Harness healing power of talking with a friend

I have a paid friend. The title isn't original; it comes from a non-pecuniary naturally grown friend who had one for himself.

I pay my friend the usual and customary fees for a therapist, and it is worth every penny. He does what the gratuitous friends do. He listens, he doesn't judge; he gives wise counsel. He lets me talk about anything I want. We could talk about sports, the weather or affairs of state, but mostly we talk about my state of mind. I get to put into spoken words emotions and fears that are often semantic orphans. They are feelings without words. I am aware of them, I sense them, I am burdened down by them, but my professional friend permits and obligates me to put them into the domain of the brain's language areas and turn them into sentences. By transforming right-sided feelings into left-sided words, a person is able to define and thereby deal with the origins of the feelings of doubt, worry and sorrow.

Friends do a lot, paid or free. They let us bring thoughts to life. Conversation is essential for human-to-human interaction. Males and females do it differently. It seems that guys can't do it as well, or at least they need a club, or some rod or a cup of suds in their hands. Women, on the other hand, do it over lunch, over the phone or over children. It may be they were taught by their mothers to chat. Someone has noted that mothers talk to their infant daughters more than to their infant sons. Men grow up in relative silence and often perpetuate it with their buddies.

I am a lousy golfer, get seasick, and I am not partial to crowds, so I spend my money for my paid friend instead of green fees, boats, or season tickets to games. For those not so inclined I would suggest other forms of conversation. Start talking with friends you already have about feelings and see if you notice a difference.

Conversing friends heal. There is an interesting lesson from the Bible told in Mark. After Jesus calmed the storms of the Sea of Galilee, in the very next chapter he comes ashore and he calms the tempest in the mind of a mad man who occupied tombs and who howls and cuts himself with a stone. His illness was cured by expelling demons. This man, now of sound mind, wants to follow the Great Healer, but he is stopped. Instead, Christ tells him to return to his friends and talk to them. "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee."

The continued therapy was to talk with friends and speak of feelings of gratitude. There was no mention whether the friends were paid, but the idea is the same. Talking to other human beings about emotions has curative powers.

It is in the relationship of mother and child an infant learns the power of speech and how it is connected to emotions. The soothing of the mother's lullaby sung to a child's cries of distress or the calming of the words of empathy as a mother cleans a scraped knee instills the connection of conversation and feelings. Mothers who are less verbal or who are dismissive of emotions may create individuals who have a lifelong struggle to put words to feelings. When the right brain of feelings and the left hemisphere of language don't communicate, emotions are left stranded without understanding.

It's not casual chit-chat but sharing of feelings with a supportive person that is constructive. Friends come in all forms: parents, spouses, childhood buddies, neighbors, co-workers or even professional therapeutic listeners. The forms don't matter. Talking about emotions does. Talking with a friend is free or sometimes it costs. At any fee it is priceless.

Joseph Cramer, M.D., is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah. He can be reached at jgcramermd@yahoo.com.