Surviving Message Lockdown

You’re not alone. You’re just not listening.

I recently spent some time trying to cheer up a friend. If you already know I failed, you are smarter than I was in that moment. But please don’t judge too harshly, because even though I really do know better, sometimes I still try.

You know how that goes. Somebody you know is hopelessly lonely and sad, and you want to reach in, share words of comfort, tell them you are there for them. And you cancel brunch to spend hours listening, commiserating, sharing tears, only to realize that nothing got through at all.

You might as well have been talking to yourself. And later, they don’t even remember the conversation. What the — ?

Misery loves a soundtrack

Look, I am a good confidante. Everybody says so. Patient; interested; compassionate as can be. So I was happy to actively listen and lovingly validate and constructively challenge and tearily, snottily comfort.

But all that comfort and validation seemed to just validate how much my friend needed comfort and validation. The comforting ideas themselves didn’t actually seem to get through at all.

It was irritating, to be honest. I felt just as used as one of the countless tissues I had placed conveniently to hand.

Finally, though, I have realized that it wasn’t about me at all. My friend wasn’t in a normal state. My friend was essentially in lockdown: nothing real was getting in and nothing real was getting out.

People who are that locked inside themselves can’t hear anyone. Baby goat videos probably can’t even reach them.

When people can’t hear anyone else’s pain, they think no one can hear theirs. And so they believe they are all alone and unheard and suffering in silence— when really they’re pretty noisy, like people wearing headphones shouting at the rest of the world over the awful inner music that’s all they themselves can hear.

Can you hear me now?

People deal with trauma and pain differently, of course.

Some people suffer in silence. No one knows who they are. Obviously.

Some people say they suffer in silence, but then they’ve told us they suffer in silence, haven’t they? So… not really silence, eh? And then they want credit for the suffering and the silence, so it’s really sort of twisted, if you ask me.

My grandfather, by contrast, dealt with the advancing pain of crippling arthritis by swearing vigorously every time he moved. “Dammit!” he’d say, or worse, every time he stood up. He got no sympathy, but he wasn’t asking for any. He was simply registering his ongoing disapproval of the situation.

I feel sure, though, that if I had stepped on a nail and said, “Dammit!” Grandpa would have immediately asked whether I was all right. But he wouldn’t have given me any sympathy; just a band-aid if I needed it.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur…

Some people, though, keep up a near-constant commentary on their pain — psychic, physical, spiritual — like the random text publishers generate to indicate where copy will go in a publication. And if the commentary is a way to seek help, or even just attention, that’s fine. It’s only not fine if they can’t seem to attend to the attention they receive.

Around my house, I will sometimes bluntly say to my beloved, “I need some sympathy right here, babe.” And then I’ll complain bitterly about this pain or that raw deal or this existential despair that just smote me, out of nowhere.

But when I’m done commentating, I need to be able to receive the comfort, because the idea is that then I renew my energy and ability to hear and perceive what is good in the world. Which includes, not incidentally, my beloved, who was, of course, there all along.

So the saddest situation is when someone cries out for help or attention or comfort, but can’t recognize any of these when they arrive, or the people who bring them these blessings.

People are only alone if they choose to be

Over the years, when people I love have fallen into this echo chamber of loneliness, I have often exhausted myself standing outside, trying to be heard through the soundproofing. In various ways, I’ve tried to get through, shouting words they can’t hear, frantically waving my arms to no avail. Sometimes, it even seems as if they avert their eyes so as not to see my earnest gestures.

That was my final clue that this inability to hear the outside world is a choice, made at the deepest level of the other’s being. It appears to be a self-destructive choice, but I can’t change it for them. It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing — it doesn’t work, and it annoys the pig.

It takes more than tea-and-sympathy to free people from those frozen states. It may take a life crisis, or it may take what alcoholics and addicts call “hitting bottom.” Perhaps people will emerge when depression is treated or illness managed.

All I’m saying is that it’s unlikely to be that quirky, empathetic thing you said, two hours into a heart-to-heart conversation, that finally melted their ice palace and quivered their lip, after which they bravely squared their little shoulders and lifted their head and… naah. That was an Afterschool Special you saw one time.

What to do while they are in lockdown

If we are pouring out love and empathy and sympathy on someone who cannot receive it or hear it or acknowledge it, we need to ask ourselves the hard question: what in the world are we getting out of that?

I think we’ve already established that it usually doesn’t do the ego much good, unless we just really enjoy hearing the sound of our own voice. (All right, I admit it. I did enjoy hearing the sound of my own voice, until recently, when I had some dental work done, and I don’t like it, so I’m trying to shut up more. With limited success.)

Hard as it may be to witness someone’s pain, it doesn’t make sense to join in the pain if it’s not going to help them. We think we are sharing in their emotional work, but we’re really just having a meaningful conversation all by ourselves. Who’s kidding whom?

So if I had all those conversations to do over again, I’d do them altogether differently.

I’d let my person talk as long as they needed to, but I’d give no advice; provide no empathetic parallels; offer no perspectives.

I’d neither confirm nor deny any feelings, because I’d know they would only be hearing their own feelings anyhow, not my validation or affirmation of their feelings. In short, I’d leave my opinions and responses and interactions out of it.

And of course I would keep listening for clues that might let me know when they might be ready to emerge. But in the meantime, I would simply abide with them while they abide within themselves. It helps to have some needlepoint, or whittling, to do while you’re abiding.

Well, nuts, that sounds like a classical therapist, doesn’t it? Or my Grandpa, come to think of it.

Instead, I’d offer practical help if needed. Walk their dog; lend them a few bucks. Guard their front door while they are curled up in a ball — whatever I’d want them to do for me.

But I’d keep my own self out of it. That way, when they emerge and can hear the world again, I would not be exhausted and resentful and in need of repair myself.

Open up in there

I don’t know what it takes to pry open the soundproof booth that keeps a person from hearing the cries and laughter and pain and reality of the rest of the world, but I am convinced that until they can hear the voices of others, they will never believe that they have been heard.

Maybe one day I’ll be as bold as the character Cher plays in Moonstruck, when she whacks the mopey Nicholas Cage across the face and threatens, “Snap out of it!” (Of course, I’d never whack anybody. But I’d certainly threaten.)

But I do know what to ask myself the next time I fall into that dark pit where I am all alone, where no one has ever been as miserable as I am right then.

Am I really as alone as all that? Or am I just not listening?

And maybe if I can just be quiet for a moment —

Wait —where did all these lovely people come from?