Sharing A Story. Compassion.
How do we find the right people to trust with our story? A common reaction to our frustrations, pains or even trauma may be for others to note how much worse the suffering can be, or to react with indifference or disregard. Likely not a malicious reaction, but one that can feel tone def or emotionally ignorant none-the-less. Why the need to compare or dismiss?
For those with a trauma background, trauma is stored in the body. You know what you need mentally and physically. Whatever your story is, “you need to be around good people, spend time healing your emotional history, and live in alignment to your values.” - Yung Pueblo.
How do we know who the good people are? We may be able to feel this in our body. Though some trauma survivors have to spend time re-establishing a mind, body connection. So feeling and understanding body sensations may be a challenge (negative sensations - clenching stomach or feet that go cold, positive sensations - slow and steady speech or deep and steady breathing). More importantly, we may be able to recognize who the good people are by the way they listen and respond to us or our story.
In a collection of books written on suffering and relationships, one word is repeated through a number of them. That word is “compassion”, and it’s found in books by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, Yung Pueblo, David Brooks, and Robert Wright to name a few. Merriam-Webster defines compassion as a “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Cultivating compassion as a listener and communicator takes patience and practice. All of us are in the learning process.
Is a good person to trust, someone who can listen with compassion? It’s likely a good measure. And may be hard to find. There’s no judgement for those that can’t or don’t listen with compassion, only a hope that we all become more aware of the need to practice and be better.
The gem in this writing is saved for last. The words of David Brooks in How to Know a Person are beautifully written. “The person who masters the skill of compassion, will have an acute perceptiveness. …She’ll envelop people in a loving gaze, a visual embrace that will not only help her feel what they are experiencing, but give those around her the sense that she is right there with them, that she is sharing in what they are going through. She will maintain this attention even as the callousness of the world rises around her, as the sage W.H. Auden poem advises: If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me. She’s learned it is the everyday acts of encounter that define a person’s character. It is the simple capacity to make another person feel seen and understood - that hard but essential skill that makes a person a treasured citizen, lover, spouse, and friend.”
Don’t let others belittle the importance of what you feel. We have to feel our feelings fully, with acknowledgement and understanding, to heal from any pain and move forward in a healthy way. Stuffing or overlooking our feelings, especially at the feedback of others, may result in unwanted coping behaviors. In The Present Moment, a recording of a retreat given by speaker Thich Nhat Hanh, he explains, “A mindfulness practitioner does not suppress a feeling, for example anger. A practitioner lets it be. Suppressing the feeling or anger it is not accepted in the Buddha’s practice. Because you know the feeling or the anger is you. If you try to suppress that, you are doing violence to yourself because you are that feeling or anger at that time.”
It’s imperative we practice compassion toward ourselves, because it’s a direct reflection of the compassion we show others. We know what we need. It’s our responsibility to honor that.
(A note to relational trauma survivors seeking help/therapy outside of professional one-on-one counseling: It’s never okay for another person to violate your trust and tell your story. It’s never right. And it’s morally and ethically wrong. Telling another person’s story is not only wrong, but risks telling the story incorrectly under the perception and understanding of the storyteller who is violating trust and potentially privacy. You are allowed privacy in regard to your own affairs, feelings, and story. If you suffer from relational trauma and struggle to trust others to the point of impairing social relations, be careful what you share and with whom, especially in regard to group therapy and 12-step programs.)