Private Pain
Most of us have a deeply personal place of pain and we keep it private because we usually don’t experience a place or person where it feels safe enough to open up to it.
Those painful feelings may even be hiding from us because they sense we are not yet ready to open up to them in a way that is not: judging; shaming; critical; or dismissive.
Many of us take this private pain to our grave.
As an example, we might be familiar with older generations never speaking about the horrors they experienced in war and then the legacy and unspoken imprint this imparts to the younger generations.
Both speaking, or not speaking about our private pain carries risk and consequence to ourselves, and subsequent generations.
Current public mental health campaigns encouraging us to reach out (like the: R U OK?) are important and to be celebrated because they are challenging our cultural inheritance to suffer deeply in silence.
They also can carry risk in a social world that is increasingly time poor and distraction rich. What if I do take the risk and say: No, actually I’m not OK. If I’m your friend and in a crisis, barely holding it together, it will probably give you the excuse you need to yourself and others to drop everything and spend some immediate time with me.
But if I’m not at crisis point and I’m managing ok at one level, but deep down – No, I’m not ok – there is real existential private pain there – around isolation, aloneness, lack of connection, not fitting in or belonging. In the time poor / distraction rich culture we are in – that may not give you the excuse you need to yourself and others to stop and give me and you the genuine time we need to open to each other and feel safe enough to share what’s really and deeply going on for ourselves.
Our private pain is private for very good reason! It only exists because we haven’t yet found the place or person to open up to about it.
Under the right circumstances, it is one of the most precious things we have to offer. It’s real, it’s show stopping, it’s probably more shared then we realise, it’s human, it’s personal, and it’s intimate. Under the right circumstances it can be a gift that is one of the most potent, substantial, meaningful and moving exchanges between human beings.
Under the wrong circumstances, if the mark gets missed somehow, and we don’t get heard and felt, it can reinforce our sense of aloneness, alienation and being judged and shamed. For our part we need to be discerning in how we choose the people, time and place for when we do this and give them the heads up – this is an important piece we have to share with them. Make sure your chosen person has stopped and heard you and is capable of really being there for you.
A good analogy is lighting a candle flame. Is it the time and place where it’s going to be seen? Will it be blown out? Can we create the space to light it and do it justice by ourselves, or do we need support to understand ourselves better?
Most days I’m listening to people’s private pain. I find it rewarding because it is human, personal, intimate and is often the most potent, substantial, meaningful and moving exchanges I have with people.
The more we earnestly try and do this for each other and take the risks to create the right circumstances for us to do it for ourselves, the better we are going to get at it, and the better we and the world are going to be as well. These times call for us to strengthen our humanity and our bonds.