Being Okay With Not Being Okay

Being okay with not being okay

Sometimes I tell my clients that I wish I had a Staples easy button. I could just press it and make everything wrong in their lives start going right again, and it would be… well, easy. And for some situations, things do seem to just kinda work out in the end and we can move with our lives.

However, there are many more times in life where we find ourselves overwhelmed, at the end of ourselves, fed up with how life is going, and there seems to be nothing that we can do to change it. Maybe it’s a parent that decides to leave the home. Maybe it is a neverending struggle to find a job that pays the bills. Maybe there are seemingly unexplained and uninvited thoughts circling around in your head that won’t go away. Maybe a relative died at way too young of an age. Or maybe there is a constant regret over a mistake that you made in your past that you can’t seem to get away from. These experiences are hard. And many of them can’t be directly fixed. And yet what we can often feel in these times is a deep longing to find some way to fix what went wrong, and ultimately to alleviate the pain that feels so suffocating. As a therapist I find myself also longing for the ability to change a client’s situation and take away that pain for them. But, it is in these moments that we need to remember (myself included) that our most important task is not to avoid the pain - but instead take a step towards it.

The Hard Work of Therapy 

In the counseling world we often talk about doing the “hard work” of therapy. Sometimes we refer to slightly different things by this, but one way of explaining it is that we need to confront the difficult realities in our lives, oftentimes within ourselves, and take a journey towards the pain instead of away from it. This is not easy to do. And understandably, a lot of us want to turn over every rock looking for some other way to steer clear of the discomfort we are experiencing before we get to the point where we are willing to stand toe to toe with it. But just as bison run straight into an oncoming storm to get through it and onto the other side more quickly, we need to face these difficult realities and go through them instead of holding onto our futile attempts to outrun them.

Into the Unknown

So what actually happens when we start to confront our pain? We have all sorts of fears that flood our mind when we consider what will happen when we actually let our pain speak to us and/or to try to express it outwardly to somebody else. And that is most certainly a vulnerable position to be in. But instead of finding ourselves getting washed away by the pain, or turning into an “emotional” or “needy” person, we often find that we are… okay. Hurting, yes. Confused, probably. Uncomfortable, one hundred percent. But ultimately we come to find that we are okay, even in the midst of our pain. At first you’re probably going to wonder if you’re doing it right, and maybe question if this is really helping anything. But the more we venture into the pain, not to give into it or to fight it, but rather to learn from it, the more we come to find that things start feeling more bearable. What seemed impossible before, now seems possible. What felt completely overwhelming before begins to feel a little bit more manageable. What was intimidatingly unknown becomes more understood. The edge is taken off. This is an example of the “hard work” of therapy. 

And this can be powerfully reinforced when we allow the safe and accepting presence of someone else to witness this pain as well. We experience validation, both from ourselves and from others. As the pain is expressed and takes form, we start to realize that we are something separate from the pain itself, and even begin to develop a confidence to be in its midst and know that we will be okay and grow stronger from it. The rest of the path to further wholeness takes many forms, but this important lesson is one we will find on just about every journey if we are brave enough to face it. So the next time you find yourself shielding your gaze from the glaring pain of your situation, take a second glance and see what invitation may be hiding in the shadows ready to be found.