Life & Therapy

When I was 24, I had knee surgery that landed me with a few weeks on crutches.  I was in a good amount of pain, so I was taking Vicodin as one does in these situations. One day, I was hobbling home on my crutches when a voice called out to me from the front porch of a house.  I looked over to see a man about my age, who asked me very nicely what had happened to my leg.  Thinking that he was genuinely interested, I told him about my surgery.  His next question was whether I had been prescribed Vicodin, so I said yes.  Well, then he asked me if I could give my painkillers to him, as his girlfriend had a tooth abscess and that they didn’t have money to go to the dentist.  Right on cue, out from the house popped his girlfriend who demonstrated what he’d just told me by pulling her mouth open and stretching her cheek out, as if I could see her abscess from where I stood on the street.  

For a moment, I tuned into their needs more than my own, as if my own need for pain relief didn’t exist.  I wanted to take away this woman’s pain.  I overlooked the fact that the pills would only mask the pain of an infection that needed to be fixed.  I also overlooked the fact that they were asking me to commit a felony.  Instead, I felt guilt for having something they wanted- something I could barely afford myself at the time. This inner struggle lasted a short while, and was then replaced with a sense of shock: this perfect stranger pretended to be interested in my painful situation, when in reality he was only interested in getting me to relieve his girlfriend’s pain.

There are many people in the world who are injured enough to believe that their pain is your problem.  If you are a compassionate and caring sort, it may be tempting to ignore your own needs and tune into that person’s pain.  It isn’t compassionate to allow someone else to deplete you, nor is it compassionate to help someone ignore their own pain.  In this example of the abscess, if I’d given this couple my pills, the girlfriend’s infection would continue to grow in the absence of pain.  Taking her pain away would be a very bad thing, because then she’d feel that she’d fixed her mouth that would continue to fester and rot.  She’d keep having to find people to give her more painkillers whenever she ran out of them.    

There are many ways that people try get you to “numb the abscess” for them while they continue to ignore it.  One example is the friend who is in an unhealthy relationship, who complains to you at length about it, feels relief after dumping on you, then goes back to his partner and does nothing to change things.  You keep listening to him, soothing him, encouraging him to stand up for himself.  You feel drained after every conversation, and nothing changes. You may even notice that he doesn’t seem to have any time or interest in your problems.  You are so fully drawn into wanting to relieve your friend’s pain that you don’t realize that he’s using you for your painkilling abilities while the problem keeps getting worse.  It may feel selfish at first to not automatically give what is asked of you, but over time, you will see that you are being generous when you refuse to let others use you as a means to numb their pain.