After Uvalde and Buffalo, it's time to evaluate our relationship with pain

In the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting, a familiar phrase keeps ringing in my ear:

“That doesn’t hurt too bad.”

It’s something I’ve heard repeatedly, especially as someone who struggles with dissociation. It is something I have witnessed in people who have come and gone through my life.

There is something addictive about denying what is painful.

It’s easier, we think, to shrug pain off—whether it is emotional or physical. It’s easier to insist that we aren’t responsible, that it’s not really happening or that what did happen probably wasn’t all that bad compared to what others have gone through.

I have seen this line of thinking used as a dissociating mechanism for trauma survivors. And I have seen it as an excuse for avoiding confrontation and the responsibilities of being a good citizen. As a first-time mom of a three-month-old girl, I've even seen this emotional "shrug it off" mentality among parents. The idea is that if you don't acknowledge their pain, the baby won't feel it either.

The examples we have for dealing with pain aren't cutting it 

The adults in my life have largely held a degree of cowardice that confounds me. When something difficult arises, they shrug and insist to themselves and often to others, “This doesn’t hurt too bad” or “That’s not a ‘real’ threat.”

I have learned from the example of people in my life that often what comforts us must be preserved at all costs—even when we are faced with the unspeakable. As a species we don’t like it when the boat is rocked. We would rather cover our ears and pretend we aren’t on the boat in the first place.  

What this tells me about our world and the human condition is that we have a toxic relationship with suffering and pain. We have been so convinced that avoiding the pain is the only way to avoid asking for comfort or help. The message this told my generation and the ones before me, is that some things we have no resilience or inner resources for. That sometimes the victim must take the hit for the cowards. That we are so frail, so fragile, that we cannot emotionally tolerate the inconvenience of being in the boat with our eyes wide open.  

Easing suffering and pain starts by acknowledging it

But I know this to be untrue. I know that the only way to ease suffering is to receive it without a fight. I have been taught this time and again—when I was getting therapy for childhood molestation for the first time as a 19-year-old. When I was facing the emotional abandonment of my church when I stepped down from leadership. When my eyes were opening to the tactics cults use to prey upon young, vulnerable college freshmen like myself. When my eyes heard and saw the pain left in the wake of an abusive pastor who conned people in church out of their 401k accounts. And I was taught this when my body went limp as an anesthetic mask went over my face and doctors removed our 21.5-week-old baby from my body. In these moments I was facing a shaking identity. I was feeling shocked, betrayed and more. But I knew from my childhood—where I first began dissociating at a young age—that pushing that pain away, shrugging it off or, worst of all, denying the pain entirely, wasn’t an option for me. If the Bible claims that the truth can set us free, I wanted at age 19 to find out for myself. And it sure seems to be onto something in the last 18 years, but I've learned there's a catch: the truth can only set me free if I face what is directly in front of me.

Pain comes for us all, in many shapes and sizes and forms. It can tap us on the shoulder and it can toss us off the edge of a cliff. Pain is inevitable. Pain is often a form of torture because it reveals an uncomfortable truth about the human condition: our time here is brief. And what I’ve found is that when we avoid suffering no matter the cost, it costs us dearly. It costs us feeling and experiencing the true depths that life has to offer. It costs us memories. And in many cases our insistence that we never feel sad or uncomfortable also costs the people around us. It costs us relationships. It costs us lives.

What can we do in the aftermath of Uvalde and Buffalo

Today I am thinking about the families who have lost their darling children in Uvalde, Texas. I am praying that their friends and communities know how to let them grieve in their own ways. I am hoping that the people who love them most have the patience to see them through the worst days of their lives.

And I am thinking of the shooter, whom law enforcement has called “evil” several times in TV interviews. What happened was evil, but the shooter was not the personification of evil. He was a reflection of ourselves, of our own searing pain and anguish. This week his pain drove him to perform unthinkable acts. And we will lose a great lesson if we think the same pain that was inside him doesn’t also live inside us.

It would be dishonest for me to say that if he’d just had mental health resources all of this could’ve been avoided. It would also be dishonest of me to say that less lenient gun laws would’ve prevented this too. In my own emotional reaching, I want to beg everyone to learn the tell-tale signs of mental health disturbances. But even in what I’ve shared here today, I know that “becoming more comfortable with pain” isn’t the golden answer either. The answer to what ails our society as it concerns gun violence probably lies somewhere in the midst of all our weakness and frailty. It will probably always feel elusive even as we rightly work to stop gun violence.

If there's one thing that does comfort me, it's that in the coming days and weeks, we are going to hear from the helpers. From mental health experts, from those trained in trauma healing, from neighbors who don’t have answers but who know how to listen. We’ll hear from community leaders who know how to organize and educate. We’re all doing our part and, for now, that’s what counts.

That’s what I’m trying to offer today, this is my own way of trying to help. If there is pain rising to the surface in you today, I invite you to greet it not as an enemy or a friend. But as a messenger. Pain is bringing you a message today, and I invite you to hear what it has to say and if possible, don’t push it aside or compare it to someone else’s pain. Acknowledge the message that pain has for you and share it with someone you trust.