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The thing about working with people who work with people is that those people tend to be obsessively compassionate towards people. And I really want to drill down on this word people and get it in your head because it’s important.
I had a conversation today about trauma. Comfort. Whether we’re creating a culture of people who aren’t able to grapple with pain. And being someone who has experienced a little trauma, I figured I’d weigh in.
And this was the response.
“Well, don’t you want to be empathetic?”
Yes, people. I really want to be empathetic. I’m actually an extremely empathetic person, to the point where I have a hard time watching literally anything on TV besides House Hunters without tearing up.
The Bachelorette is a form of self-torture (in more ways than one).
But going through severe losses, some really tough pain and literal threats to my life, I can say this: Confronting my shit is what got me through that very same shit. Which isn’t nice. It isn’t sweet. It’s completely un-fun and not very “progressive”, yet it’s just how this stuff works.
Of course, people are not all the same. But how many of us believe that our pain is just the absolute worst? That we can’t even deal with our type of pain because it’s just so fucking terrible?
I don’t think it is, honestly. And maybe that’s the cruel dark world catching up with me or maybe my Fox News obsessed uncle is starting to make a little bit of sense.
Empathetic people have helped me get through my trauma, but they didn’t let me hide from the world. They didn’t shelter me and put warnings at the top of everything I read and throw a blanket over my face when there was a death on television.
I healed. I let my brain do what it does best: Adjust.
It took tears. It took a few sleepless nights. It took resisting having a breakdown every time people spoke of my pain. And I don’t like that all of that had to happen, but all of that really did need to happen. It’s just not nice. It’s not sensitive. It’s not what we think should happen.
And that’s a really tough pill we all need to swallow.
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This post was previously published on www.medium.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
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