There is a creature in my backyard. I don’t know how he came to be there or what he wants, but there he is. His presence permeates my awareness. He looks at me with intent, and I become unsettled. There is something all-encompassing about him, and I try my best to look away, to pretend he is not there, hoping when I look back, he will be gone. I turn my eyes to see if this could be true, but there he remains.
He does not leave, so I do instead. I try to stay away a little longer than I normally do. But when I return nothing has changed. The creature has taken up residence in my back yard now. He seems bigger than before, to be more in control, somehow more powerful. I yell at him. I scream obscenities. I cry and plead for him to please leave me alone in my house and my yard with no response. His very being makes me hurt inside. I must not go out there in the back where he is. I will not go out there again. Maybe someday the creature will go somewhere else but not today.
This is a story I often would tell my introductory college classes when we begin to talk about personal suffering and trauma. It is a metaphor for how most of us try to deal with the creature in our backyard we call our emotional pain.
When we approach this creature in such a manner, when we try to deny his existence or ignore his being there, it is probably the least effective choice we can make in trying to come to terms with him. In doing so we are prolonging his presence, giving him our control, ceding to him any power of healing we might actually have. Always, when we do this, we make him much larger and more imminent than he ever could have been without our help.
There is only one thing we can do to address our suffering, our trauma, effectively when it is there waiting for us as the creature in our backyard. It is the very last thing we think want to do and the choice that makes so little sense to us in the moment. But it is what we must do if we are to come to terms with this creature. We must begin to accept the fact that our personal suffering is not going anywhere and is never going leave. In some way, shape, or form, it is with us now always.
Something bad has happened to us and it cannot be undone with wishing and hoping. Maybe we were physically abused by parents who told us they loved us. Maybe the scoutmaster we trusted most molested us in our tent one night on a campout. Perhaps a fire burned our home to the ground, or a sudden flood swept everything we owned away. Our loved one has died and will never be coming back. We are different now, and we are not going to be the same again.
Whenever we try to be the same again, we are prolonging our suffering. It is us engaging in a fantasy when factually we must now learn to live in a new reality. There is a new normal for us to accept and to move forward with if we are ever going to move forward at all. We think such new steps could destroy us, so we resist. They could lead us in the wrong direction, so we hesitate. But, in the end, they might very well fulfill us, and some of us take them.
Whatever the outcome, whatever might happen when we suffer, we must take these new steps. We must walk in this new reality we find ourselves in with an acceptance of it. The creature will always be lurking in our backyard, and he will do so for the rest of our days. To resist him is futile at the very least and probably more than self- destructive. The best and only way to effectively deal with the creature once he is there is to go outside, look him in the eye, and embrace him.
I know this seems counterintuitive. I know that we want to do the very opposite. I also know it is the only way we will heal and move forward. It is an undeniable truth in any healing that our personal suffering must literally become our friend, or at least our welcomed guest. Our resistance to it is its actual power over us. We must take our power back. We can only do this through acceptance of our trauma and pain.
We must find the strength inside ourselves to affirm and normalize the bad that has happened to us. We do not have to use it as our excuse. We do not have to live it out as our life script. It is simply part of who we are now. We must find our own way to accept this fact. As long as we resist it or deny it, our pain will continue to wield its power over our life.
Whenever we suffer, whatever its cause, there is always a creature in our backyard that was not there before, and he is not going away. He is no real threat, though, if we do not make him one by denying his existence.
Bill J
(content from The Wisdom Is Lost In the Words)