The Courage to Feel: Why Vulnerability and Honest Conversations Matter

At our Tasmania screening something really brave happened. In a room of 120 people someone asked, are the feelings I am feeling now after watching the film good for my mental health?

That question opened up the most powerful conversation. The film is designed to make the audience feel, to take people on an emotional journey. Sometimes we can explain those emotions and sometimes we can’t, but they are essential to being human and to growing on an emotional level.

It’s interesting to notice how we have become so desensitised to violence, crime, murder, hatred, deception. We can watch those things on film or television or even social media without flinching. But when we are faced with a story that touches us deeply, that makes us cry, that leaves us feeling vulnerable, suddenly we wonder if that’s acceptable.

The truth is that our emotions are what make us human. They are what set us apart from every other species. They allow us to grow, to learn, to connect and to expand our understanding of the world and each other.

In North Queensland a young woman named Chloe said something on a panel after the film that I will never forget. After her dad took his life, she wished people would stop saying sorry whenever his name came up.

She wanted people to know that every emotion we feel is normal, no matter what it is. Even when thoughts of suicide come up, as they have for her, she doesn’t want people to be afraid. She said what matters is not being scared of those thoughts but understanding them, talking about them and knowing it’s ok to feel them. What truly matters is how we respond.

Hearing her say this was one of the most beautiful and powerful things.

Yes, the film might make you feel vulnerable. It might make you cry. And that’s ok. Crying is just as normal as laughing. We are meant to do both. Too often we run from the hard topics because they make us uncomfortable, but if we never lean into those conversations how can we ever change, how can we ever progress, how can we ever create a better world.

Without sadness we wouldn’t know joy. Without discomfort we wouldn’t know growth. And without allowing ourselves to feel we wouldn’t really be living at all.