Skip to main content

TELL ME YOU UNDERSTAND MY PAIN!

“No apology has meaning if we haven’t listened carefully to the hurt party’s anger and pain.” Harriet Lerner


I love Brene Brown. If you aren’t familiar with her work, Google her. She has TED talks, books, a fantastic presence on Facebook, and so much more. She is a research professor at the University of Houston, an author, and speaker. The majority of her research is about vulnerability. She’s definitely worth looking into.

Anyway....Brene posted a list of her favorite books recently and on that list was Harriet Lerner’s book “Why Won’t You Apologize? : Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts”. I ordered it right away and read it cover to cover in a couple of days.

I won’t go into a full on review of the book but  if you do nothing else today, after reading this blog of course, buy this book and read it.

As someone who witnesses people’s pain (their masks) - and who has had my fair share of it -, I can tell you that pain is as prevalent as oxygen. It’s also as invisible as oxygen.

Mass shootings wouldn’t happen if the shooters weren’t in pain. It is hard to inflict pain on others if you feel loved and are living life from a loving place. Pain must be shared. If I’m in pain, you should be in pain. That’s our society's mentality. Everyone is so caught up in the pain they feel that they become blind to the fact that others are hurting too. 

People are suffering and part of that suffering is because they haven’t received a proper apology for a past hurt. The other part of that suffering is people’s inability to be vulnerable and ask for that apology, or worse give an overdue apology. 

Pain and anger needs to be validated in order to heal the wound in your heart. That's the secret to healing our society. If we could all just validate each other rather than argue about who is right and who is wrong, then we could change the world. Literally. 

Putting on a mask to cover your pain only allows that pain to fester. You become angry. You become passive aggressive. You become spiteful - needing someone, anyone to feel the pain that you are in. This is an instance when sharing is NOT caring.

Learning how to be a great apologizer, and a great receiver of apologies, can be such a tremendous tool to healing all of the pain that we carry. Lerner’s book is a great resource for anyone who is in pain or who has caused pain (all of us).

Some of the highlights from the book:
          The Many Faces of “I’m Sorry”
          Five Ways to Ruin an Apology
          The Secret Life of the Non-Apologizer
          How -and Whether- to Accept the Olive Branch
          Who Is at Fault?

I highly recommend that you read this book. Like, right now. Go read it.

If you learn nothing from me, know that whatever pain you are carrying needs to be dealt with. Pain doesn’t hide behind masks very well. It seeps through the mask and oozes like an open wound leaving trails behind you. It’s time to figure out what mask you are wearing to cover your pain. The happy mask? The I’m fine mask? The Enlightened mask (this one is so prevalent now. People claim enlightenment and yet inflict pain on others like it’s their job)? The angry mask? The addictive mask -using substances to cover the pain-? 

Maybe you need an apology. Maybe you need to give an apology. Maybe you will never get that apology but need to work on understanding your roll vs someone else’s behavior that caused you pain.

Talk with a therapist or talk to me. I can help you name the pain and come up with a plan to face that pain - which may be seeing a licensed therapist. The point is that you need to talk to someone who can listen objectively and help you name your pain.


As ever, and namaste.


Kathy 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Good riddance 2017!

“We lose connection with our realness when others have standards on how we should be.”  Tara Brach I’d like to say a big F-you, sayonora, and good riddance to 2017 but my therapist says that’s not nice. She says that without all the tough lessons I had this year, I would not have grown. And...she’s right (but don’t tell her that...) Every day I choose an Angel Card (see link) to give me a word, something to contemplate and guide me as the day goes on. Each year on New Year’s Day, I chose a theme word for the year and then I review it on the last day of the year. Last January I got "Education". To be honest, when I picked it, I was a little disappointed. I guess I thought the word was boring. I’m sure my angels were laughing at me then. They knew what they were doing, as always, because I definitely got an education this year! I got my PhD in me and let me tell you, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. 2017 was a year of transitions at home and work. It was ...
1 comment
Read more

The infectious quality of joy lies within

"Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls." Mother Theresa I had someone say to me the other day that this world has no joy. Just sit with that one for a minute. No joy? Doesn’t that sound hopeless? I was left with this empty feeling in my heart and her words have reverberated in my head ever since. No joy? How sad is that?   I think that she was referring to the relentless negative news that fills our newsfeeds and how beat down she felt by it all. The media - mainstream or social - is a constant barrage of all that is wrong with the world. Climate change/natural disasters, sexual predators, shootings, animal cruelty, war, insane dictators armed with nuclear weapons....it just goes on and on. If you focus on all of that then I can imagine how one might feel there is no joy in the world. A few years ago, I bought a mantra band that says, “Choose Joy.” I wear it often as a reminder that joy is a choice. It's not something you should take for gran...
Post a Comment
Read more

Be true to yourself

“Something lost? A part of yourself, perhaps? That which you seek, inside you will find.” - Yoda I saw the new Star Wars movie a few weeks ago. I enjoyed it very much mostly because it had a very spiritual, and timely, message of hope. It also had a message that the power to change anything, or overcome darkness, comes from within. Star Wars has always been about the struggle between good and evil both in the universe and with its character's internal struggles. Some struggled more than others, like Anakin Skywalker, aka: Darth Vader. Without getting too much into it, Anakin had a strong force - of good - within him when Qui-Gon Jinn, the Jedi Master, discovered the young boy. Jinn said that the force within Anakin was so strong that he was the “chosen one”, the one they’d been waiting for to restore balance in the galaxy. And then.... Anakin turned and went to the dark side, which ultimately greatly upset the balance. If you've watched all the movies, you know ...
1 comment
Read more