Meraki Healing Center, PLLC

I found an old entry in the archives of my phone notes – the first paragraph below, with a few minor updates – recently, after starting to listen to an episode of a podcast that has apparently become like a Bible for me. This episode of ‘We Can Do Hard Things’ featured Sara Bareilles and was about returning to yourself. I hadn’t yet finished the episode when I first found this note, & was struck by the relevance of my own words to a quote I’d heard in said episode. As you’ll see, it’s where the title of this blog comes from. Thank you, Sara Bareilles 🙂. They were talking about something Sara had said about her partner, specifically the significance of the way he has shown up in their relationship during some of the most terrifying times of her life: “you said being loved by him feels like he can just exist next to you in the pain, and that that love and that presence is allowing someone the dignity of their own discomfort”. I couldn’t stop thinking about this quote. It was relating to a handful of personal experiences that had simultaneously been occurring over these surrounding few days for me, and it led to me expanding on the aforementioned phone note. I almost didn’t publish, because this only captures approximately 5% of all the thoughts and words that were mulled over. Fortunately (or unfortunately?), I watched an Instagram story by someone who encapsulates what it means to show up vulnerably and imperfectly but 100% passionately, and I hit send before the second guessing could win. As always, these words are simply my own, they are not meant to be anything more than what they are: an honest, poorly edited attempt at sharing my own thoughts, my own questions, my own struggles, about what it means to embrace this wild thing called life.

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I wonder how much better of a clinician I will be – how much better of a friend, and of a sister I will be – when I have figured out how to master the art of what it means to allow someone to sit with their discomfort. When I’ve gained enough experience with this practice that I can do it, well. It hurts to sit with someone you love in their pain.

You don’t really fathom the heartbreak of it until you try it – you deeply, truly try it. You let go of the last remaining hope of being able to fix it. Of being able to predict the outcome. You don’t try to make it better, you check your ego at the door, and this surrendering gives space for the person to be in their pain, for your love to be known, and for the discomfort of the unknown to be acknowledged for what it is, but nothing more.

You accept you actually can’t change anything. The change won’t come, even if you were to do “all the right things”, not until this person is ready to face their situation for themselves. You try to meet them where they are at, you let them be in that place.

It is uncomfortable as hell, to sit with someone in pain. Another uncomfortable truth is that sometimes we aren’t supposed to. Sometimes we aren’t the right vessel for that surrendering. It’s a disservice to our own being, it’s a disrespect of their dignity, it’s a demonstration of our own insecurities being brought to the surface and given breath to live, if we try to be this person who can sit with another’s pain when we’re unable. How backwards that sounds, I know. But it’s true. We have to know the difference. Not everybody has to – not everybody is supposed to – hold the mess.

To give someone the space to move at their pace, the dignity of their discomfort, is to respect and honor the process of healing. Is to respect and honor the foundation of the relationship that you cherish.

Maybe I haven’t mastered it because I am not ready to experience the inevitable acknowledgment that I am not yet able to sit with my own pain, not in the way I think I can. The numbing & avoiding still happens – albeit often unconsciously, at least at first. I still dissociate, & watch from above as I leave my body. I still want to crawl out of my skin.

And if I can’t feel and move through the discomfort for myself, if my body and brain aren’t yet in sync in the knowing that I will actually survive it – that it will not kill me – of course I can’t fathom watching someone i love experience their version of it either.

I know I am getting there; I’ve done it, I’ve felt it, I’ve moved through it, that pain for myself, but it still resembles the creation of a destructive hurricane. The fear of death – of the inability to make it out on the other side – that potential still fuels the survival modes. That potential triggers the protective fixer to come to life for others. That fear will destroy me, & it will destroy my relationships. That fear will destroy the cocoon that enables the transformation from the old to the new, it will ruin the necessary healing process to occur at its full potential capacity.

God, the depth of discomfort. May we all tread lightly as we learn how to embrace and sit with someone in their suffering.