The Anatomy Of Survival

Someone told you it was all in your head. They were right about the location. I am a neurologist. Strokes, seizures, migraines, panic, flashbacks of war: all in the head. All real. Location was never proof that you made it up.

When nobody takes your fear seriously, something changes in how you speak. First, you rehearse every sentence before you say it. Then you exaggerate, hoping someone finally listens. In the end, you say nothing at all. The fear stays. Only the talking stops.

Much of the advice we give people in pain is for our own comfort. Stay positive. Everything happens for a reason. It will pass. Before you say one of these, check whether you are easing their pain or your own discomfort.

When someone tells you about a loss, your brain searches for a similar experience of your own. Hold it back for two minutes. Ask one question about what happened to them, then listen to the full answer. Comparison moves the conversation to you.

Sometimes “perspective” is just judgment with a better reputation. We tell ourselves that we’re helping someone see the bigger picture. But sometimes, all we’re really doing is deciding that their problem isn’t big enough to deserve the way they feel about it.

Something that seems insignificant to you might be the most difficult thing someone else is dealing with right now. I know that sounds obvious. But I think we forget it all the time. We listen to someone describe a situation, and instead of trying to understand how it feels to them, we imagine how we would feel in their position. And then we judge their reaction based on that. But we're not really in their position, are we? We're bringing our own history, our own fears, and everything we've survived into a life that isn't ours.

I think one of the easiest ways to lose empathy is to start believing that your own suffering has taught you everything there is to know about suffering. You begin to compare. You hear someone's problems and quietly think about everything you've been through. And suddenly, what they're telling you doesn't seem so serious anymore. I've caught myself doing this more often than I'd like to admit. The uncomfortable part is that it doesn't always feel like a lack of empathy. Sometimes, it feels like wisdom. And I think that's what makes it so dangerous.

Sometimes I wish people would stop trying to make difficult experiences meaningful. And the strange thing is, I do this myself. Almost all the time. Whenever something painful happens, I try to find something in it. But not every painful thing teaches us something valuable. And not everything that happens to us needs to become a beautiful story about growth. Sometimes something terrible happens, and the only thing we can honestly say is that we wish it hadn't. I think there should be room for that kind of honesty, too.

There's a strange kind of sadness in remembering a place that still exists, but no longer exists the way you remember it. The streets are probably still there. The buildings, the shops, perhaps even some of the people. But the life you knew inside those streets is gone. And when someone tells you that you can always go back, you don't quite know how to explain that going back to a place and going back to a life are two completely different things. I think that's one of the hardest things about leaving home.

One of the greatest privileges in life is having a home you can afford to take for granted. Some people spend the rest of their lives missing the ordinary days they once couldn't wait to escape.

Surviving something terrible doesn't automatically make you wiser, kinder, or more empathetic. Sometimes it just makes you better at surviving. What you do with that experience is another story.

The cruel thing about nostalgia is that it remembers selectively. It gives us the smell of the kitchen, the summer evenings, the familiar streets. It rarely gives us the reasons we once wanted to leave.

Welsh has a word, hiraeth. It means longing for a home you can't return to, and sometimes for one that never existed. English needs a full sentence for that. Several languages need a paragraph. A feeling common enough to need its own word, and most languages still don't have one.

Maybe the hardest part about leaving home is realizing that returning and going back are not the same thing. You can return to a city. You cannot return to a time.

We are surprisingly good at giving other people permission to rest. Then we feel guilty the moment we need the same permission ourselves. Compassion is often easier when it is directed outward.

There are moments when we don’t want advice. We don’t want perspective. We don’t want someone to explain why things will eventually be okay. We just want someone to agree that right now, they aren’t.

Sometimes I’ve been disappointed when people didn’t notice that I was struggling. The uncomfortable truth is that I was also doing everything I could to make sure they wouldn’t notice. We sometimes hide and still hope to be found.

A memory doesn’t need to appear every day to influence our life. Some of the things we think we’ve forgotten are simply making decisions from the background.