"Suffering begins with pain but becomes suffering because of our isolation and powerlessness in its presence." Curt Thompson
This is part one of a fantastic episode on The Place We Find Ourselves podcast. Adam Young is talking to Curt Thompson, author of The Deepest Place, in an episode entitled: Healing From Trauma: The Power of "Being With" (Part 1).
Basically this episode is about the need for community while we are in our pain.
Adam begins the episode by explaining that for trauma to become embedded in our body, we must have (1) powerlessness and (2) abandonment by potential caregivers.
Okay. So let's say that has happened. Trauma (pain) has embedded in your body. Maybe this occurred through childhood trauma. But maybe it occurred during an especially challenging time in your marriage. Or maybe you fought in a war. Or maybe you witnessed a violent crime. No matter what it is, that pain is now in your body. And you need community to help deal with that embedded pain.
We know if we cut our finger, we can't solve the problem right then. But we know within ten days, we will feel better. But we can't see that when we have marriage issues. Cancer. Trauma. So there is FEAR. We fear that this will last forever. Oh will we ever be done with this pain? We want it over. But the only way it is over is if we go through the pain. We don't want to go through the pain. We want the pain to be over.
As humans, we hope reflect on the past with gratitude and look to the future with hope. But our brokenness and trauma take us out of that realm and we look into the past with regret and toward our future with anxiety.
And that's where suffering lodges itself deep in our soul.
Oh we want to be thankful for the pain we have traveled through. And we want to be hopeful for the future that we might have. However, the depth of our pain means all we can do is look backward with anger and regret for what we had to travel through. And this means that the thought of our future is filled with anxiety.
Will I ever feel normal? Will I ever be able to enjoy my days? Will I ever be able to laugh again? To smile? Will thoughts of this anxiety consume me?
WE NEED COMMUNITY!
What about the traumas we have that leave scars? These scars can mean that we need to talk about these things for a long long time. We begin to fear that those we lean on will get tired of our "complaining" and that they will leave us. And then we will suffer more due to the isolation. What if Job's friends could have just sat with him willingly and just sat with him for as long as it took?
In his book, Thompson tells us that while we may not suffer less after taking in what we learn in this book, we can instead learn to suffer differently. Community will allow us to do that.
I so agree with this statement. My suffering during the last year was horrific. It was H-E-L-L. But having people to suffer it with me made all the difference.
In the Bible, Paul and Jesus and Peter all write about suffering and talk about it matter-of-factly. They don't talk about it as if it is to be avoided. They talk about it as if it is to be expected. They are to join in Christ's suffering. This is what is bringing us connection to Him and to others which will lead to hope and joy. This is counter-intuitive to any other story the world offers. Seriously! Think of another story told by our world where we are to join in the protagonist's suffering?!
If you are willing to bring your suffering into a community that is the perfect example of the body of Jesus Christ. We can suffer without feeling we have to fix it. Instead, if someone is with us in the suffering, at some point, you begin to pay as much attention to the person sitting alongside you as you pay attention to your pain in the moment you are xperiencing it.
Suffering, if we can name it and allow it to be, will deepen our sense of connection, our sense of being loved and cared for, at the very point when the suffering is the worst thing we can imagine.
Vulnerable. Can you be vulnerable? Can you sit with someone else in their pain? Can you allow someone else to sit with YOU in YOUR pain? I have been doing this. This means that I have to go back into my pain and look at it so that the person I am standing along side of can FEEL FELT.
I just did this. During the depths of my suffering, I had to allow people to stand alongside me. I didn't want to. But I HAD TO HAVE THEM. And it was not easy. I had to allow my cousin Cara to listen to me sob. Over and over and over again. How was she not tired of me? How could she call me again? How could she continue to reach out to me so patiently? Wasn't she sick of me?
And now, mostly on "the other side", I am doing the same thing for others. And they are texting me and apologizing for bugging me. Bugging me? This is my gift to our world! To our friendship. To our community. To growth and healing.
