Americans require happy endings. In our movies, in our books, in our lives. We don't allow for suffering or unhappiness. We don't tolerate unhappy stories from others. We don't tolerate "negative" moods. Everyone is supposed to be happy, all the time and everything is supposed to turn out right, all the time.
But this isn't real. I watched people pull away when my mother had cancer. They couldn't tolerate the fear, the unhappiness. I have watched as clients with terminal illness try to discuss it with their families and hushed up, brushed off, or pushed away. I watch people struggling with death, divorce, financial loss, the loss of a home. No one wants to hear it. No one will listen. Because it's unpleasant.
And I watch people struggling with the emotions that occur with these events. These "negative" emotions; anger, fear, sadness, frustration. They are rushed off to a doctor to be medicated as if something were wrong with them, as if they are "abnormal". It is explained to them that this is a "chemical imbalance" that needs to be treated chemically. Yet no one can asks when the "chemical imbalance" began. Are they talking to a 50 year old person who has never been depressed in their life until their wife left them? What a coincidence that this "chemical imbalance" occurred for the first time when they experienced a major loss in their life.
Our handling of trauma is much the same. Someone tries to tell us how they suffered and everyone tries to shut them up and slap a happy ending on it. This leaves them feeling rejected and alone on top of the trauma they experienced.
How do we learn to get past this way of thinking? Watch more foreign films. They don't have those pat Hollywood happy endings. They are ambiguous and sad and angry and you never know how they will end. Read Rebecca Coffey's book, "Unspeakable Truths and Happy Endings". Learn to sit with your own "negative emotions". Sit with the fear, the sadness, the grief, the anger. What do you have to learn from it? Learn to sit with a friend who is having trouble and just listen. Don't try to fix it. Don't try to find a "happy ending". Just listen to their pain, and let them have it.
How can we truly appreciate happy endings if we don't fully experience the sad ones? If you block pain you block pleasure and pretty soon you don't feel anything. Is that really worth it just to avoid the uncomfortable emotions in life?
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