A FEW weeks ago, I wrote about a school friend who’d experienced a terrible personal tragedy.

Her husband of three years collapsed and died of a heart attack in front of her when she was visiting her parents in Northern Ireland.

Since then, events have been held to mourn his passing in the latter, in England and in Australia, and for most of those who knew him, life is pretty much rolling on as normal.

But she has been continuing to use social media – she used a popular site to announce his passing - to express how she is feeling. Some of her comments have been positive, others heartbreaking and, on a few rare occasions, they have expressed despair and intense sadness.

As much as I am not a fan of living your life through these sites, or of unleashing your daily emotions in public, in this case I am glad that she is finding herself able to communicate the grieving process.

Through these comments, she reaches out, and in response, she is sent loving messages, advice and support from her friends in all corners of the world. In these modern times, we are not all so lucky as to live in the same street or town or even country as our best friends.

I think it can be no bad thing that she finds it able to at least speak words aloud about what she’s going through and that she is not completely bottling up her rage or upset. So much of today’s stress and depression comes as a result of people not being able to utter what ails them.

When my brother’s best friend threw himself in front of a train after returning to college last January, I know that my brother was even more confused and devastated by the fact that, when they’d gone out for drinks at Christmas, his friend had not indicated that anything was wrong.

Perhaps a problem shared is not always a problem halved, but I do believe, hand on heart, that – as Bob Hoskins used to say in the BT ads – it’s good to talk.

Part of my treatment for my chronic pain involves meetings with a clinical psychologist at Basingstoke Hospital. She is phenomenally good at her job and I have very much come to appreciate, all over again, the benefits of getting something out of your system by expressing it to someone.

Our deepest fears and insecurities can consume us, but being able to ‘confess’ them to someone helps with the process of tackling them, perhaps even exposing how just how unwarranted they are.

It’s often hard to recognise that everyone else is muddling along, coping with life as best they can in the same way that you are – whose life is perfect?

Opening up can become a sort of welcome exhalation, a realisation that phew, it’s not just me who’s struggling along today, for whatever reason.