“I cried because I didn’t have shoes, 

until I saw a man who didn’t have any feet."

I want to talk about a pet peeve of mine.  I’ll tell you when I get to it, so be patient with me.

People hurt.  It’s part of the human condition. People hurt from gut-wrenching grief.  People hurt from debilitating anxiety. They hurt from heartbreak, frustration, anger, sadness, depression, hopelessness, loss. The list goes on and on and on. Have you ever hurt – I mean REALLY, I-think-I’m-gonna-die hurt? Of course you have. I don’t think anyone in the world has escaped this kind of despair.

The other side of the coin is that we comfort people who hurt. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always seem to come naturally. In fact, it can be awkward and uncomfortable.

So, how do we comfort someone who is hurting? Sometimes we say things like:

God doesn't give us more than we can handle.

At least your hair will grow back.

Offer it up to the poor souls in purgatory.

There is a reason for everything.

Remember that people are starving in other parts of the world.

Just think of the other people who have it worse than you.

Or the most hideous of all, in my opinion: 

Thank God you have other children.                

Therein lies my pet peeve – when someone “comforts” us by reminding us that there are people in the world who hurt more than we do, or about all the other horrible things that could be happening to us instead of what’s going on now.

I have suffered clinical depression most of my adult life.  My most recent bout was brutal. It lasted over a year and a half and was unlike any I’d experienced before.  When I am very depressed, Vince sees it all. He listens to me sob and scream and cry out; he also watches helplessly as I become catatonic.

On the other hand, I am relatively adept at putting on my “business as usual” mask when I am in public. I don’t care to have other people see my suffering; I don’t care to talk it to death, and I don’t like to come across as “wah wah.” (Maybe this is because I don’t ever want to be referred to as SNL’s “Debbie Downer!) 

That being said, this bout went on long enough that my daughters, their husbands, my mother, and many others were well aware of my lingering trip to the “dark night of the soul.” So when people would say things like, “Oh, you look much better!” and tell Vince, “Debbie must be OK now,” it would really frustrate me. When someone would ask me, “What’s the source of all this pain? What’s the one thing that would really help?" or “I had a friend who took (insert name of drug), and she’s feeling great!” I’d just want to disappear.

Why? Because just looking OK didn’t make me OK. Because there was no “one thing.” If there were, certainly I would have found it by now and taken whatever “magic cure” would solve everything.

None of these words of wisdom helped – not at all. It’s possible these people meant to help – but this didn’t help at all.

When we are suffering, sometimes we’re just looking for a glimmer of hope. The last thing we want to hear is platitudes.  When we are in anguish, the pain is real; it hurts right now. Suggesting we “look on the bright side” does not help because we can’t look on the bright side right now.  This, in fact, is part of the problem. So now, in addition to feeling bad, we feel guilty and shameful for not seeing that others have it worse than us.  What is wrong with us?  We must be truly evil!

One of Vince and my “Foundations for a Fabulous Life Together” is to love others “unconditionally.”

When someone comes to us with their sadness and concerns, I think that loving unconditionally means to truly listen openly and non-judgmentally -- to not judge their pain as less than someone else’s in the world - or less than our own; to not subversively imply that if we had this concern, we’d handle it better – or at least we’d put it into a more favorable context

I’m blessed with a husband who loves me this way. I strive to love him, my friends, and my family this way as well.

Sometimes the best glimmer of hope we can give someone is to acknowledging that their pain is real – and that we are here to help in any way that we can. Or that if we can’t provide a lot of help, we can be there to hold them, listen and simply to understand.