Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace, until Wednesday morning.

Now, I don't know about you, but when we feel stress in life sometimes we don't really know what to do with it

sometimes that's conscious sometimes it's unconscious Sometimes we intentionally shut it away, shut it off, try to push

it down and suppress it. Other times it just sort of happens. It's almost like we don't have the capacity

to even think about how to process it or to be able to allow it to be

processed. So it just sort of happens, it's pushed away. Now we may think that's a good way to deal with stress. If we can just sort of push it away and keep it out of our mind out of our life, then somehow we're going to be happier as a result.

Stress doesn't really work like that. My guess is that you will have

experienced that in some way in your life. Maybe you've been able to keep it down

for a certain period of time and then I don't know maybe you got ill in some way

maybe you're able to suppress that frustration or something for a certain period of time and then you just

suddenly broke down one day. Maybe it was tears at work. Maybe it was a meltdown in the queue at the supermarket with your children. There are so many different ways that we suddenly go from sort of at least

appearing on the surface as very calm, sane individuals to completely losing it. And that's a big jump and it's not something that happens in that moment

it's something that has already been building up underneath and that at some point has to come to the surface.

And if it can't come to the surface in one way,

through our thoughts, or our emotions, or through,

you know, it will find another way.

And I was really struck by this recently. I was listening to an elderly man and he'd been

living for decades since he had lost his child and it had understandably sort of almost defined his life in many ways and by all accounts had been a very private man

had never really talked about it.

It had occupied his mind clearly in such a strong way and yet you know came from a time and a place in a tradition way

it just wasn't the thing for necessary men especially I think to talk about their

struggles mentally in that way and had gone for many many years to say most

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