We ask people, “how are you?”, but are we really prepared to RECEIVE the answer fully?
This does not mean our intention about asking about their well being isn’t genuine. However, equally true is the fact that most of us feel befuddled and don’t know what to do or say when a person genuinely shares what he / she is going through (challenges / pain/ feelings/ situations). The part within us that deeply wants to support and help, feels lost. What can I do? How can I help? And we sort of realise that there might really be no way to help and that brings helplessness and a deep sense of inadequacy or feeling of unworthiness within.
This is a very difficult space to BE in and feel that unworthiness within the self, to be intimate with that innate sense of helplessness that creeps in during these situations.
Our human brain or mind works very fast. It wants to so deeply help and support in order for the person’s pain to go away that it starts conjuring solutions or statements. It starts giving ideas , suggestions, plans of action -say this, tell them to do this, do that, da da da da da ……and this inner programming is so quick that before we start realising, our mouth has opened or our hand has typed suggestions, solutions, or indulged in situations where we start doing or saying something that we feel might help or support the person.
This addresses our concern that we might be feeling. It helps with our own helplessness or deep rooted sense of unworthiness.
But, what about the person at the receiving end? Did we check what he / she might need?
Is he / she just sharing ? Is he/ she just venting or ranting? Does the person need solution or does the person just wants to feel needed, validated or acknowledged in that moment? Or simply witnessed and held?
Agreed that online spaces make this process immensely difficult. But simple statements like “I am listening”, “I am present”, “I see you” while controlling our own inner impulse to advise or suggest solutions without asking if the person needs any suggestions can go a long way in not invalidating the other persons pain and experience.
Allowing ourselves to BREATHE through our own innate discomfort and helplessness of not being able to do much, learning daily about BEing rather than slipping into Doing, these are the things which would, in my opinion go a long way – for ourself and the person that we desire to support or be there for.
We want to take away the pain of others and support them. We desperately do what we know best. We are indeed coming from a place of support and love.
However, in that moment, what does the person really need??
Can we ask, “How can I support you today?” Can we simply listen from our body and not just the mind?”
Can we breathe through our own unconscious helplessness that keeps coming up when we really aren’t able to do much ?
And yet can we realise that pure presence IS everything?
Holding space IS everything. Gentle nudges ARE everything.
Listening IS everything.
Do we realise that the other person’s sharing might also bring up “our own pain & helplessness” and it is our own inability to feel our pain that provokes us to offer solutions or suggestions that haven’t been sought yet?
Do we realise that simply sitting with that person may make ALL the difference in their field??
What bigger need do we humans have than being witnessed for who we are and what we might be going through? This doesn’t mean encouraging victimhood. This simply means, for now, being present to them fully and may be when the wave has settled, ask “Do you need a suggestion or advise?”
Do we realise that pain, loss, trauma and grief is such a roller coaster that the person going through it may start feeling “I am not important, and that during the grieving or traumatic period, their sense of self is HIGHLY diminished. They already are questioning their existence and their state of being; they are already feeling that something is inherently wrong with them for them to feel what they are feeling or what they are going through.
By giving our solutions or healing suggestions, don’t you feel, we might not only be diminishing what they are feeling but also indirectly conveying a message, that they might not doing enough??
And that is the least that we want them to feel, isn’t it??
Do we realise that they might feel that the whole world is going on enjoying life while all they feel is pain ? Is something wrong with them or about them that they have manifested so much pain in their life?
And when we advise, we further might enable this state.
Do know, that solutions are welcome too. But it depends how actively engaged you have been in their healing journey. If you are just a passer by or have been a mere spectator, then please check if your suggestions would be welcome or is it the need of that moment.
More so, is it YOUR need or THEIR need?
No one can lessen the pain that the person might be going through. All we can do is to walk, may be a few steps with them without invalidating their experience and pain and there by not denying (but aceepting) our own pain.
What we honor, honors us back.
This is the biggest act of kindness, in my opinion, to the other and to your own self.