The power of believing each other
(Nimue)
One of the most powerful things we can do for each other, is to believe each other. This is especially important around differences of experience. Listen to people when they talk about prejudice, racism, sexism – that you haven’t seen it might be because you have a wildly different experience of the same spaces. Believe people when they talk about how illness impacts on them. Believe people when they talk about their needs and feelings.
It doesn’t mean having to take action. Simply being heard and feeling understood is powerful. Being allowed to do things your own way so that its viable for you, Is worth so much. Having slack cut where you need it can make worlds of difference. More than anything else though it’s the power of being believed and taken seriously that really helps.
I spent years asking for what I needed and being disbelieved. The grounds were that what I needed was supposedly to small to explain my ongoing emotional distress. The burden of disbelief added to my distress. I’ve since established that the things I thought I needed were exactly the things I needed. Being heard and being believed has made me feel a good deal less crazy and dysfunctional, and has opened the way for considerable healing.
Just being heard can be restorative. It can give a person back their sense of dignity. Being treated like you don’t know what’s best for you is disempowering and often infantilizing. Having people assert that they know what you need better than you know yourself is profoundly uncomfortable. It’s even worse when they are wrong about that. Being taken seriously, when you’ve been denied that in the past, can of itself be a healing experience.
The risk, when we believe each other, is that the trust will be abused in order to scam or manipulate. However, treating people like you believe them doesn’t have to translate into action. If someone’s stories lead to wanting money, unpaid work, unfair advantage etc then those red flags need taking seriously. If someone simply wants to have their story heard and to be treated with respect, there’s no reason to think they are trying to manipulate you.
If someone else’s truth makes you uncomfortable, it’s worth taking some time to ask why. It can be difficult looking at experiences that are different from you own – finding that something you are part of is a difficult space for People of Colour for example might be unsettling. That’s the kind of discomfort we have to take on board if we don’t want to double down on our own privileges. It’s ok to be uncomfortable. Sometimes its necessary. Don’t mistake your own healthy discomfort for someone else treating you badly.
Our own experiences of the world are not much of a guideline for how anyone else might experience things. For the person dealing with chronic fatigue, your simple task might be prohibitively difficult. Your happy space may be overwhelming for someone who is neurodivergent. When we listen to each other, and believe each other we can build understanding and a more flexible view of the world. My experience is not going to be the same as yours, but if we hear each other out, and take each other seriously, we can figure things out and avoid invalidating each other.
