Raw Meat - Managing Pain in Divorce

A result of my career is that I have witnessed thousands of people go through extreme emotional pain. Divorces can be incredibly rough on the psyche, between changing homes, worrying about children, private disputes made public, financial concerns… the list goes on and on. Clients are emotionally battered, and in this place where they are just marching forward, day after day, to get through to the other side.

Years ago, I had a client come up with a particularly apt description for this mental state. She said she felt like raw meat. Everything just felt tender and exposed. All of her private business had been made public. Every aspect of her life had been scrutinized. She felt like she did not have the patience for even the most simple and basic tasks of everyday life. She was just a raw, exposed nerve.

Over the years, I have certainly developed an eye for seeing people in this place. They look exhausted. Lots of them experience major weight drops as adrenalin and anxiety burn away their usual appetite. They often struggle with even basic tasks, like getting a cup of coffee at our little Keurig station at the office.

Typically, when I see this type of quality in clients, I will look at them and say, “I’m stopping the meter.” (My own goofy little parlance to let them know I’m off the clock and not billing.) I put down the notepad, and ask, “How are you doing?”

I’ll get the canned answer most of the time. I let them give it.

“But seriously, how are you holding up? What things are stressing you out?”

I let them keep talking. At some point, the floodgate usually breaks. I can’t recall how many times I’ve talked with people about this “raw meat” state, how to survive it, and what it means. The opportunity to speak with people in this state has been one of the most illuminating parts of my job, and I am always grateful for it.

In all these discussions, I have noticed one common theme: This raw meat place is the birthplace of peoples’ worst and best behaviors.

The worst behaviors tend to take the form of escapist behaviors. Drugs, alcohol, spending, sex, you name it… to escape from the awful pain from this place, people will engage in spectacularly bad behavior if they believe on some level it will provide even a little bit of relief. Even if it is something that on some level, they know is spectacularly bad for them. Sometimes it is more insidious – things like sabotaging relationships with family, friends, and perhaps worst, children. People will throw themselves into conflict, thinking that somehow fighting over everything will somehow end or ease their pain.

The other road is harder. That raw meat feeling can be the birthplace of a person’s most noble behaviors, too. For example, in that painful place, people can get really real. I have several clients that talk about having some of the best, most meaningful conversations with friends and family that they’ve ever had. The suffering, if people stay with it, is a remarkable place of self-knowledge, and the birthplace of change. I cannot tell you how many people use this raw place as the point to go to therapy, go back to church, start working out again, improve their relationship with their family… you name it.

The trick is just learning to stay with it, accept the pain, and deal with it instead of trying to get away from it. Truly, there is no “easy way out.” There’s only the way through.

The pithy way I say it to clients is that pain is a vehicle… you get decide where it drives you to.