When someone tells us that they hate their life, what we usually hear is an ask for help to make things better. We respond by offering support and advice, by reminding them of all the good things in their life, or by trying to put their problems in perspective. We feel their pain and want to help them through it. It’s a very human and kind thing to do. But while it comes from a genuine desire to make them feel better, it would likely leave them feeling worse. Because, the thing is, when someone tells us they’re unhappy, they’re not asking to be fixed, they’re asking to be loved.
They’re asking for acceptance and love of who they are, just as they are, in this moment in life. For permission to be the person who doesn’t have a perfect life, who screws up and who hasn’t figured it all out. They’re asking for us to hold their humanity, with unconditional love and acceptance.
It’s very difficult to see a loved one in pain. Offering advice and help to change when someone struggles is a very human and kind thing to do. But the offer to help, well-intentioned as it is, only strengthens the very root cause of their hurt—the judgement that they’re doing something wrong, or that there’s something wrong with their life. Implicit in the offer to help is the message that they need to change. And while this suggestion is subtle and it comes from a place of compassion and care, it is a form of judgement because if we’re saying that someone needs to change, we’re saying that who they are is not okay.
While the circumstances of our life may not be as we’d love them to be, when we judge ourselves for that, whether we do that consciously or subconsciously, we deepen the suffering. Inherent in the resistance to life as it is the judgement that we’ve done something wrong, or often worse, that there’s something wrong with us. And when we share our hurt with others, and we say that we’re having a bad day, or that we hate our life, it’s this judgement that we look to reconcile. Because often the judgement of what is or who we are creates more pain than do the circumstances themselves.
We come from a place of love when we offer loved ones advice on how to overcome the hurt. But what we really need when we’re hurt is not solutions, it’s permission to hurt. Once we allow ourselves to be with what is, once we stop judging ourselves for what our life is and who we are, we find acceptance and surrender, which the solutions are then the natural by-product of. The most profound form of support we can afford to someone who’s struggling is not help to change, but acceptance and love for being who and where they are. It is difficult to really hear and hold someone in their hurt, but when we do, this is the most genuine expression of our love.