A recent post mentioned that next to death, our number one fear as humans seems to be public speaking. But if you are in grief, you may experience another high ranking fear.
Having done a lot of grief work in my own life, and interacted with so many others recovering from loss, I have noticed a common fear that bears calling out. It’s our fear of being “Too much.”
Without some degree of self-awareness, this may seem like a foreign concept. But for many of us in pain, the only thing worse than sharing our truths, is to have that truth be too big, too painful, too present, too real and even too reminiscent of someone else’s experience such that we regret opening up. How do we know we have been “too much?”
For one thing, the person listening changes the subject, orr uses a dismissive statement to re-route the conversation. We hear something like “It ain’t easy…” or “Is it going to rain today?” There is nothing wrong with saying these things. It’s just that for someone grieving, it is incredibly courageous and vulnerable to share anything about our sadness and when met with dismissal, we feel worse than we did before we said nothing.
We know the world likes and wants “happy.” We are taught by culture to apologize for “non-happy” (see post “I’m Sorry” from earlier this month.) We are trained to keep our grief private and not to bring others down. Ironically, at any given moment, someone other than us, is usually also “down” in that so many of us are experiencing loss in one form or another. My experience is literally that every single time I have ever shared my truth, there is at least one other soul that reminds me I am not alone in the struggle.
So why don’t I do it more? (I am getting better!) Why don’t we collectively, as a community, open up? Because we don’t want to scare people away. We don’t want our loved ones, the few that may have stood by us through tragedy, to get “sick” of us, or “tired” of our grief.
Sure, we are sick of it. And we are tired. But we also know there is a “limit” to what people can bear. Or at least we perceive there is one. We don’t want to find out, and this keeps us in hiding, and isolates us further. Our sadness is exacerbated, when we carry the load alone for fear of upsetting (or tipping over) someone else’s apple cart.
Marianne Williamson says “And by letting our own light shine, we subconsciously give others permission to do the same.”
I say “Whether our lights are bright, or dim, they must shine. Holding ourselves back from being who we are, and only letting certain parts of us show up, robs the world of the gifts we have yet to share.”
Let’s give ourselves and subsequently, with our courage, give others, permission to let all of it be here: Next time you fear sharing your emotions from loss, or any experience being “too much” take a hard look at the company you are keeping and decide if you are spending time in places that make enough room for all the parts of you.