It’s Okay to Tell Someone Where It Hurts

“Tell me where it hurts.” – My Mother

I was very fortunate as a young boy to hear those comforting words.  They were usually followed by, “There now, let me help make it better”, a kiss on the location of the pain, and then a hug.  And magically, it helped!  Perhaps your experience as a child was different, but for me, just having my hurts validated and not feeling alone with them seemed to help attenuate or even eliminate the pain. 

Then at some point in my “growing up,” I started rejecting attempts at comfort, pushing them away to embrace a more stoic approach to the pain of life.  “Keep a stiff upper lip,”  “big boys don’t cry,” “be a man,” and “suck it up” were the messages I received from elsewhere that drown out my mother’s voice of compassionate caring, and these became my new mantras which I carried into adulthood. 

During my professional training, the culture of medicine only reinforced and encouraged this approach to the pain and hurts of life.  As I look back, there have been many quite distressing professional circumstances that I endured but never really processed, including tragic patient outcomes, doubt about perceived medical errors, misdiagnoses, toxic interactions with colleagues, and quite regular cases of the “imposter syndrome”.  Through them all, the additional messages of “we’re the caregivers, not the cared for” and “your problems are nothing in comparison” were piled on top of my adolescent scripting.  You likely carry some variations of these scripts as well.  Quite possibly they’ve even seeped into your personal life.    

Perhaps it’s time to let go of this dysfunctional cultural and professional programming and take the courageous but also sane step of allowing more of our humanity to emerge by talking about these emotional wounds.  But how?  Acknowledging our emotional pain points can feel daunting … even scary. 

If that is the case for you, it will likely feel “safer” to start with small steps, such as some brief sharing with someone you feel affinity with.  For example, sharing “I’m having a hard time with this …” will allow you to see if they can be a “trusted other” by their willingness to listen without judgement and their ability to validate your struggles while resisting the temptation to immediately go into “fixing mode”.  Though a colleague who knows your professional world might be preferable (like your PeerRx partner), you may determine that a close non-professional friend, counselor, or therapist is more appropriate for you. 

We are in a time when the pain of the world is inescapable, including some professional hurts you are likely presently experiencing.  And mirroring our professional “scripting,” you may find yourself thinking (or even saying), “It’s no big deal” or “I don’t want to burden anyone with my problems” or “I’ve got this” and then going into the default “suck-it-up mode.”  It’s time to remind ourselves that healing can only start when we acknowledge that we hurt and where we hurt.  Having our hurts validated and not feeling alone with them can help attenuate or even eliminate the pain.  It is a really big deal.  Let’s all embrace the wisdom of my mother.  No one, including you, should hurt alone …. 

PS:  The immediate validating response to my recent MD Coaches podcast interview on avoiding isolation indicates that my story resonated with many who listened.  If you’ve not yet taken the time to listen to the podcast, I’d ask for you to reconsider.