Comment on Leslie Jameson essay

Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain

I'm an older white male psychologist who's worked in the field of Post-traumatic Stress these past 33 years. I was drawn this area because the suffering of persons who had undergone horrible experiences was so clearly legitimate. When people have involuntary recurring dreams and flashbacks of awful things and are desperate to get rid of the symptoms, it's difficult to question whether their condition is authentic. After many years and thousands of hours listening and learning to help, I came to understand that the complex adaptations we make to physical and emotional pain stem from basic facts of the human condition. In particular, we are always vulnerable, always needy, and we feel shame when confronted with our inability to prevent bad things from happening to us. It's not anyone's fault but shame drives us to hide, to avoid, to detach, and to deny. Healing is the process of coming to understand and accept ourselves as vulnerable, needy human beings. Our pain is legitimate and expressing it is always a performance in the sense that a musician playing a song with skill and passion is performing. Ms. Jamison's essay is remarkably courageous and honest and it challenges the reader to step up and follow her example. Not everyone can do this and there's no shame in that, either.