Dr. Peter J. Weiss

This week­end, my wife and I enjoyed the movie, “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” about a sui­ci­dal 16-year-old who checks him­self into a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal.

As you might guess by the title it’s a com­edy that deals with seri­ous sub­jects.  Star­ring Keir Gilchrist, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis and Emma Roberts, a lot of fun comes along with the mes­sage.  Get it.  You’ll like it.

Movies tend to make me think.

Some­times days later, I’m still won­der­ing why a char­ac­ter did this or that.  I’ll catch myself think­ing about what he or she could have done dif­fer­ently, and I’ll have to remind myself that it wasn’t real.

How­ever, although a film’s story may be fic­tional, the issues it raises are often real for many of us.  That’s what keeps our inter­est.

In this case, I won’t fill you in any more on this movie in case you want to rent it your­self.  I’ll just tell you that it struck a chord with me about the pres­sures of life, and how I deal with them.

We all face stress; the ques­tion is do we break or do we bend under it?

My view is that it’s not the prob­lems that break you.  It’s your abil­ity to respond.  Can you admit your issues, face them squarely, under­stand your own role in the sit­u­a­tion, and ask for and accept help from oth­ers?

If so, you’ll do fine.  But if you keep all the stress inside, avoid fac­ing the issues, and repress your emo­tions, even­tu­ally it’s all going to blow up.

I believe that, in fac­ing your prob­lems, it’s really help­ful to know that every­one suf­fers, often from sim­i­lar issues.  Most do it silently.

When we “com­pare our insides to their out­sides,” we feel we come up short.  But it’s not so.  We all have prob­lems.

When you real­ize you’re a lot like other peo­ple, you can give your­self per­mis­sion not to be per­fect and start deal­ing with life’s dif­fi­cul­ties.

So find a small group of friends.  Open up about your prob­lems and your feel­ings.  Lis­ten to them as they open up about theirs.

That’s the first step to get­ting bet­ter.

You can do it.