We Need a Cultural Container to Hold Each Other's Pain
Our culture is largely inept when it comes to rituals that help us process pain and suffering.
Dear Ponders,
In this dispatch from Lily Pond, I’m going to raise an important but uncomfortable issue for you to ponder. My mission here is to get all of us to ponder on important but taboo subjects that are nonetheless parts of the human condition. So today, I invite you to think about how our modern culture could do better to support those who are suffering from invisible, psychological pain.
Let me start with a personal anecdote. Yesterday, I attended a virtual wedding shower for a colleague. Everyone put a quote about love on their Zoom background. Somehow, in my absent-mindedness, I didn’t see the link to the background “templates,” so I just randomly selected a celebratory picture as my background. The bride-to-be read every quote with much delight, while I rolled my internal eyes, feeling jaded and cynical about the notion of romantic love.
After a painful breakup as a result of sexual betrayal, I was in no mood to celebrate romantic love with anyone. But to be a “good employee,” I had to show up as a supportive team member, put on a happy mask, and hide my misery. The longer I sat in the party, the more pain I felt in my gut. I just wanted the party to end as quickly as possible.
It was extremely hard to compartmentalize my feelings. “Your pain shouldn’t overshadow the joy of your colleague,” a voice in my head admonished. “But you’re being fake by going along! Can’t you just excuse yourself?” Another voice pleaded with a sob.
As much as today’s “enlightened” corporate culture celebrates “showing up as your whole self,” I doubt its sincerity. Yes, if you show up with your happy, enthusiastic self, that’s fine. You’d be liked and rewarded. But if you show up with a sad face with tons of personal struggles, you might be considered a pariah. In fact, managers are generally ill-equipped to handle situations where their staff members are struggling with personal issues that could affect their productivity at work.
The overall sense I get is that people don’t want to be involved in your “mess.” Your personal problems — particularly relational problems — is your own “dirty laundry.” So don’t hang it where we can see it. We don’t want to deal with it.
This kind of attitude is not only present in the workplace, but within families, social circles and in the whole society as well. If you tell someone about your “dirty laundry,” you would be seen as spreading gossip or, in the context of “toxic positivity,” spreading “negativity.” Those who put themselves on a moral or spiritual high ground would try to stay away from it.
My experience of sitting through the virtual wedding shower prompted me to consider how our Western (Westernized, depending on where you live) and individualistic society fails to fulfil an essential need of being a human. It’s our need to be emotionally supported when going through psychological pain.
In America, people who are suffering emotionally and mentally are shooed to therapies and support groups automatically. I am a big proponent of these therapeutic channels, from which I have benefited a great deal. I even have the fortune of belonging to a close, virtual community of mid-life women who support one another and grow to be our whole selves.
But there’s got to be more.
Friends are naturally people we turn to in times of emotional crisis and needs, and I count myself lucky to have a few really close friends with whom I can share my sorrows. But no single friend or group of friends are supposed or equipped to help shoulder the entire load of this person’s suffering. They have their own life issues and even grief to deal with. And that’s where our collective society has failed us.
How can we create a culture where community members can come to one another’s rescue in times of crisis? How do we ensure each person has access to a network of people who can be present with us physically in times of need? I’ve found this to be an extreme challenge, especially after the pandemic.
What kind of container can we create in our culture and the places where we show up most frequently, to allow for the person in pain to be honored, embraced and accepted?
These questions led me to revisit an interesting African custom that I have heard years ago:
In the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the centre of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual.
Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, each recalling the good things the person in the centre of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy, is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. This tribal ceremony often lasts for several days.
At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.
Notice how the tribe celebrates the person who engaged in wrongdoing? I’m not sure if a ritual exists that celebrates a person who has walked on a difficult emotional journey. But wouldn’t it be nice to have one?
How could we create a culture where community members can come to one another’s rescue in times of crisis? What kind of container can we create in our culture and the places where we show up most frequently, to allow for the person in pain to be honored, embraced and accepted?
In American culture, celebrations exist for stages of life where there is growth and expansion, such as birthdays and weddings. But when it comes to life stages where people experience separation and loss, we hardly have any rituals. With the passing of a loved one, we do have funerals, or celebration of life as some call it. But that ritual lasts just one day. As any of you who have gone through grieving knows, grief may visit us any time for years or decades.
What about other difficult passages of life in between birth, marriage and death? What about divorce or separation from partnerships? The latter isn’t even recognized because somehow, if you are not officially married, your pain of separation isn’t considered as bad?! What about estrangement from parents, siblings or friends? What about losing your job, home or possessions? What about traumatic experiences and betrayals?
Because so many people are relegated to dealing with the painful moments in life alone, without support, is it any wonder that we turn to whatever means we can lay our hands on? Because therapies, coaching, retreats and the like are expensive and not accessible to everyone, things that temporarily boost our dopamine levels have become the go-to methods to help us numb, bypass or ease our pain.
Some of the things that people turn to for quick doses of pain relief include drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, gambling, video games, compulsive spending, disordered eating, binge-watching TV shows, and more.
Is it any wonder why America is saddled with addiction problems? Over 46 million Americans struggle with substance use disorder. Statistics show that addiction and substance abuse affect more Americans than heart conditions, diabetes or cancer.1 Between 3% to 6% of Americans have sex addiction2 (but given the shame surrounding this, I believe the figure is underestimated.) And those numbers are barely scratching the surface of the depth of pain that people feel.
My intelligent and indomitable Ponders, what do you suggest that we can do, to create a cultural or collective container for people to process and integrate emotions that are often put into a dark and shadowy place?
I’ll leave you with a little “word gift” that I hope will create a ripple not just here at Lily Pond but in the community where each of you live:
Ubuntu: A collection of values and practices that people of Africa or of African origin view as making people authentic human beings. While the nuances of these values and practices vary across different ethnic groups, they all point to one thing — an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental and spiritual world.3
I believe that if we can adopt this philosophy of “I am because we are,” we may stand a chance of restoring some of the humanity that modern civilization has stripped from our human existence.
Fast Facts about Addiction. https://drugfree.org/article/fast-facts-about-addiction/
Sex Addiction Statistics. https://www.addictionhelp.com/sex-addiction/statistics/
Ubuntu philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_philosophy
Such an interesting topic!
My upbringing taught me that there’s no use to cry over spilt milk, to keep moving forward.
My best friend taught me that you can be raw and real with your feelings and you will still be loved.
My husband taught me that that there is a safe place, even if you feel like a complete mess.
My husband’s and sister in law’s family (Māori & Pacific Islander) taught me about coming together in grief. That it’s ok to feel a range of emotions, laughing at the memories, crying at the pain.
Also that, as the next generation sees how people come together in grief, they will in turn replicate it.
My mother’s cancer diagnosis taught me that it’s ok to reach out when you feel weak, that you can ask for others to hold you and support you.
I hope we are teaching our children that their feelings are valid, to find their safe people to talk to.
I have been lucky enough to be a part of various communities from which I have made friendships. What about people who go from job to job and haven’t built up lasting friendships with whom they can rely on. What if they move to a different city and leave their support system. How do they create a new one?
I get what you mean about being shooed away. Growing up in a dysfunctional family and being thrust out into the world with no support system has forced me to view this culture with a critical, unflinching eye in order to survive. It's a country and culture that denies, as you say so well, that "an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant" whole. That understanding may exist within a few families and friendship circles. Outside of that, it's the hunger games for many of us, who are being pushed more and more to the fringes of society every day. It would take both a massive shift in people's assumptions and a willingness to sacrifice for this to change.