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NW: sometimes i truly have felt that no one but God understands...

I've had some moments like that myself, NW, especially in the beginning. It can be particularly isolating to feel that there is no one else who understands or has had your experience. However, isolation increases pain and one's sense of personal burden so it's important to find others who can identify on some level with your experience, even if they can't identify with it exactly.

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And I've had people, many times, say to me, "This pain that I feel, I think no one else in the world feels this." And then I can say to them with tremendous confidence: "Wrong."

But what is not wrong is that we do have that feeling often, that I am the only one that has this particular pain. So maybe it will be quite a challenge to you to say this and it might not seem genuine. But even that is beginning to shake up your complacency about pain being just your individual burden. It somehow shakes it up just to even contemplate that other people feel this.

And in many cases my own experience is just that, that which could become so introverted, a downward spiral of depression and isolation -- just the thought that other people feel this opens it up. It's what Trungpa Rinpoche used to call, "Thinking Bigger".

And I think I've said this before, I'll say it again, that compassion or the sense of shared humanity, of our kinship with each other, this is what heals.

Source: The Spirit of Tonglen


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Meantime, in spite of no one being able to understand, as based on the responses thus far, it would seem that more might understand than had been considered.

Best of luck to you 2hope.