What Lies Underneath Fear
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where someone that you know and love is experiencing a deep trauma? It is terrible to know that someone we love is enduring pain and suffering. If you’re like me, maybe you have heard these statements in different conversations or have found yourself saying them in related situations:
I don’t know what to do
I don’t know what to say
I don’t know how to help
Often, when people we are close to are experiencing trauma we can have this sense of inadequacy or insecurity about our ability and knowledge in helping someone feel supported. We can disqualify ourselves from consistent involvement by telling ourselves that they have other people surrounding them, that we don’t know what to do, or that we’re afraid to be a burden. Therefore, we back off. The unfortunate side to these fears is that everyone has them which can, at times, mean that a person or family is left to sort through the ‘fight’ feeling isolated.
Truthfully, a person or family in the middle of the fight of their life does not often have time or emotional reserves to tell people what they need. It can be after the thick of the fight that we can learn that a person felt isolated, lonely, or even abandoned. Almost everyone would wish that they had done more so that they could have alleviated this additional layer of grief and confusion from the person that they love.
Have you found yourself in this place? Not knowing where to begin in supporting someone walking through a trauma? Feeling ill-equipped and afraid of hurting them further by your lack of knowledge?
The first thing that we need to do is to start at the beginning and dig a little deeper.
We are afraid. What is that fear? When you think of it, it’s truthfully empathy that is immobilized. Our empathy is a gift that gives us the awareness of others sufferings and desires for people to not have to endure that. Empathy gives us the ability to be aware but we have to choose to either hide behind our insecurities or grow in our understanding and allow our empathy to be moved into action-based compassion.
Our thoughts can swirl in the ‘what-if’s?’ What if I hurt them more than they’re already hurting? What if I say something insensitive? What if they don’t want my help? What if I make them uncomfortable?
Observe that all of these “what-if’s” are really just empathy getting stuck in fear. We don’t want to hurt the person or people we love further. We need to understand that in order to support the people we love through a trauma, we have to choose to grow past our current limits. Difficulty is a stretching experience for everyone who dares to work with it and not against it. This stretching may be uncomfortable. The reality is that you will probably hurt the person you love. There is the possibility that you will hurt their feelings or make them feel uncomfortable. Instead of allowing that thought to immobilize you, what-if…. this gave you an opportunity to learn how to love better? What if… you made a mistake but it made you a better friend because you were teachable?
The worst “what-if” is leaving a person to feel isolated who really needs the support and empathy that you have to offer. You might not be perfect, but you will get better and your action-based compassion will learn a rhythm that is so much more beautiful than being immobilized in our fear. Your empathy is the beginning of a beautiful gift that you can offer to someone walking through the depths of trauma.