Is it good to talk?

Published 13 February 2013

In 1990, a British Telecom (BT) advert starring Bob Hoskins was launched, telling us ‘It’s good to talk.’ Back then it was a startlingly modern sentiment, especially when preached by an unquestionably macho man with a thick Cockney accent. The message was simple but powerful, suggesting that exchanging human confidences with one another could make for better relationships. It was a hugely successful campaign, running for half a decade and earning the company £5bn incrementally.

More significant is the fact those four little words have since been adopted into our everyday vocabulary. Remind a friend ‘it’s good to talk’ and they’ll immediately know what you’re talking about, even if they’re too young to remember the days when we communicated via landline.

In an age of instantaneous global technology, talking and communicating with one another is part of all our lives. We chat, text, and Skype constantly, and communicate via a plethora of social media. It’s easy to forget that as recently as two decades ago, when the BT ad was launched, the idea that it was good to talk about everything from the state of our marriage to where we were going on holiday was still relatively new.

Today, we share opinions and emotions with one another without thinking about it. Rapid technological advances have made this possible, but they’ve also brought about a change in our national psyche: from a culture which prided itself on its Blitz spirit and stiff upper lip — unwilling to over-analyse, let alone complain — in the face of adversity, to one that revels in sharing personal details with complete strangers. With that has come a huge growth in our desire to analyse our lives via professional therapy and counselling — a desire that has fuelled this industry to expand greatly.

I’m in my mid-thirties, and if I had to identify a single event in my lifetime that had the most significant influence on this change in society’s move to more openness, I would say it was the death of Princess Diana. The national outpouring of grief — most tangibly symbolised by the growing mountain of bouquets placed outside the gates of Kensington Palace — saw strangers weeping and embracing in the street. Then prime minister Tony Blair’s famous televised speech, during which he fought back tears as he remembered ‘the People’s Princess’, was also highly significant because it further endorsed the idea that baring our souls was important.

Today we live in a culture where exploring our emotions is part of the way we communicate. Not so long ago, you had to either have a serious substance addiction or be very rich to take part in therapy and counselling sessions. I’m neither of these things, but I’m not ashamed to say I’ve been seeing a Jungian therapist every week for five years. A quick straw poll among my friends revealed I’m far from unusual — almost all of us have at some point seen a therapist.

It’s argued that abandoning the traditional British trait of keeping feelings buttoned-up is generally felt to be a good thing, with greater individual self-expression leading to greater self-awareness — ultimately resulting in a kinder, more compassionate society. But is our willingness to reveal the depths of our soul with a stranger really healthy? And is our insatiable appetite for analysing what we do, think and feel making us more selfish and self-obsessed, and therefore less equipped to deal with genuine adversity than ever before? In short, are we turning into a nation of cry babies?