Being Soothed in Suffering

She looked away from him, eyes moving downward, and her heart now moving further away. “It’s not my job to soothe your anxiety”.

Relationships are hard. Helping a couple navigate counseling is difficult. One of the most beautiful pursuits can be the most challenging: coming back to each other while keeping away from hurting one another. Most of us have had some resemblance to the harsh moment above, but everyone has experienced the tightening of their torso, the felt sense of their heart sinking further into their chest as weighted words leave traces of their impact.

In our series of “Suffering & the 4 S’s”, we offer an additional perspective on a misunderstood word. Soothe.

We care. We love. We risk. Sometimes people break our hearts.

According to attachment theorists, research has shown that children gain confidence in the world when they experience stable and reliable attachments. Theorists call this developing a secure base; children were more likely to engage their curiosity about the world when they had a felt sense of safety and healthy attachment to their caregiver. We can call this a “secure base”.

Over and over again, as children experience the world, having a secure base is having the sense of “home” in life. Let’s dig into this.

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Home. Even when it’s the home we didn’t grow up in, it’s a place where people understand and experience love, acceptance, being known, and feeling understood.

Though the feeling of “home” can live in a house, we all know that “home” is found in the people we love and who love us.

When I was a wedding and portrait photographer, I would facilitate sessions so that the couple would be in motion as I photographed them. In one of the games I’d play with them, I’d eventually have the woman come from behind her fiancé, hug them, and with their eyes closed, say, “You’re the softest blanket in the world…”

For some reason, each woman would eventually close her eyes as the lines on her face formed a gentle smile.

“home.”

In that moment, she felt secure. She felt loved. Safe. She’s as close to “home” as she can get.

His presence in her life soothes.

Attachment therapists would contend that soothing is not solely an experience infants or children need, but adults.

Let’s get a little more concrete in what we mean by soothe.

The action of soothing is calm, to quiet, to make or bring peace to a situation or person. However, is soothing something Christians should enact in adult relationships?

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Let’s look at a few texts that provide some guidance:

-              A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger

-              A healing tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit

-              Sweet words are as honeycomb to the soul, and health to the bones

Healing words are as sweet as honey; they turn away anger, they lead to life.

Words can soothe. Healing words are a balm in irritating circumstances.

There is a place for silence, when words are not helpful or necessary. Simply being a calm presence in someone’s life can bring peace to their circumstance.

We will all have moments of internal distress; however, Dr. Siegel and Dr. Bryson highlight that negative experiences can be shifted by an interaction with someone who attunes and cares for them. Soothing is not the removal of suffering; that seems to overestimate a human’s capabilities. Soothing implies that the sufferer is not alone.

Soothing is an opportunity to communicate to those we love that when suffering disrupts life, there is something uniquely secure about the person who is standing in it with them.

Soothing is not a job; it’s an opportunity to gift someone your presence amid internal chaos. In the book, The Power of Showing Up, Siegel and Bryson give a practical way parents can soothe their children. I believe this tool can also benefit adults who may have never learned what showing up in their relationships can look like, because soothing is about being human.

P – Give them your presence

E – Engage them

A – Give Affection

C – Calm (being calm)

E – Empathize

-j