When we sit with people in our pain, this doesn't mean that our pain stops. Instead this allows the person in pain to FEEL FELT. (I love that expression and use it a lot. We all need to FEEL FELT!) I am being seen. And if I will begin to talk about that experience, it creates curiosity in other people who will then talk about it with me. God will take when is meant for evil and will instead allow that pain to deepen our sense of being loved and cared for. Our very perception of suffering begins to transform because we start to see it as a vehicle to being loved!
It is a real thing.
How will you respond to it?
And how will the story of the gospel help you understand this suffering?
We can only give love to someone else if we have it to give. We want people to love us! Until they actually try to. We are less capable of receiving love then we are of loving others. All of our music talks about how much we want to love. The parts that bring a person into the doctor's office, are the parts that are actually very afraid when it gets closer. You reach out to a friend in desperation. But then, when they are willingly there, our instinct is to pull away. It's too scary to be that real. To be that vulnerable. To be that open. To be that ... RAW.
Have you ever seen someone who gets overwhelmed by people loving them? Maybe at a funeral or after a surgery or tragedy? They will stop wanting to make eye-contact. It is hard to receive love. These are the things that a newborn has NO defenses against. A newborn is looking to absorb being loved. But our traumas teach us that allowing us to be loved is a life-threatening proposition. What happened to being a baby and willingly allowing people to love us? What breaks us so that we have to question that love? Why can't we willingly receive it?
Confessional Communities are groups of people that sit alongside you and listen to you as you are learning, grieving, working through your grief. This work is SLOW. But it is DURABLE. In these communities, you don't leave stones unturned because of shame. Your shame is welcomed. And isn't shameful at all. You get the opportunity to feel soothed, seen, safe, and secure. In these communities, your vulnerability becomes transformational for other people. And part of this healing becomes your very witness to how your vulnerability is a process of healing for others.
"My simple desire is to remind us that the way forward is through suffering, not around it, but all within relationships," writes Curt in his book. "Reintroducing ourselves to the nature of relationships in the context of suffering can transform not only our relationships, but our experience of suffering as well."
There is a way in which the human heart and mind and right limbic brain operate. This part of the brain heals via relational interactions. The presence, comfort, the transforming power of the Holy Spirit is key for healing. It is mediated through the body of Christ which means other human beings. After the second page of the Bible, everything is human-mediated. It is no longer just God-mediated.
WE NEED PEOPLE!
We are exceptional at surviving ourselves. If a child is suffering from brutality in their young life, they will develop coping mechanisms. Some people are not so good at this and they end up in drugs or alcohol or develop other terrible coping mechanisms. We are capable of paying attention to certain things and blocking other things. We can build walls to turn off ourselves to things that are painful and turn it on to things that we need to cope in the world. It's a crap-shoot to say why some people cope in "more healthy" ways. One person is on drugs. The other person's brain and body are keeping track. And at some point, the brain-body matrix will come together and say "I'm done." If I ignore a sprained ankle, it will eventually say, "You can't avoid paying attention this anymore." Because it's too painful. We don't do this because we are stupid. We do this to survive.
Newborns survive through co-regulation. Basically: they borrow the brain of the parent. So when they are in distress, they are not alone in their distress. The parents, by their very presence, help the child see that they are not alone. A newborn is suffering. But their parent is with them in co-regulation. But, if we don't have that experience as a child, there is no way out from it. What if you are nauseous all the time but never throw up? That would be awful You'd have to just ignore it.
That's how it is with pain. We figure out ways to ignore it. We can't possibly feel that pain all the time. So we find fantastic coping mechanisms.
And those mechanisms work for us ... until they don't work for us anymore.
Suddenly you can longer ignore the symptoms eeking out of your body. In my case it was depression and anxiety. Right now, as I write this, I have friends whose anxiety is coming out through:
1. Fear of death
2. Fear of parasites/bugs
3. Fear of people being upset with them
4. Fear of failure
5. Fear that something will happen to their children
6. Fear that their significant other won't love them anymore
7. Fear of conflict
The curiosity of your counselor is going to start bringing the stuff out of their body. If someone is with you, that changes anything.
This is just part 1. I will be writing more about part 2 very soon!
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