Being With Others in Their Pain

Article written by Kerry Thomas M.Ed., LPC

I had a friend shoot me through the heart with an email yesterday. I had not heard from him or his wife in a couple of months. This is not usually a good sign, but we often assume, as I had done, that their lack of contact has something to do with us. We should seriously reconsider that.

He sent me a message and let me know that his wife had been sleeping with another man and had just moved out the day before, without notice, while he was out of town. Yeah, just like that.

His words sprang from the screen, and I felt the pain shoot through my heart with a bolt of energy. My head started to spin, and I reached out to him immediately. Via return email.

My own emotions were creating such conflict in my brain that I don’t even think my sentences made much sense. They certainly weren’t grammatically correct. I wondered fleetingly if he would think my IQ had just tanked, and then I hit “send”.

As I got into my car to head to my office ten minutes later, I realized in a nanosecond of complete clarity that responding to my friend’s pain, big pain, with some erratically written email was not enough. It didn’t rise to the appropriate level of compassion.

I have had my heart broken before. Countless times, sadly. I have often said it is the most painful experience a human being must endure, if they are lucky enough. The pain of this happening in one’s life is almost unbearable.

So I understood the pain. What I noticed in my own life is that what I feel most during times like these is alone. In fact, that was the most unbearable part. All at once you go from having a companion, most likely the one you shared everything with, to being completely alone. It gets very quiet. Very fast.

And now you are sitting there with your overwhelmed, obliterated heart, your mind swimming, everything flooded with pain….and….no one to talk to.

This is when we are really needed here. This is, in fact, what we are really here to do. I can’t think of anything more important on this planet than people. Okay, maybe animals too. So if your priority is people, than your first priority when it comes to “life tasks” is to prioritize your relationships with them. Be there for each other. Show up. Understand. Support. Connect.

After almost a decade and a half of being a therapist listening to people’s deepest feelings, what I have come to understand is that the driving force in our heart is to be deeply, authentically connected to good people who know us completely, accept us, understand us, and support us fully in our vulnerability. In fact, a study that has been going on for the last 75 years on human happiness, the longest study ever done and still underway at Harvard University, found that our happiness is chiefly tied to this human connection.

So if people are the most important thing on this planet, and the connection between them is the thing we really need in order to really feel happy, that seems to indicate to me that we really ought to be prioritizing our behavior as it relates to people and our connection to them. Our connection to people, not things, not jobs, not watching television, not making money, but to people.

So first let me ask you, are you doing that? Do you feel as though you prioritize people, how you treat them, how you show up for them, and the space in your life you make for them? Is this truly the most important aspect of your life?

It really needs to be. I know I may sound like some kind of lunatic here, telling everyone that making money and working 60 hours a week is not going to make you happy, but I am okay with that. I am a bit of a rogue.

And when it comes to being present for people when they are in pain, this seems to be something that we shy away from. I know because I went through something spectacularly painful last year, and I didn’t see people lined up at my door. Instead, I heard crickets.

There were a couple of people who were present every step along the way, and I am eternally grateful for their presence in my life, but there were so many friends who had been around during happy times that just seemed to disappear from my life. Almost on cue. Poof.

Being there for the people we care about while they are in pain has got to become something that we cultivate the skill to show up for, totally, completely, selflessly, fearlessly, consistently.

As I said, I wonder sometimes if what keeps people from full-on supporting someone when they are in pain is that they are not even sure how to do it. I mean what do we do with all those overwhelming emotions? When we sense someone is in pain, often it feels so uncomfortable to us that we just want to say something that will put an end to it, and then our friend ends up feeling invalidated. I would like to help you understand what it looks like and how it feels to do it so that you might fight the urge to run or hide or not fully show up next time someone you know is in pain.

How it feels to be present with pain initially is uncomfortable. Most of us have become so accustomed to running from our own feelings, that the skill of coping with emotions has become rather lost on us. So the initial work needs to begin with getting comfortable with emotions in general, our own is a great place to start. That is such a large topic that I think I will cover that in another article.

So once you have gotten to a good place with your own overwhelming feelings, it makes it so much easier to be with others while they are drowning in theirs. Perhaps beyond that, it is uber important to keep in mind that there is nothing that we can do to make those feelings go away. In fact, we shouldn’t even try.

Feelings are meant to show us something, make us change directions, see things differently, grow, expand our understanding of human behavior and ourselves, increase our compassion for ourselves and for other people. These messy things called emotions are so important to us for so many things and a beautiful part of the human experience, when you think about it.

So please understand that it is not your role, nor should it be, to expect to change how the other person is feeling. Stop telling yourself that it is your job to “fix” them or to fix the situation. All that is required of you is just to be present. If you can just become an immovable object for a while, just sit with them in their pain. Be present for their emotional displays and expressions of hurt, despair, anger, whatever comes. Let them cry on your shoulder. Tell them that you understand how they feel. Tell them that their feelings make sense. Tell them that you care.

Let us begin to prioritize our connections to others. Let us learn to rise to the occasion when they are in tremendous pain. Show up, be present, listen, support, love. There is nothing more important than people. There is nothing more necessary than to support them during their darkest hours. Being with people in the good times is easy. Anyone can do easy, easy is for sissies. Don’t settle for being a sissy. Be a badass friend; be a badass human.

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Kerry Thomas M.Ed., LPC is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist with 20 years of experience specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, depression, and anxiety in both adolescents and adults. Her therapeutic approach integrates traditional as well as holistic methods of addressing mental and emotional wellness. Kerry has worked with clients all around the United States as well as internationally. Kerry can be reached at klthomas14@hotmail.com.