A sympathetic heart

I think we can all agree that life is hard. It's not necessarily fair all the time...or any of the time. People struggle with all sorts of issues, from addiction and inadequacies to loss of loved ones and lack of resources. Sometimes we stumble upon happiness and comfort, but they are often all too fleeting.

And, a lot of my research confirms that life is, in fact, hard. (Like you or I needed a reminder...)

I have been studying the effects of concealed stigmatized identities (e.g., mental illness, drug/alcohol abuse) for several years now. I have collected survey data from several hundred undergraduate participants who generously share with us information about their identities, their experiences of revealing those identities, and how their identities have affected their lives. To say that I am humbled by some of the responses we get in these surveys is an understatement.

Reading through the responses we get in these studies is quite possibly the most depression-inducing activity I can do on any given day. People describe their concealed identity, usually at length, and these identities cover quite a considerable range. There are people with mental illness. People with weight and appearance concerns. People with abusive or otherwise dysfunctional families. People who've experienced childhood sexual abuse, or assault, or rape. People who've had a death or serious illness in their family or who have some deep dark family secret. People who've had abortions or who have committed felonies. You get the picture.

The first thing I realize when I read through these data sets is that *so many people struggle.*

The second thing I realize is that so much of our collective hurt is due to someone else's doing (e.g., rape, abuse). I'm sure that a lot of people realize that they are inflicting harm on others, but so many of us don't realize how our actions negatively affect others. We go about our individual lives and fail to see how our actions and words can affect the people around us. Sometimes we are too busy or too self-involved to see it, but everything we do and say affects other people. And as this data set indicates, what we do often hurts other people--hurts them to the point that they carry it around, hidden from our view.

The most humbling part of reading about people's experiences is that I realize that we interact with people everyday who carry around hidden identities and are hurting and we don't even know it. One of the responses that has been most unsettling to me is from someone who indicated that her hidden identity was that she was raped at a party. When asked how long she has had this identity, she listed "2 weeks." I am so completely saddened by the thought that there are so many people walking around with these experiences, these burdens, this hurt. We each probably interacted with at least one person today that has a concealed identity--something so stigmatizing or hurtful that it seems unbearable to describe to other people. I don't know about you, but if my current daily behavior is any indication of how I probably interacted with such a person, I should be ashamed. The problem with being self-focused and busy and inattentive to others (and we all are, to some extent) is that we risk being total jackasses to other people, especially to those who already have so much to struggle with. We all struggle. We all hurt. That is why it is so ironic and down right disturbing that we are so distant and unkind to one another. If we each read through a dataset such as this once a week--or just discussed in a real way with other people how we struggle or hurt--we would probably be better people, probably be more considerate of others. We might be more likely to share our burdens with others and be more likely to help others bear their burdens, too. I can't help but think that by sharing ourselves in such a way, that we might someday develop a more sympathetic collective heart. And wouldn't that be good for all of us?