The First Step to Healing Is Naming What Hurts
Naming the Pain: Why I Write What I Write
Why this post?
I got particularly struck by Jordan Peterson’s interpretation of a familiar passage, from the psychology prespective:
Genesis 2:19-20
19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed[a] every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam[b] there was not found a helper fit for him.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%202%3A19-20&version=ESV
Peterson points out that everything is ambiguous until it is named — and that this applies not just to animals or objects, but to our inner experiences: our emotions, our memories, our pain.
That idea has stayed with me.
As I write this, I’m also reflecting on my emotional landscape. Writing about pain isn’t easy — I often feel the emotional weight of it even as I type. But I’ve come to see that the act of naming pain is not only necessary — it’s sacred.
It reminds me (and I hope it reminds you too) that self-awareness is not indulgence. It’s a form of stewardship. To care for others well, we must first learn to name what is happening within ourselves.
And that begins with courage — to see what hurts, and to call it by its name.
Why naming pain matters
Pain that remains unnamed is often pain that remains misunderstood — by others, and even by ourselves. When we can’t articulate what we’re feeling, we may mistake burnout for laziness, loneliness for ingratitude, or anxiety for personal failure. Naming pain gives it shape; it turns a heavy, invisible fog into something we can begin to understand, respond to, and care for.
It’s not about labelling ourselves permanently — it’s about gaining clarity. Just like how a diagnosis in medicine doesn’t define a person but points the way to appropriate treatment, naming our emotional pain helps us seek the right kind of support, whether that’s therapy, rest, prayer, or simply being heard.
Without naming, we risk wandering in circles — feeling something is wrong but not knowing what it is or how to begin healing. Naming is the first act of stewardship — a way of saying, “This matters enough to notice. This pain is real enough to name. I deserve to recover from this pain.”
Learning to articulate our pain
Learning to name our pain is not something that comes naturally to most of us — especially in cultures where emotional restraint is seen as strength, or where certain feelings are dismissed as overreactions. Many of us grew up without the language for what we were going through. We were taught to “get over it” or “be grateful,” even when something inside us was breaking.
So it makes sense that when we finally try to describe our struggles, the words feel clumsy or insufficient.
But naming pain is a skill — and like all skills, it can be learned. It might begin with writing in a journal, not for anyone else to read, but just to see our own emotions more clearly. It might look like sitting with a trusted friend and saying, “I don’t know exactly what this is, but I think I’m hurting.”
Even borrowing words from others — a line from a book, a lyric from a song, a question from a therapist — can help us begin.
Lyrics: Linkin Park - Numb
I'm tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface
I don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
Caught in the undertow, just caught in the undertow
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
Caught in the undertow, just caught in the undertow
I've become so numb, I can't feel you there
Become so tired, so much more aware
I'm becoming this, all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you!
…
The goal isn’t perfect articulation. It’s simply to move from silence to speech, from confusion to clarity, one word at a time.
Pain is not the whole story
While it’s important to name and articulate our pain, we must also remember: pain is not the whole story. It is real, and it deserves to be acknowledged — but it does not define the full arc of our lives.
Even in our darkest moments, there are quiet threads of hope running beneath the surface.
Restoration may not happen quickly, and healing is rarely linear, but neither are we static or hopeless.
Time, on its own, may not be the best medicine, but time opens space for hope to come and find us again.
And often, it is in that in-between space — between naming the pain and waiting for things to change — that something unseen begins to mend. When we allow ourselves to believe that pain can be named without being final, we make room for a future that is different from our present.
Next time, when we are in pain, let’s acknowledge it bravely. That is the beginning of hope, and restoration is coming.