Stop saying “I understand”
because, in all honesty, do you really?
Every pain is different and pain is different to everybody. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines it as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage”. This definition alone already points out that pain is connected to fine sensors, emotions and experiences, all of which cannot — per se — be generalized. Interesting, that we do however tend to turn someone else’s pain into our own issue, right? In my article, I will tell you where our impulse of trying to understand one another really comes from and why we should be more sensitive about using the words “I understand”.
The Issues with the Issue
“Sharing is caring”, we all are familiar with the phrase. We are somehow at a turning point in our society that encourages us to share the bad stuff that happened to us throughout our lives but is our society equipped for receiving it too? It is one thing to be okay with the experiences you have made on your own but it is a totally different thing to get to the point where you are comfortable enough to be able to share these experiences with someone else. With every new medium we introduce to our day to day lives, such as our shiny smart phones, a different one shifts away. The use of the internet, for example, reprogrammed our brains pertaining to process information we are exposed to in fascinating ways:
“We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to. But our “new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence” go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of “deep processing” that underpins “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.”
Patricia Grienfield in Nicholas G. Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
Not only does our mindful knowledge suffer from the mass information we binge every day, our urgently-needed reflection and focus seem to shift too quickly when it comes to these important types of conversations. Like many of my generation, I tried and tried over again to share the bad things, but met too many recipients who could not give me the comfort I hoped to find. Too many recipients were not able to process the emotional information I have shared well enough to give me some kind of relief.
It is not about you, it is about me
When I was a kid, my dad was fighting cancer. I remember the day of his diagnosis as if it was yesterday. He received a letter that contained the result of his latest biopsy. Instead of telling my brothers, mom and I one by one, he gave me the letter to read it out loud in front of our family at the dinner table. Now, as you can guess, that was not the most pleasant way to give someone the news. But it also taught me something really important: there is no real guide for dealing with pain, no one tells you how hard it is for a very strong person to admit that they have a weak spot, which is why I could never blame my dad for coming to me seeking for some sort of relief by letting me bear the news.
I didn’t talk about it until I was in my 20-ies because I did not feel like I wanted to talk about it, of course it was tough but it was not the end of the world. I’ve seen people fight way more challenging types of cancer. As a tiny human being however, even though I knew all of this, I felt really scared. Looking back, I am glad I did not share the news with too many. When I was talking about my dad’s recovery some people came up to my family with something like “Oh, I understand. You know, when I was (insert random painful emotion here), I (insert random life advice — like “went out for a walk each day and felt better- here)”. The more I listened, the more I started to realize that even when people were sharing very difficult stories with one another, the focus often shifted from the person initially sharing to the other person with two simple words: “I understand”. It comes so naturally to react with empathy, we’d all usually say something like that, am I right? We want to show the person that we understand. But does the person in front of us really want us to understand the pain they are going through?
Listening Comprehensions are a Life Lesson
Here is the problem: even though you’re not doing it intentionally, you do turn someone else’s problem into something that is about yourself. You reflect the problem with an experience you’ve made. To put it even clearer, you throw back what you have felt in a similar situation when you react with empathy rather than sympathy. The issue with the issue is that while sometimes articulating an understanding of someone else’s pain can be relieving, it usually ends up with the troubled person being misunderstood because the focus of the problem shifts to yourself.
In some cases, you might even be diminishing the feelings that you were entrusted with by putting your own emotions and experience(s) over them. Have you ever thought about how relieving it must be for the person in front of you to listen to the words “I hear you” rather than “I understand”?
All the people trying to make you feel good when they are sharing their own experiences, sometimes just make you feel miserable. In my head the only thing I wanted for my dad to feel is being heard. Not understood. Heard. Understand the difference (you can say “understood” here).
A person in pain is not seeking for your understanding, they are seeking for the relief of their own pain.
It’s ok not to understand some things in this world because at the end of the day, this only means that there is a lot out there you still have to listen to. So, when someone tries to share something with you next time, listen carefully rather than categorically assume you went through the same or even worse — even if this might be the case. Share hugs, not stories. Give them comfort, not a life advice.
