about time someone said it. As a working therapist I have occasionally noticed my female patients’ faces change quite noticeably from week to week, but no one has ever spoken to me about what was making this happen. Cosmetic treatments, and the difficult thoughts and feelings that might make someone undergo them, are apparently one of the hardest things to talk about.

On the one hand perhaps these treatments are so normalised that they do not seem worth discussing in therapy – a new study in the US shows that young women using Botox has risen by 41% since 2011 – but on the other you probably wouldn’t spend hundreds of pounds on something that carried serious health risks if you weren’t feeling pretty worried about your appearance. Doing stuff to your face is like the sunny side of self-harm; you might try it in order to short-circuit anxiety or sadness, but the end result is supposedly regeneration rather than damage. Still, nothing signals underlying unhappiness and self-loathing more than a pumped-up, frozen physiognomy. In that sense, it’s a socially acceptable form of wound.

It’s hardly surprising that people, especially women, are prone to feeling insecure about their looks. But Botox is perhaps a special kind of beauty treatment in that it inhibits the visible expression of emotion. It helps people hide the way they feel. That this should come as a bit of a surprise is interesting in itself – this has never been its explicit selling point. The idea has been more that youth is good and age is bad. By starting Botox in your 20s you can supposedly pre-empt the signs of passing time. But what is facial ageing if not physical proof that you have smiled, frowned and been surprised? In other words, that you have let the outside world in on some of your feelings.

In Jane Austen’s great philosophical masterpiece Sense and Sensibility, we see two sisters attempting a serious experiment in living. Marianne expresses emotion freely while Elinor buttons it up. Which of them will fare best in life and love? Austen’s ultra-humane answer is that both ways have their ups and downs. And anyhow, while you think you’ve made your choice about which is better, you may find yourself doing the other.

Women in particular have had to rely on their beauty and personal charm in order to secure economic stability

More than 200 years later we’re still struggling over the same question. From the misery memoir to Instabrag via Geordie Shore, we’re trying to work out what will make us more lovable: free expression or self-control. Loosely speaking, some therapies work more towards the former, some towards the latter. As Austen wisely noted, there’s no clear answer as to which is best, although extremes in either direction do seem to cause trouble.

For humans, ensuring lovability is closely linked with survival. Babies very quickly learn how to endear themselves to their carers, and this habit continues into most people’s adult lives. If it doesn’t, modern psychiatry would even be inclined to brand you with a personality disorder. To generalise, becoming lovable seems to involve not crying and fussing too much, and learning to put your feelings aside for the sake of other people while still being affected enough by the world to experience empathy. You need to be able to control the release and expression of emotion, but not to the point of cold-bloodedness.

Historically, women in particular have had to rely on their beauty and personal charm in order to secure economic stability. Keeping your face nice and your character sweet in order to hang on to your TV job is perhaps the contemporary equivalent of donning a corset and holding your tongue in the hope of keeping your husband. The problem is that everybody is pretty much aware of the painful tragicomedy of all this, and Botoxed women are a very visible enactment of it. It seems to be absolutely socially acceptable to blast an older woman for having a too-smooth face. Far more so than for having a baggy one. By trying so hard to hang on to our charms, we risk revealing how much we fear losing them. In hiding our feelings we give them away.

Although cynics might see Minogue’s admissions as yet another ruse by a celebrity who wants to reel us in, it’s probably time we started to speak more freely, and above all kindly, about facial injections and the different forms of pain they attempt to address.

Botox use is on the rise – but are some using it to freeze their feelings? | Anouchka Grose

Ill feelings remain about my time in a convalescent home | Letters

Whatever happened to convalescent homes (Letters, 7 and 15 December)? I was twice sent to such a place in 1954 and 1955, aged seven, following serious illness. It was 35 miles from my home and named after Jan Smuts, the South African nationalist leader, soldier and Calvinist. The naming was appropriate: it was run by methods that were, even by the standards of the day, harsh and spartan. Up at 6am in freezing cold, forced exercise, enforced naps and compulsory medication with some vile substance called “Radio Malt” daily, as well as other substances lost to memory, too awful to recall, and physical punishment. Kindness was not on the menu.

Parental visits were allowed once a week but they were not permitted inside. My family had no car and so my mother travelled hours by bus, every fortnight and, more than once, walked through snow with holes in her shoes, to feed me pork sandwiches at the gate – a taste of home.

The experience undoubtedly marked me, and many others, for life. Their passing should not be mourned.
Martin Plaster
Bristol

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Ill feelings remain about my time in a convalescent home | Letters