Whatever our intentions, we do no one any favors by fearing their pain or colluding in their banishment of it. As people work to heal their traumas, hurt will inevitably arise. This is why all of us go into denial, suppression, repression, rationalization, justification, hazy memory, and varying grades of dissociation in the presence of hurt. When we face all the ways we have numbed ourselves, pain will inevitably emerge—in fact, it has been waiting a long time to do so. Of course, the fear of these exiled parts is also natural.
