Once in a while we suffer a singular, difficult experience that causes us to question the life we live. Things can be motoring on well until this one event – a financial difficulty, a death, an injury - seems to change everything and cause us to question the things that we took for granted. We can be at a loss like we have never been before, vulnerable like we wouldn’t have thought possible. And we can feel like there are changes that need to be made, but powerless to make them in our sadness and dejected state.
One of the common elements of this is feeling like we are the only ones suffering. We see people on the street going about their lives and they seem untroubled. They shop, they drive and they do the things that just seem too hard for us to do for us in this state of loss. They don’t seem afflicted with what is happening to us and it can seem that we are only the ones that are suffering, the only ones who have ever truly suffered, the first in the world to really feel loss.
The truth is that these sorts of distressing events happen once in a while to almost everyone. Our nature is often to keep this deep loss private from strangers, to turn in on ourselves and keep it close to our chests. We may put on a face of stoicism, of grim undertaking but this can seem like boredom or displeasure to those looking at us. For all we know, those that we see going about their lives have suffered even more than us but keep this to themselves, except perhaps for the times they are in private or with loved ones.
However, when we don’t feel that others understand what we are going through, our feelings seem solitary, unique and strange to us.
We often feel a strong need to talk about such things, hoping that in talking to friends or a partner they will take away these feelings. Despite their best intentions, our friends and family can feel bewildered and uncomfortable talking about these things, and we can feel we are unfairly burdening them. Or, we can get loaded down with advice, sure-fire ways to feel better, to move on, or to get over it. However this can often, despite the best intentions of all, feel empty and flat and just confirm what we thought – ‘I am alone in this’. For this reason I encourage you to ‘get help’ – see someone who won’t feel bewildered or uncomfortable with your feelings, who won’t tire of you, who won’t saddle you with advice you haven’t asked for. A professional who will work hard to understand, so you can experience, at least in part, the measure of comfort that can come when someone demonstrates that they know and accept how you feel.
image credit: Piotr Bizior
