There are two different ways to be in pain and they’re both horrible and life-threatening
It’s important to understand the experiences and needs of people in acute pain versus chronic
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This is a follow-up to “I treasure my mother”, a piece I wrote about childhood abuse, its intergenerational impact, and forgiveness
I used to focus on all the good I could have done if I had not had such a traumatic childhood. I used to think about the superior choices I would have made. I would have gone to university at age 18, and would have wound up with a PhD by age 30. Maybe I would have gone to med school. I would have made better relationship decisions for myself. I would have had kids later and been a better mom, less preoccupied at times with my own pain.
Now, I look at people I know who grew up so much more privileged but who nevertheless harbour deep resentment for a couple or a few bad incidences with their parents. Or maybe they had a mom who pressured them to achieve, or who was nitpicky and critical.
Looking at them, I see that pain is, 1. relative, and 2. overwhelming, sometimes, even when it’s comparatively smaller.
It’s like this: If I stub my toe, I’m not going to not swear, complain and be distracted just because my arm isn’t being sliced off. Pain overwhelms us at any degree that it’s felt and it doesn’t help us to think of how much worse it could have been.
I’m sure, with a more privileged childhood, I still would have found something about which to be in pain. No one makes it to adulthood without pain. Very few make it without some trauma. In the famous ACE study, a study of 17,500 mostly middle class, mostly white adults, 67% experienced at least one significant traumatic experience.
I don’t think that people who had more privileged lives had it worse, because the Adverse Childhood Experiences study proves handily this is untrue. But I have identified one way I do think it’s harder for people who had a mixed childhood experience. When people grow up in relative privilege, with two parents who love them and who try to meet their needs, but one (or more) important needs were not really met, it can be difficult to identify the cause of their deficits and pains and to feel entitled to feel them.
It’s kind of like when people have chronic low-grade pains in their bodies. They may go to the doctor who can’t find a source. They may think, “Am I making this up? Is this psychosomatic?” Eventually, after a lot of professional investigating they identify an autoimmune disease.
Compare that to a person being brought into the ER with car pieces in their gut and their arm cut off.
Who is better off? It depends what we’re comparing!
Surely, the person in the ER might die and their pain is more acute. But at least we know what’s causing it and how to fix it. After skilled emergency surgery, they could get EMDR to help them reprocess the trauma of a car accident, their organs could heal, they could get a new bionic arm that works great, and lead a happy life.
The person with the autoimmune disease may not be in acute, life-threatening pain, but they have a longer history of pain that weaves its way into their life to the extent that it’s hard to tell what is what: Are they depressed, flawed as a human being, or just maxed out from all the chronic pain they’re trying to ignore? Their pain is unrecognized and sometimes not believed. They get the message that they shouldn’t be so sick and they no longer know what is real and where to find their power amongst their victimhood.
There’s acute, emergency pain, and there are complex webs of toxic pain. They’re both horrible, differently. They both can lead to health problems and death.
If I had experienced a better childhood, I might be confused today about why I feel pain. I might blame myself. I might think I’m just broken. If my mom was intermittently deeply loving and also abusive, I would be more likely to blame myself for her abusing me. It’s very difficult for child-brains, which start by learning things in black and white terms, to understand how someone can be both good and bad. That’s complex grown-up math. So instead, the parent, whom they need for attachment, remains good and they, the child, become bad.
I never thought it was me. I never thought I was the problem. My teachers loved me, my aunties loved me, my friends’ parents loved me, and Oprah loved me. Everyone said I was good and polite and smart and likable. With the growing mountain of evidence, it became easy to see that my mother was the “bad” one. It became my job, then, to love and protect myself, to mother myself, to tell myself what I needed to hear, and so I did. If I had a better childhood, I might not love and trust myself as much as I do.
I’m not saying I’m glad it happened. I still suffer. I still have work to do. But at least it’s easy to identify and target. And healing is possible with the right love and care.
It’s folks with mixed experiences who have a hard time identifying how they are harmed. Being asked to look at the symptoms — their behaviour or mediocre performance — leads them to conclude that they are bad. Someone, still, in their child-mind, has to be bad. So, they may never heal. They may live their lives in extended states of pain.
Everyone needs help. I think that people with chronic pain from childhoods that weren’t horrible but weren’t great might need the most help, long-term. But people with acute pain need emergency help. We need to prioritize them first. This benefits us in the end because people who have been hurt and healed have the most empathy and the most experience to help.
There are implications here for relationships and social justice.
Who do we help first?
Who needs to help themselves?
What tools should be provided?
How do we abandon no one?
Who is responsible to whom?
