When Pain Needs Presence

I had a meaningful conversation with someone I trust and wanted to share a summary of the follow up message I sent to this individual.

“I have felt the power of you staying present with me in my challenges without feeling any judgments or your need to fix it. Yet, I still feel your support and hope. I think that’s the difference between ‘fixing’ and ‘supporting.’ Fixing carries a different energy … almost like I need to fix this for you because this is uncomfortable or stirs emotions within myself that I’d like to avoid.

That is a different energy compared to the response of ‘I am here for you to acknowledge the pain and be a witness to what is here.’ Fixing feels like it conveys the message that I am broken where support / presence feels like I am still whole. Often, I am just asking for someone to sit with me while I move through the pain.”

I am going to share something else I wrote. “I wonder if I use work to avoid facing a shame belief that’s really at the core … that there’s something wrong with me, and if anyone were to find out, I would be rejected, abandoned, or even destroyed.”

As I reflected on what I had written, I found myself wondering how I would respond to this if someone told me the same thing. Would it trigger my own core beliefs? Would I recognize my own patterns of distraction or avoidance? Would there be a desire to just “correct” or “fix” their belief?

Or would I feel courageous enough to allow that belief to exist and just sit with them in the darkness of it?

There is nothing wrong with the desire to fix someone’s problems. Often it comes from a place of compassion. But when I feel like someone is trying to fix what they perceive as my problem, I mostly shut down. It’s been a good thing to notice because honestly, my own default has been to fix. So lately I’m practicing being present instead.

I can take this same practice and apply it within my own internal family system. When I admit that core belief to myself, there are protector parts who would love to just “fix” it and end the pain. Yet, when my true nature can stay present with what arises, the energy shifts and I get curious as to what might be underneath.

In doing so, I can ask internally, what exactly feels wrong with me? I hear responses like I am damaged, I am broken, I am disgusting, I am no longer “pure”, and I am unworthy of anyone’s love, especially God. I know from experience that many of those beliefs were born long ago out of trauma and shame. Instead of feeling the need to avoid them, or fix them, I now feel more compassion towards those wounded parts.

To me, this is the real journey of choosing an authentic life. I am learning to meet these beliefs with less judgment. Instead, I find more empathy emerging and the desire to get curious as to what each part might need as I move towards presence and living the life I want to live. The more I can learn to stay present with myself, the more I can stay present with others.

One thing I am starting to realize is that it isn’t about fixing anything because there is nothing broken. However, this is still hard for me to accept when I’ve believed for most of my life that I am irreparably broken or damaged.

So for now, my practice is to do my best at allowing everything to be here just as it is. I share difficult beliefs because exposing shame to the light changes its power. And when the light of my true nature feels hard to access, I am learning to get curious instead of assuming something is wrong with me.

Maybe the deepest healing comes when I stop doing to myself what has hurt me most—treating my pain as a problem that must be fixed.

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The raw moments that unfolded before this reflection were captured in Lotus Moments. If you’d like to read them, click here.