I was talking with some friends about how we deal with pain in our lives. At times I haven’t found it helpful that our language around pain has often been territorial, defensive, and insular. We seem to believe that recovery is something that is done away from everyone, that we need to pull back and remove ourselves from life in order to make it. I guess much of this approach has grown from the old school attitude which meant that people powered on through when pain came, which often meant that no recovery happened at all.

Surely there has to be a third way? I’ll write more about that at another time but let me get back to the title of the post.

While we were talking about the more modern approach and how we so often remove ourselves in these moments my friend said a phrase which jumped out to me.

“there’s a difference between insulation and isolation”

We didn’t get to talk about all that he meant by that statement but it got my head thinking.

Isolation is the process of being separated from others. It denotes a distance, a space, a gap, a removal. Insulation is different. When something is insulated it can be present and available in the moment but is guarded by the negative effects of that moment. In electrical wiring insulation protects harmful currents from causing damage. In healing insulation protects a house from losing heat.

When I think of us socially insulating I think of us being present even when we are facing challenging moments, but understanding our limits and contributions. We’re not being irresponsible with ourselves but we haven’t disappeared.

I remember after our daughter died a number of years ago. It was a pain like no other. It was tricky to know how to engage after she had passed away. Should we take months away from church services, jump straight in to work etc. In the end we missed one church service but determined in our hearts to return the next week. We knew that isolating ourselves, whilst that was what we most wanted to do, was not a healthy choice. However as we re-engaged with ‘normal’ life and work we didn’t jump straight in like we had done before. We didn’t turn up everywhere and jump back in to full responsibility, we insulated and understood we had a healing journey to go on.

I’m not sure what your life situation is today and how you’re feeling but l wonder if we have chosen isolation or insulation over this season? Perhaps we need to work out what insulation might look like in this season rather than isolation.