When You Start to Remember
Do you ever start to remember…and suddenly everything is not okay again?
A minute before, you were completely fine, hadn't thought about certain things for weeks, maybe months… and then these shadows approach and swallow you out of nowhere?
Yeah, so….....I've been remembering pain. Starting like, a couple days ago. I don't know where it came from, but suddenly everything that has happened the last 4 years of my life decided to team up and come at me all at once.
I have a few different ways that I react to pain.
One way is giving into fear. Giving the reins to my depression and anxiety, taking all of the pain in and letting it tell me that it is ALWAYS, EVERY time going to happen the same way as in the past and there is no hope for anything different and everyone is out to get me and about to get up and leave so go do what I do best and FREAK OUT. On myself, and also on those people. And my response is, "Okay if you say so!"
Another way is going numb - which is hardly ever a choice.
Or, I let all of the intense feelings take over me, but I don't freak out on anyone. I just sit with it, I pace with it, I internally combust with it, while it feels unbearable. Then I have 2 choices. I either use a bad coping mechanism, or I wait, for what seems like an eternity, for it to pass.
I responded the first way the other day (sort of freaking out on people). I still have some, what one might call, "immaturity," inside of me. I also think it's a protective mechanism in my body that's trained to push people away when I think they might be on their way out already. This action is a result of my "giving way to fear." I hate it about myself. It's one of the qualities I have that disgusts me the most, and it brings on loads of shame. I have grown however, and my freak outs are nowhere near what they used to be.
Anyway,
I've learned 2 truths about suffering throughout my life thus far.
The first one is from a book I have been reading about trauma. It was a quote from the author's mentor that said:
"The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves" (The Body Keeps the Score, pg. 11).
WOW! Yiiiiiiiikess. But is it not true? I suffer from my imagination. When it comes to situations like this, (being overcome with fear and reacting on other people), imagination is a result of a past reality being projected onto the future.
I tell myself no one will ever stay. Nobody loves me. They are all thinking that they wish they never knew me in the first place. They are trying to find a nice way to get out.
And when I react it becomes new lies, about how I am a horrible person who is never changing. I am unlovable, unhelpable, impossible, I only hurt people and I'll never change.
The lies we tell ourselves are dangerous and venomous. They poison our minds and if we don't know that they are lies, we let them control our lives. I have a long history of letting lies control my life. Sometimes my reaction to pain is both lashing out and using a bad coping mechanism - and then going numb after. Why is sitting with the pain so seemingly impossible?
For one thing, we are trained by the world to do everything we possibly can to avoid pain. So, in one sense, it is a societal and cultural issue. How can we alleviate and avoid this pain at all costs? Let's get drunk, let's get high, let's press an "easy button," let's not eat, let's throw up, let's use self-harm behaviors, let's not show our feelings ever at all because they are so uncomfortable for everyone else to see.
On the other hand, sitting with pain is freaking HARD. For lack of a better word - pain is PAINFUL.
The first lesson I learned about suffering was from a clinician at my debut admission to a partial hospitalization program for eating disorders when I was in high school, in a group session.
"Suffering is not accepting pain" -Jen (also the packet she was reading out of but I give her the credit).
Our true source of suffering is our refusal to accept the pain.
An example I use in the book I wrote is if the house just burned down, but I choose to stand inside of it while the flames take over and pretend it isn't happening, as I burn and fill my lungs with smoke.
When I was a junior in high school I broke my foot, but didn't really want to believe anything was wrong. So I walked around school in flip flops and pretended everything was fine - when every step brought excruciating pain. It was obvious to anyone who even glanced at it that something was terribly wrong. It was swollen up and twice the size of my other foot, and also bruised and red and yellow-brown all at the same time (sorry for the visual). But I lied to myself, said nothing was wrong, and did not accept the pain. I refused the reality that my foot was broken, I would be out for the cross country season, and I would not be able to contribute or be a part of my team in the way I wanted to. The 2 ways that we suffer.
Maybe… just maybe… would it have been less painful… and maybe… just maybe… would the healing process not have been dragged out… if I went to the doctor as soon as it happened? Like, as soon as I heard the pop in my foot a few days before? It took until my coach forced me to go to the doctor's to actually acknowledge something was wrong.
And guess what? When I accepted that it was broken, I didn't want to endure my new reality. So subconsciously my eating disorder developed. It took my foot much longer to heal (healing of bones is dragged out when not sufficiently nourished), it actually broke a second time, and I had to sit out cross country and both track seasons - besides the very last race of spring track. I was only supposed to sit out of cross country.
I learned so much from Jen, the clinician who taught us about suffering, that I made "WWJennDo?" bumper stickers for everyone in the clinic and for all of my fellow patients, and we called it "soul school." I still have the sticker on my bumper.
Radical acceptance was the skill we were taught to handle unbearable pain and realities. Things that we wish with our whole being had never happened, could not have imagined ever happening, and yet, radically accepting that it did, and finding a way to live with it. Another term I would use for myself is faith and trust in God. It reminds me of this Bible scripture,
"No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it." 1 Corinthians 10:13
Everything can be accepted and endured. Nothing on this earth could happen to us that we don't already somehow, somewhere, have the tools to handle and live through. Maybe the tools are the strength of our minds we haven't yet realized - our ability to sit, remember, and endure, until the excruciating wave passes. Maybe it includes the people in our lives who love us, who may have nothing to say that can take it all away but are willing to sit next to us in our pain, and hold our hands. Who say "I love you, you are not alone." Maybe it's the Bible, which teaches us how we can still love and choose goodness throughout the most tragic and horrible times. I would say - it is a combination of all of these things.
I wanted to share this today because I was filled with shame for the way I reacted to my pain the other day. I want to choose to sit with pain, although it feels like the hardest option. Because it turns out the long-term results of lying to myself ends up making me (and others) suffer much longer.
We've got this, friends. As Glennon Doyle always says,
"We can do hard things."
(Why "we"? Because when we do hard things - we are never alone. We have a whole sisterhood behind us, holding our hands, catching our backs, and a God who is watching and walking with us through it all.)
