Pain

[See a companion post from my friend on this same topic here.]

Last week I was in what you might call "serious emotional distress."

And I was watching a cheesy sci-fi drama called Believe (my apologies if you love this show). The Asian female character had been shot to raise the emotional stakes of the show while not actually harming any primary players, and was running a dangerous fever (they performed emergency kitchen-table surgery on her, but she couldn't go to the hospital because she was a fugitive-on-the-run and would go to prison for life, etc.).

So the leader of the supernatural gang kidnaps a doctor and brings him to her bedside. 

"She's not getting better because the wound is infected," says the kidnapped doctor. 

And at that moment, a lightbulb went off for me. 

Because I was in pain. And the pain wasn't getting any better. 

I was wounded. And the wound refused to heal. 

It refused to heal because it was infected. 

And furthermore, this was the wound. Suffering or hurting alone, in isolation, was the wound. I was in it. I am in it. This particular wound is multi-layered and deep, cutting all the way down to the bone. 

I'm no expert on medicine, emotional pain, or cheesy sci-fi dramas, but in my experience, emotional pain, while intense at first, usually gets better over time. It just doesn't hurt as much as it did when it happened. I cry. I feel better. I talk to a friend. More crying. Maybe some blogging thrown in for good measure. And the pain fades. 

This isn't about that kind of pain. This is about the kind of pain that just doesn't seem to get better. A foreign object enters the wound and the wound gets infected. 

Half the time I feel this force, this pain, stuck in my throat, choking me so that it's hard to breathe. 

How does an emotional wound become infected? 

Shame

Roughly 10 years ago I had an experience that left me hurting for what seemed like forever. I was "betrayed" by someone I trusted and the experience left me struggling to heal from wounds that went deeper in my history than I cared to remember or re-live. 

Even now it's difficult for me to articulate what happened, because on the surface it seems like no big deal. But it left me reeling emotionally, and at the time I didn't have the internal or external resources to deal with it. 

So I didn't. Deal with it. Time went on (as it does), and gradually I felt better, okay. Except I wasn't really okay. Somewhere along the way I decided that the way I felt was my fault and that I had used this pain to hurt other people (by not forgiving them, continuing to be hurt and angry, etc.).

I was wrong and I decided that I would never allow this to happen again. I would never again be so hurt that I hurt other people. 

Of course this meant shutting down vulnerability and keeping other people at a safe distance. 

It wasn't until recently when one of my facebook friends posted a quote by Brené Brown that I realized the connection in my mind between vulnerability and being terribly, gut-wrenchingly wounded. The greater the vulnerability, the greater the wound. The more intimate the relationship, the harder it is to recover.

It was a quote about the benefits of being vulnerable, and my mind went, "But what's missing is that the minute you open yourself up in vulnerability, you also open yourself up to be deeply hurt." 

Shame says, "Something is wrong with me. I hurt other people. I must stop myself from hurting other people." (See also, Frozen)

And so the wound doesn't really heal so much as get covered up with protective scar tissue. And getting wounded in the same place hurts like a $##@$%$%.

Isolation

Shame and isolation are closely connected. I felt shame over feeling shame (fun!). I couldn't kick the shame, the anger, or the hurt no matter how much I prayed, cried, journaled or tried to truly forgive.

The moment some of this shame started to lift I was actually crying to my dad about what had happened. And he said, "You can't make someone feel bad for feeling bad! You can't shame someone for feeling shame!"

And I was less alone. 

Shame says, "Don't let your pain and your grief touch other people. Protect them. Suffer alone."

Forgiveness

What was so frustrating about this entire ordeal was how much I tried--really tried--to do the right thing, namely forgive and move on. 

I read all the right verses about forgiveness. I prayed. I had the "I forgive you" conversation. I did everything "right." 

Because that's what Christians do. They forgive. 

But I now think that one of the worst things you can do is to forgive prematurely. 

Forgiveness is so often touted as the gateway to freedom and healing--forgive and be healed. But so often forgiveness functions as a kind of denial: 

You deny the depth of the hurt.

You deny the extent of the damage.

You deny the past hurts that make this present one hurt so bad.

You deny the process of healing that needs to take place before you can truly forgive.

Denial

I am a slow processor. It takes me an eternity to figure out what I am feeling and why. It's an agonizing process and most of the time I just feel like, "Wait. I'm crying again??" as one more layer of the wound rises into consciousness. 

Why didn't anyone tell me that practicing self-compassion makes you feel even worse? That acknowledging the truth of the wound is excruciating. That letting yourself get angry is scary and confusing. That setting boundaries doesn't mean that other people won't violate them, and in fact can serve as a trigger. That you can feel like &*$# and still not know why. That sometimes you ask for empathy and realize the other person is incapable of giving it. That being vulnerable and brave doesn't mean you won't have to do it again tomorrow and the day after that. That I still don't know how to make the pain go away. That I wonder all the time whether I'm crazy and this is just all in my head--that I'm being too sensitive or a drama queen. That asking for help doesn't mean you'll get what you really want or that you even know what you want or would be capable of articulating it if you knew what it was. That sharing your pain can make you feel even more alone and isolated. 

I wish I could say it's easier this time around, but I actually think it hurts a lot worse. 

As my friend mentioned, sometimes you find yourself telling the same story over and over and over again. It's because you haven't completely figured it out. You haven't gotten relief. The wound hasn't healed. 

Keep telling that story. Go deeper, if you have to. Find safe people who will listen. Don't stop.