It can be hard to know when to talk about a painful experience that’s happened to you. It can feel like the wrong time – all the time. It can also be unclear to figure out who’s the right person to talk to. As you move along a path of healing, you may start to wonder when to share your story with others if you haven’t already done so. Perhaps, you think, if you share with someone, they will have a fuller appreciation of the different sides of you and the unique experiences that have made you… you. It might also feel like relief to think about breaking the silence through sharing with another person. After all, many social media messages for healing and recovery emphasize the importance of social support in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. And yet, as heartening as it may sound, the message about getting social support can inadvertently bring up feelings of shame for those who can’t seem to find that support. And this shame can add to an already heavy burden from the original trauma.

My recent post on healing culture offered these ideas: healing is personal, it takes time, and it’s a journey. As a result, the process of healing can preoccupy you for a while, perhaps causing you to distance yourself from others as you try to make sense of an event that’s shaken you. There may come a point, however, when you may not want to feel so alone anymore, where you want to share some of your story. Even while knowing it’s our personal responsibility to heal, we are still human and need people in our lives. We need to know that our experience matters, that we matter.

Sometimes we are not connected to our families or old friends, with perhaps distance and time separating us. Sometimes people are estranged from their families for reasons that are too difficult to go into. Or perhaps family isn’t a safe place to talk about the painful thing we are healing from. And yet over and over we read about seeking support from others.

So how do we even do that?

A readiness to share

How ready you are to share is a personal decision and can be influenced by many factors. For me, it took a long time to be able to share about my life and past trauma. I went through an entire marriage of a decade and a half not talking about one of my earliest traumas, being assaulted as a 12-year-old on the street in New York City. The event was so brief, a blip in time, and yet that day remains etched in my memory, this one moment having a lasting effect on my ability to feel safe around men. I wrote a literary essay about it after leaving my marriage, as the memory came up suddenly for me, and I could no longer look away. I’d buried many memories but in the stark emptiness of divorce I had to face the truth of my life and my role in the demise of my marriage. Now, as I’ve become more comfortable with my past and owning my story, I am becoming more aware of my personal level of readiness to talk and learning who it’s safe to share with. This learning has been harder than I could have imagined.

So much of our social interactions are superficial with a focus on shared good times. It is wonderful to have people in our lives to share joy and happy times with. In fact, life can be hard and demanding, with work pressures and child responsibilities, that having friends to relax with is a key element to having a full and balanced life. And yet, we are human. We’ve been through difficulties, some so painful that they transformed the very essence of who we are. Having people with whom we can talk, share our stories, is a way to help ease burdens. By talking about deeper issues, things we’ve been through, we can deepen intimacy with others, thereby strengthening our relationships and having the sense that someone is in our corner.

One way to know if we’re ready to share a deeper truth is if we simply want to speak about it. We may decide to challenge ourselves by taking a small step towards having a closer relationship with someone. Perhaps we’ve known them for a while and want to create more closeness. So, we share something small and see how they receive it. It’s a little like a dance: I offer a move, a personal share, and the other person responds, being able to mirror or reflect what’s been shared. One move at a time, a give-and-take from one to the other and back. We sometimes must take a chance and see if our offering for a deeper connection is met by the other. It takes courage to be vulnerable (Brene Brown is right about that). It might be helpful to try to notice which person in your life might be worth taking a chance on. We can make the first move and watch their response.

Their readiness to listen

Certain people can’t handle your story. It’s a fact of life. There are different levels of friendship, and you might share with one person and find it doesn’t go the way you’d hoped. It might feel like it’s the right thing to do at the time, and you discover they cannot hear you. They don’t understand and move away from you. And then it feels worse, like you’ve opened up a wound and there is no bandage, and now the person is gone, and you’re left with a gaping hole. It can feel disheartening if it’s someone you care about and want to be closer to, to have a deeper understanding with, yet realize that it is not possible. At least not right now.

