"We British do not want to be mamby pamby whimps. Crying at the drop of a hat. There is enough wet soft dris as it is." Jonny Norfolk - Blogger
Being British means we have fortitude.
In fact we think of this as our greatest national characteristic.
We operate on the idea that what ever is happening to you is probably happening worse to someone else somewhere - so out of loyalty to this person (mythical or otherwise) can we all please keep our emotions in check and keep on carrying on. Repeating the effects of your situation upon your emotional well being is frankly not part of our modus operati.
In fact we absolutely never ever embarrass each other with outbursts of emotions (known locally as "just going on about it"). So we put up and shut up and don't make a fuss.
As a nation we are often accused of taking this rather socially considerate trait to extremes. We don't like to bother a doctor with a minor issue such as our lack of well being. (My American cousins always find this absurd, for what more important task could a doctor have than to attend to someone who is unwell) But physical or mental well being we'd rather not bother a busy man like a doctor.
And we certainly wouldn't bother our nearest and dearest with such a display of a lack of fortitude. I jest not, it has been known of those in the last stages of liver failure blame the jaundiced skin tone on a spray tan gone wrong than embarrass anyone with the information that death just may be knocking. We are British and as such we just don't like to bother people with the less pleasant sides of life. We put up and shut up and never embarrass ourselves or each other with demonstrations of weakness.
Fortitude - aka the Stiff Upper Lip, that we UK residents are so well known for has always been seen to be our secret weapon. It's what got us through the Blitz... hell the Roman invasion if you wanna play history top trumps! We've been putting up and shutting up since the dawn of time probably.
It's not that we don't acknowledge bad stuff, but we don't like to be seen to be dwelling on it. What we do is express an appropriate degree of concern and sorrow and then talk about something else. We express a brief emotional vacuous acknowledgement then quickly draw a line under it and never mention it again. We've always done that - it is the British way.
To delve deep into issues...well that's all just a little bit embarrassing. We can't do embarrassing, we like only to be viewed as Doing Well.
Doing Well in the United Kingdom is demonstrating an almost super human ability to not lose control. We quite literally would rather die than not be thought of in this way.
I imagine that every time a village was razed to the ground by Viking raiders the survivors would pick each other up, pat each other on the back and shrug muttering "Vikings huh? What can you do!" and carry on. Other nations may form an underground or resistance... not us Brits. We raise our chins, square our shoulders and simply do what ever we were doing before misfortune came. We do not let it taint us. We carry on regardless.
And to be honest we are rather vain about it. Being British means we don't 'go on' about something that requires an emotional response. Fortitude ...we have that in buckets lined from the back door to the shed and back. We put up and shut up. And of course we carry on.
And so it comes as some surprise that this, our most valued national characteristic, has recently come under much fire. Apparently we are killing ourselves by exercising our national vanity of bottling things up.
Our obsession with trying to play down the negativity of certain situations turns out to be much more harmful rather than helpful. And this is never truer than when it comes to being in control of your emotions.Convincing yourself that things are not as bad as they seem is totally unhelpful as in fact this stoic approach to distress actually prevents us from trying to rectify the situation.
Therapists view the stiff upper lip as 'reframing'. What we do is take a negative situation, reframe it by looking for the positive in it and say "That wasn't so bad there is always someone worse off'.
- Thus the loss of a leg isn't as bad as a snapped spinal cord.
- The death of a grandparent is compared to a cricket score.
- And we absolutely measure any 1st world issues against the daily struggles of a third world nation.
This ridiculous 'Top Trumps' system of devaluing genuine loss or pain is at the heart of our response to any misfortune we come to hear of. This justifies us not 'bothering' anyone else with our issues. However by doing so we do not put in place active strategies like problem-solving and seeking social support.
QUICK BRIT TEST: Come on be honest... they last time you did one of those home cancer checks... you found something didn't you? But you rationalised it away. Didn't you?... after all it was probably nothing, you maybe did the check wrong, you know what... you'll ask next time you see the doctor?
This mindset is why we Brits don't bother the doctor... and die in statistically much higher amounts of treatable if reported early illnesses than our commonwealth buddies like Canada and our European neighbours like Sweden. We are even worse with our mental health and don't even bother each other... so our suicide rates top the charts.
We think we are being honorably decent by not bothering each other.
But basically we just look each other in the eye - and lie.
And where is the honour in lies?
Did you know that your average Brit says “I’m fine” an average eight times a month – when they could be anything but. And of course the classic: “I’m OK” - us Brits trot that deception out an average of six times a day, making it the most common lie you will hear on this sceptered isle.
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Basically out of every 10 Brits you will talk to, 6 will be regularly putting on a brave face to avoid being a burden, while 3 will always consider it embarrassing to show you any signs of weakness.
Nearly two-thirds of all working adults in the UK admit to having put on a brave face at work and four in ten confess they bury big problems. One in three people feel they had no one to share serious concerns with, while two-thirds of Brits in relationships will hide health concerns from their partners and families. The most common reason given for not talking about these issues: Fear of Embarrassment. And not of our own.... we are most concerned about embarrassing the person who has to hear us!
Surely these levels of deception cannot be healthy???
I was fortunate enough to have sessions with a Canadian counselor when I entered my current hyperbole of emotional trauma. She observed: Putting on a brave face can often be a default mode to anyone brought up in the UK. However this denial impacts a persons well-being. Addressing your nurtured reluctance as a nation to open up about these concerns and seek appropriate help can greatly increase your peace of mind and reduce the risks of the problem worsening. No one should be afraid to talk about issues that worry them and ask for support to get through the difficult times.
And whilst that is all well and good for a Canadian observer to say.... breaking the mold and talking about the issues that expose vulnerability or letting the world know that you are at your limit is extremely hard for anyone born and brought up in the UK. We just haven't the national wiring to deal with it.
Our wiring is thus;
Put up and shut up.... worse things happen to someone somewhere surely, so now please may we all now continue to act in a manner that makes further talk unnecessary. Thank you.
As a nation we still believe that Keep on Keeping on means that you will be rewarded by being thought of as Doing Well.
After all.... there is absolutely ALWAYS someone worse of than you.
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