I was often sad and unhappy as a child and adolescent. I didn’t feel loved and valued by my parents. I was criticised, heavily and regularly, for innocuous things. In the family unit of my parents, brother and I, I was the odd one out—not just because I was different to them but because growing up with a brother who was often ill, I was on the periphery.
It was hurtful and lonely to growing up like this. When I spoke to my friends about the things that I was going through, they’d remind me that my parents weren’t so bad. And they had a point. My parents were very well-regarded by many people, they were caring parents in some ways, too. To feel less pain, I’d remind myself of all the good things I had in life and of how many other children were in more pain than I was.
This is how we often sooth ourselves or others: we express gratitude for what we have and remind ourselves that the problems we have could as well be much worse. And while it’s important to keep perspective, it is also important to remember that we need to honour our feelings. It’s okay to keep the big picture in mind, but if we’re using it as a strategy to criticise ourselves for hurting, that’s kind of akin to saying that we should enjoy eating crap because someone else’s tastes worse.
Reflecting back on my childhood, I realised that I’d remind myself of all that was good in my life not to gain perspective, but to disabuse myself of my feelings. And disabusing ourselves of our feelings is abusive.
We tend to judge ourselves for feeling down, unhappy, lonely—for hurting. And this makes us hurt more. Our pain doesn’t want to be shoved away, it wants to be seen and felt. Making space for feelings, accepting and respecting our reality for what it is is the first step in dealing with whatever we’re going through.