Just because someone is smiling, doesn’t mean they are happy.

I hear it every day in therapy. From clients of all ages. All backgrounds. All situations. “They just don’t understand me”.

This feeling of being misunderstood, and not heard or seen, hurts. It hurts a lot. It often hurts as much, if not more, than the pain of the client’s other concerns; their sadness; their anxiety; their depression; their grief; their loss; their eating disorder; their day-to-day mental torment and anguish.

Please don’t misunderstand, I don’t have clients who expect their nearest and dearest to be mind readers. They are not saying it is easy to walk in someone else’s shoes and to understand someone else’s pain. They know that is not possible. They know that only we know how we feel and the intensity and impact of our traumas, our wounds, our pain. They know too that most people are trying their best to understand and are trying to say the right thing and help relive the pain they can see.

But, sadly, the reactions and comments they receive often just make things worse. They make things worse because they are so often based on assumptions and labels that miss the mark - not by a little but by miles. ‘You have so much to be happy about; you are so lucky; count your blessings; I would give anything to have your life; what do you have to be depressed about’ and on and on and on. These judgments from the outside, which impose a view on how the person who is in pain should be feeling, have the effect of invalidating the person’s experience; their feelings; their pain.

The message that is received is that you are wrong to feel how you feel.

I equally hear about comments made about clients which clients become privy to. These feel like commentaries, rendered as if a reporter is being asked on the news for a response to someone or some big event:‘she is holding court’ or ‘she is always smiling’, or ‘she always seems so happy’. These comments fall into the trap of judging (always a bad idea) what can be seen, without remembering that what we see is rarely the whole story. It’s a cliche, but think how much of the iceberg is visible to eye and how much is hidden from view. Think how often we show the world how we are truly feeling; how much of a front or face we put on to shield ourselves from questions or worry or concerns. Think then about how the person next to you at work, at home or in the street, may be doing the same thing.

Smiling or being chatty or looking happy can be the defence mechanism we reach for to hide the pain that is chewing us up inside. It can be our armour; our shield; our hiding place. It can also be exhausting to try to look fine when inside we feel everything is crumbling.

If we really want to understand someone and how they are feeling, then judging the book by it’s cover is the wrong place to start. Thinking we can tell what is right or wrong with someone from the outside is a fool’s errand. Seeing a smiling face and assuming they are happy is naive in the extreme.

If we really want to understand someone and how they are feeling, then asking, listening and not judging would serve us and the person we care about so much better. We can never truly understand someone else’s pain but we can help avoid making it worse with our assumptions and our labels. They are inevitably from our point of view and may reflect our needs much more than we person we are trying to help.