Aftermath
Aftermath: How to be OK (Mostly) When Someone You Love and Care For is Not
Definition of Aftermath:
noun
What one is left to navigate, manage or hold in the wake of an event, set of circumstances, realization(s) or awareness.
What remains after that has ongoing unconscious and conscious impact.
An irreversible shift in landscape or situation.
When going back to what, or how, things were before is impossible.
How to be Okay (Mostly) When Someone You Love or Care for Is Not
One thing that is not talked about nearly enough is how someone else's aftermath/experience can affect us. We can easily get swept up into someone else's trauma or story. To be okay, we must learn how to work with a scenario where someone close to us is struggling.
I have spent much of my life trying to be okay when someone I care for is not. There have been both very intense seasons of this and long, low-grade years where I have struggled to hold onto myself and my equilibrium.
When we love or care for someone, it is hard not to carry their pain. If they are not doing well, for whatever reason—chronic pain, depression, anxiety, suicidality, manifestations of PTSD or C-PTSD, other mental or physical health conditions, etc.—it is hard to be okay yourself. As I write this, I feel it to my core—those seasons where I felt as if someone sunk an anchor deep and I was pulled under.
I learned how to do this young. In my growing-up home, my parents' well-being was often deeply impacted by the people around them. I watched them shoulder and carry the pain of so many, often to where it impacted their health and mental well-being. I learned by osmosis that this is what you do when someone is in pain. You take it on, too. You feel it with them. I never questioned this direct and close linkage—you are not doing well so I am not doing well, until, well, I wasn't doing well myself and had to unpack why.
Let me clear a couple of things up. Yes, we are connected and linked to one another. Energetically, physically, spiritually. What is emerging in the field of neurobiology underscores how very connected we all are. We regulate our nervous systems in connection with another (which can mean the opposite as well—we dysregulate in connection with others). I am not saying here that we should not connect, feel, or be impacted by how another is doing. Doing so is part of our being connected and well humans. It is part of our biology and neurobiology. What I am wanting to help us work with here is that we can still feel, empathize, resonate and care for others without fully taking on, carrying their stuff to the point where it impacts our own mental and physical health. Can you sense the difference? We can connect and care without carrying.
I have, to a great degree, gotten exponentially better at not carrying other people's pain in ways that it feels like my own, but I still work really hard at this, some days with more success than others. Often, I first sense that I am carrying other people's stuff when I wake up and don't want to get out of bed because I feel a heaviness related to someone close to me struggling. I have learned to recognize that feeling when I don't want to get out of bed but instead just pull the covers over and try to hide. In those moments, I feel my altogether too familiar friend, Depression, sidle up next to me and say, “Hey, girl. I'm here for you today.”
I used to think I didn't have a choice. I used to let that heavy weight settle on me. I got out of bed with it and took it with me everywhere. There were damn good reasons to feel depressed/anxious/not okay.
So, here's some recommendations based on what I try to do when I feel this way (feel free to let me know what questions you have and what you'd like me to explore more):
Get outside help and perspective (this will be a refrain). I am serious about this. I became a therapist partly because of the need for this.
Acknowledge what is really going on. Look at it. Don't shy away from it. What is hard right now? Who is it hard for primarily? Why is it also hard for you?
Check-in (internally) and see if those in pain around you are asking you to carry their stuff, if they are shoveling their shit onto you (I use the word shit very intentionally here), or if, for some reason, you yourself just pick up other people's stuff. If you have played a role in creating or fueling someone else's pain, that is a very heavy load, especially if they keep blaming and holding this over your head. If this is the case, breathe. Anyway, just do the check-in. What surfaces is information for you.
Now that you have this information, what do you want to do with it? In my case, it was like a lightbulb turned on for me when I saw how I had been weaned from an early age to take on and carry other people's pain. (Sidenote—this made it hard to be a pastor. I would also not be able to be a therapist now if I hadn't gotten this pattern under control). The lightbulb illuminated how easy it was for everyone around me to give me their pain, weigh me down under it, because I WOULD TAKE IT. But my doing so contributed to years of depression for me. In my case, I needed some serious intervention. By serious, I mean two things: lots of ongoing therapy and going away to an intensive week of group therapy where I verbally, in front of a group of others, using my whole body to do so, forcefully articulated to certain people I had identified (who were not physically present but were in the room), “I refuse to carry your pain. I refuse to carry your shame. I refuse to carry your anger, your deep grief. I give them back to you.” Believe me, that was a whole something I still take out and look at now and then. Anyway, I do this on the regular now. I've done it a number of mornings in recent months before I got out of bed. I internally have learned how to give someone back their pain. I see it. I acknowledge it. I care. But I cannot carry it in a way that makes it my own. The key here is to identify whose pain you are carrying (and feeling responsible for it, that it is somehow yours or that you can't get distance from it) and why you are carrying it. What we are carrying and why we are carrying it can be different for different people.
This is a helpful place to get outside help and perspective (refrain). I got/get it from therapy and from those who intimately know and have walked my story with me. I have had to unpack a whole heck of a lot around this to even begin to consider doing something different—to even begin to understand I don't have to carry other people's pain to my own detriment. This has taken years. And as I just said, it continues to be an ongoing daily choice for me, both in connection with those I love who struggle as well as the clients I deeply care for who are struggling. There will always be those around us not doing well, let alone a world that is weighing down hard and heavy on us all on lots of fronts right now.
Remind yourself that you are of the most help if you are doing okay, if you are not caught in the undercurrents.
Remind yourself of this again, as often as you need to. Talk to yourself outloud. Some days I walk around and verbally tell myself I don't have to carry this person's pain or anger or whatever it is. It is not mine. It is theirs. I own what is mine. I let them have what is theirs.
Tell yourself you have a choice. It may not feel like you do, but you do. Please don't tune me out here. There was a seven-month period where my parents lived with us because my mom was in such extreme pain that my dad could not manage on his own. This period is a black hole for me. I did not do this period well. I got sucked into the vortex of darkness and survival. I did a little better when there was a long season where a kid of ours was struggling hard, partly because I had more tools and understanding in my toolchest by that point. But I remember so many days where I couldn't find my footing or couldn't separate how my child was feeling from how I was. In another relationship I have, I must regularly remind myself I do not have to carry this person's pain or fix it. In other words, I must keep reminding myself I have choices about what I will carry, what I will allow to suck me in or not. People will always be happy to offload their pain onto anyone willing to carry it. Public service announcement: our carrying it doesn't really help them. Our caring for them as they figure out how to carry/manage/work with/heal it for themselves does.
Figure out boundaries. Where do you begin and end? Where does another? Again, those of us who learned early to be codependent might need outside help with this. It is excavating work. It can be excruciating. It can be long. It can be eye-opening, distressing, painful. You get the idea. But it can also be relieving, freeing, lightening, clearing.
I think that's enough for now. In sum, initially what has helped me with all of this is recognizing what I do, why I am doing it, and offering myself choices around that.
Where we will go from here is self-compassion…Yah. Too much for today.
We can be okay when others close to us are not. This is not callousness. But this recognition is vital to our ability to be well ourselves and to be of genuine service to others who are in any kind of pain.
Rooting for you in all you are faced with, holding, being asked to carry.
Kimberly
Co-Founder, The Aftermath Agency PLLC