“I Feel Your Pain”
Has anyone ever said this to you? Have you ever said this to anyone?
I personally have to struggle against the pervasive cynical and superficial culture that seems to seep out of every crack in our current me-centered culture when I hear this. As a result, I consciously do not say this because of all the personal baggage this stirs up in me.
However….and this is a good however…I read a short quotation recently which I cannot find now on a website which gave me more positive, deeper, and supportive encouragement. I’ll paraphrase the quotation:
In order to enter into a meaningful encounter with a person in pain, a friend must dig deeply to find the same injury in herself or himself that the person in pain is experiencing. This can be hard. The friend may have to go very deep and very far back to find even a touch of injury that resonates with the situation. But if we look hard enough, we will find that pain in ourselves. And when we have found it and can feel that injury within ourselves, we can enter into a meaningful, empathic, and genuine encounter “feeling their pain.”
