Strategies for intentional living from experts who get it
Most of us see ourselves as caring, compassionate people. We want to empathize, to understand, and to help. Therefore, when someone shares their pain, we often draw on our own past struggles, how we “pushed through” for the sake of our sanity, our marriages, and our families. Without realizing it, we may be responding to them in the same way we behaved or were treated in similar situations.
This is one of the most common and harmful dynamics I see when working with women in birth-related trauma therapy.
Take, for example, a client who suffered from severe hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), to the point of being hospitalized multiple times during pregnancy. She missed family celebrations, avoided gatherings because every smell triggered relentless vomiting, and endured body aches from the constant strain. When she confided in a well-meaning listener, that person, trying to be supportive, might have thought back to her own mild morning sickness as a newlywed. Her response? Something like, “Perhaps some fresh air would have done you good.”
Consider another client who experienced a deeply distressing birth. There might have been no major medical crisis, but emotionally it was shattering. Her birth support wasn’t there when she needed her. Labor lasted far longer than expected, and when things suddenly progressed, her husband was absent, having been sent home, thinking things were still not moving. She continuously felt patronized, disbelieved, unsupported, and out of control. Now, she is highly anxious about being left alone with her baby in case something goes wrong, and on high alert regarding every ache and pain she feels, thinking it could be life-threatening. A visitor, recalling her own lengthy labor, remembering how she managed “like a trouper” without pain relief, might think, Why is she making such a fuss? and say, “Yes, birth can be like that, but look at your little one, he’s worth it.”
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