Lose Your Pain Through Finding Compassion

“I LOST all regard for someone who caused me pain. I FOUND understanding of a person whose background was different from mine. Longfellow once said ‘If you were to read the secret histories of your enemies, you would find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.’”

John A. Jenson, Lost & Found

Everyone’s story is different because everyone’s experiences are uniquely their own. We all have our own “secret histories.” Our histories may overlap with those of many people, but no one else in this world shares our exact same history with us. There’s no possible way for someone else to fully understand how we think, how we truly feel, or what it is that motivates our behavior. They have not walked in our shoes or been called by our names. We often don’t even understand our own behavior, especially when that behavior causes pain. So how could anyone else possibly understand? Unless they have somehow existed under our skin, they can’t.

The flip side of this behavioral coin is also true: We can’t fully understand any one else’s behavior no matter how much pain we witness in their eyes, and no matter how much pain their behavior may cause us personally. But we can relate our painful “secret histories” to those of everyone else we encounter. We can grow to understand how our own behavior is often motivated by our past hurts and unhealed emotional wounds. We can come to understand that our negative behavior is about us, about where we currently are in our personal lives and about how our unresolved issues from the past haunt us—and others-- today.

If we’re successful in understanding our own painful behavior and personal limitations, it can help us to better understand the painful behavior of others. We may never know their secret histories, much less how they truly think or feel. But if we learn to better understand ourselves, we can learn to better empathize with the painful behavior of those whose histories overlap our own. Inner emotional brokenness is part of the human condition. We are all emotionally shattered in some way. And even though we can’t fully understand the cracks in someone else’s heart, we can relate to the fact that their hearts are cracked, just as our hearts are.

 When we can empathize with the brokenness of others, we can also begin to realize that their hurtful behavior was actually about them and not about us. Their behavior may still have caused us pain, but we weren’t the intended target. They were. We got in the way just long enough for all of their inner turmoil to ricochet off of us and splatter back onto them. We mirrored their inner-pain back to them. And, in doing so, we proved to them what they have long believed about themselves: That they are rotten. So, you see, we aren’t even the ones who suffered the most from their behavior—they are.

The next time someone causes you emotional pain remember that his/her background, though similar to yours, is still different in ways you can’t begin to understand. Then practice some compassion with yourself and your own wounded secret history. It will enable you to enter into your inner-zone of grace-filled empathy, and it will allow your personal compassion to spill over to the person who has hurt you. It will also allow your soul to shine—again.