I said “this isn’t just stress” and the room finally got honest with me

Dear Delyara, I have been using stress as a blanket word for too many things. Tiredness. Flatness. Brain fog. Emotional distance. Irritability. Sudden crying. The physical heaviness of moving through ordinary days as if they are each slightly uphill. Stress is such a socially acceptable word that it has allowed me to hide the seriousness of what I’ve been carrying even from myself at times. This week I stopped doing that. I said the fuller truth in the appointment. I said what the days actually feel like. What evenings cost. What my body feels like. How frightened I have become by how normal I have made it all sound. The room changed when I said it plainly. The help changed. My own relationship with the problem changed. I think truth becomes therapeutic before any treatment does sometimes. This felt like one of those times.