Emotional Pain
I wrote a few weeks ago about physical pain. Today, I am focused on emotional pain, because I am somewhat amazed and dismayed at the toll that deep disappointment has taken on me. Yesterday, I went to mediation for the car accident that I mentioned in my June 24 post. I can’t really tell much about what went on, as I signed a confidentiality agreement. But I can describe the experience—and it’s necessary, if readers are to understand my focus on emotional pain.
We’ve been trying for four years to get this claim settled, and we were ready for it to be over. Both the lawyer and the mediator had high expectations that mediation would settle the case. Therefore, Mom and I were confident that this would be the end. That by the end of the day, we would have a settlement. Our hopes were high. Too high, as it turned out.
When the mediator told us that no agreement was possible, we were devastated. I felt like I’d just had a nuclear bomb explode on my head. Twenty-four hours later, I am still in shock.
The disappointment is as painful as any broken bone ever thought about being (and I’ve broken several, so I have a good basis for comparison). The thing about physical pain is that you can address it directly. Broken bone? Set it, put it in a cast, take some painkillers, let it heal, then rehabilitate it. It comes back almost as good as new. Bad cut? Stop the bleeding, stitch and bandage the wound, let it heal, rehabilitate it. Painkillers if you need them.
But what do you do for an emotional laceration or fracture? There’s not much you can do. You can’t put a broken heart in a cast. You can’t bandage disappointed expectations. In fact, it’s harder to stop emotional “bleeding” than it is to stop a severed artery. Where do you apply the pressure and the gauze? Where do you place the stitches?
And, oddly, the very rest that is so crucial for proper physical healing can be completely counter-productive for emotional healing. We went swimming after yesterday’s disappointment. I don’t mean splashing about in the pool, either. We did laps, and lots of them. Pushing myself physically, I couldn’t concentrate on the emotional pain—it receded into the background. But when the physical exertions were over and I relaxed, the emotional pain came flooding back. Had to fix dinner for the kids, and again, the emotions receded. Dinner over, the pain returned. As long as I could focus on something else—paying bills, cooking, bo and kata practise—I was fine. But when doing tasks that didn’t require mental focus—cleaning the kitchen, folding laundry—I was in pain.
There are ways of “treating” emotional pain, of course. Ever read the Psalms? David suffered excruciating emotional pain. And he cries out to God in a most pitiable manner—“God, why have you forsaken me! How long do I have to endure this? Why is this happening? Help me!”
For me, prayer, reading Psalms and other parts of the Bible, listening to both religious and secular music, and reading books by writers like CS Lewis and Max Lucado—these are all my “emotional painkillers.” Vicodin for the soul, if you will. Like the person encumbered by a cast or bandaged wound, I am still limited in my abilities. But I can function a little better—more “normally”—when the pain is deadened.
The social aspects of emotional pain can actually result in even greater emotional damage. People in emotional pain need compassion and understanding from those around them, but they are less likely to get it—primarily because emotional pain is less obvious. A person in a cast or bandage is obviously injured. A person with battered emotions merely looks unhappy—or they may put on a brave face so that the world doesn’t see their agony.
When someone with a broken arm cries, we let them. When someone with a broken heart cries, we tell them not to. In the aftermath of my divorce, I even had people tell me to “get over it”—as if the ripping apart of a marriage were the equivalent of not getting a date for the prom. I’m sure those people didn’t mean to be callous or cruel, but I’m equally sure that they wouldn’t have told someone with a broken arm to “get over it.”
I’m not saying that people who want to wallow in self-pity and pain should be allowed to do so. Obviously, letting people stew in their misery is undesirable. But just as we encourage those with physical injuries to work towards regaining full function, we should encourage people who have been emotionally injured to heal and recuperate. “Physical therapy” is encouragement of an injured body part to resume its normal and natural function by gently stretching and strengthening it over a long period of time. Those who are in emotional pain need to be treated just as compassionately, patiently, and gently as we encourage them toward recovery.