lessons i learned in cpe: #3. it's okay to acknowledge pain

       My CPE (i.e., chaplaincy) unit at St. Mark’s Hospital ended a month ago.  It’s amazing how much time has already flown by.  That said, I’m pretty sure these “lessons” I learned in the process will stay with me for the rest of my life.  Some of them are harder than others, and they may resonate with you or not—it’s okay either way. 
 
For previous posts, please see:

Lessons I Learned in CPE:  #1. Everyone Has a Story 

Lessons I Learned in CPE:  #2. Everyone Deserves to Tell Their Story

 
Here is my lesson #3…
 
It’s okay to acknowledge pain.
 
Physical pain.  Emotional pain.  Psychological and relational and spiritual pain.  Even cultural and historical pain.  They exist and they matter.
 
If I pricked you with a needle, you’d feel it—and it wouldn’t be pleasant.  That’s because you’re a human being in a surprisingly resilient, but also squishy and mortal body.  And you can’t always control what happens to that body. 
 
The same is true with your mind and emotions.  Sure, you have the power to respond to the thoughts and feelings that crop up in day-to-day life, but you can’t always control when and how those thoughts and feelings arise in the first place.  They just do.  And many of life’s experiences are painful.  Some of them are even traumatic. 
 
“Trauma” is the Greek word for “wound.”  It refers to physical injury to the body, but can also be used to describe other types of woundedness.  For example, verbal abuse from a parent can cause psychological trauma to a child.  Or rejection by one’s religious community can amount to spiritual trauma for a person of faith.  We may think of “trauma” as a too strong a word for most circumstances (I certainly did before this experience), but it happens to apply to a lot of situations, and rightly so.  Traumatic experiences, big or small, have the ability to embed themselves in our lives in ways that can affect us years down the road.  If you can remember a painful comment someone said about you fifteen years ago, that remark was traumatic.  It stayed with you.  And it deserves to be acknowledged and healed.

Let me be clear:  if I could flip a magic “off” switch and never again experience pain, I would.  Who wouldn’t?  But we can’t.  We might try—and, in fact, I think most of the time we do try—but I don’t think it’s helpful in the long run.  In fact, I’m convinced that denying our pain and pretending everything is fine is inevitably damaging, for at least three reasons:
 
First, it doesn’t actually reflect true human experience.  Everyone feels pain, period.  Denying it robs us of the opportunity to connect with this facet of our shared humanity.  Our particular pain is unique, but the experience of pain is universal… and it may as well be something that brings us together.
 
Second, we often use coping mechanisms to numb our pain, and the effects of those strategies eventually wear off.  You finish all seven seasons of the show you’ve been binge-watching.  You hit the bottom of the ice-cream container.  You can only give 110 percent at work for so long before you run out of steam.  Even the “good” distractions (like compulsive exercise or volunteering) have their limits, and the more sinister ones can lead to serious addiction and behavioral health struggles.  I became even more aware in CPE that my strongest coping mechanisms have historically been self-criticism and perfectionism.  Like I said: it’s a universal struggle and we all have our weaknesses.  But they’re no real substitute for addressing pain head on.
 
Third, as Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr has masterfully observed, “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us.” [1]  This can be a hard truth to swallow.  We like to think of pain as something we can conquer or deal with by ourselves without having it affect others… but unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.  
 
We wouldn’t tell someone with cancer to ignore the doctors, avoid chemo, and figure out how to resolve it on their own.  It would only get worse.  An illness needs to be diagnosed and treated for healing to happen.  The same is true for other forms of pain: if they aren’t acknowledged and transformed, they can fester.  Suppressed pain has the potential to lead to fear, mistrust, exhaustion, isolation, and aggression.  Despite our best intentions (including “not wanting to burden” other people), these are not a recipe for healthy relationships.  Instead, we end up unintentionally transferring that pain to the people around us—including our spouses and family members, our co-workers and neighbors, our friends, and our children. 
 
Even grief over loved ones is not something we just “get over.”  I visited with patients who shed tears talking about family members who passed away decades ago.  It isn’t because they were weak; it’s because those losses were traumatic, and they didn’t often feel permission to talk about them.   
 
I’m not suggesting that acknowledging pain makes it go away.  But hiding it will make it linger, and can even let it grow.  Alternatively, bringing it out of the shadows can invite our pain into a space of compassion and restoration.  We don’t have to “go it alone” or “sweep it under the rug.” (We all know those were never great solutions to start.) 
 
This lesson left me with two lingering questions:  Can I see whatever pain I might be holding on to?  And what would it take for me to bring it to light?  

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[1] Transforming Pain — A Daily Meditation by Fr. Richard Rohr (cac.org)