Some people may be able to listen. It just might not be the right time for them. Sometimes in our desire to connect and deepen a relationship, we may forget to check in and see if they are in the right frame of mind to hear us. Are they in a place they can receive? They may not be, due to their own personal circumstances. And we must accept it is not only our timeline that counts but theirs as well.

There are many nuanced pieces in having a relationship with someone. In a surface connection, there are less pieces to manage, as there’s nothing too deep to navigate. But as we dig deeper below the surface and invite intimacy and connection, we can enter a realm in which we are suddenly vulnerable, and a careless word or unkind feedback can send us heading back for the safety of isolation. In this space, no one can hurt us. And we can hurt no one. But this space, unfortunately, can keep us locked up in a little box in which, instead of creating closeness, we protect ourselves by cultivating a certain kind of image.

A culture of image

“Be strong, don’t show weakness.” That is often the message in society. We don’t often allow people in too far lest we show them our soft underbelly, a delicate place where the slightest word or gesture can ruin an entire relationship. Stay on the surface so no one gets hurt. But by remaining on the surface, we deny ourselves the opportunity for community and connection.

I had a sweet moment sharing something personal and vulnerable with a few people on Instagram the other day. I’d been crying earlier, trying to let go of a relationship that had once been important to me and after crying, I felt better. Empty, but in a good way. In a relief way. And I decided to do something nice for myself. I baked brownies. And I decided to take a picture of my brownies and post a story about it. I felt vulnerable posting my message, admitting I’d been crying. But I thought sharing had merit. I wrote: “Sometimes the best self-care after a good cry is making brownies. We empty ourselves by releasing… and then nurture ourselves… with creativity and love.” And the response was warm and receptive with many fluttering hearts. In a small way, I connected to a truth in our shared humanity: that sometimes we feel sad and cry and we can care for ourselves in whatever way feels right. We can’t always present a perfect image of strength. Sometimes it can be helpful to present an example of self-care after shedding our pain through tears.

Still, even knowing that I want to model a practice of self-care, it felt scary to me. As a therapist, I feel a burden to show strength, that I have it all together and this pressure can weigh on me. I want to share who I am and yet I feel called to the image of Therapist as Expert, Therapist as Strong Person and Therapist as Role Model of Emotional Stability (whatever that means).

Life’s little test…

A while ago, I tried sharing my story with someone I wanted to be closer to. And it didn’t work out – some of it due to my lack of readiness, some to poor timing, and some to their lack of readiness. It was an attempt without much forethought, which likely contributed to the unwanted outcome. It was someone who I wanted to be the right choice, but due to unfortunate circumstances, was not. We don’t always choose the right person or the right timing with a person. And sometimes we choose someone who is not interested in our story, someone who seems to want us to maintain a more surface connection, and reinforce an image they have of us.

We can do all the right things, check our own readiness, the other person’s, test a little and see how it goes, attempting to go beyond image in relationship, and still it doesn’t work out. But there is no shame in trying, although it can feel shameful in the moment, when we can see that they are not accepting us, but are instead rejecting us, telling us that our personal sharing is not welcome, and thus, that we are not welcome.

What choices do we have?

We can choose to remain silent, and therefore remain isolated from others, wondering what is wrong with us that we can’t receive the seemingly unobtainable social support (that others seem to find easy to get). But silence doesn’t get us where we want to go; instead, silence keeps us locked up in a box looking out at the world while we try to keep our exterior shell strong and shiny.

Or we can speak up, showing courage in our vulnerability even as we don’t know the outcome. We can consider seeking social support, even if it’s hard. The social media messages may tell us finding this support is simple but we have learned that the process is not, especially in the wake of a difficult life experience. All of us have different levels of readiness and comfort levels. But despite the challenges, we can still reach out our hand, ask someone to join us, and perhaps they will be there, ready for the dance, responding to our bid for closeness, relieved that they have been offered a fledgling connection instead of an image of perfect strength.