The Wisdom of Withholding
What dissociation and distance can teach us about surviving pain.
Alfred Kubin (1903)
After talking to a client I was pondering the idea of “presence”. What does radical presence mean in the context of my practice, SULMUM? Presence is a powerful notion. It is one that needs nuancing, especially when you put it centre stage, the way I do. Presence is often perceived as the positive pole, opposite concepts like distraction, denial, dissociation or numbness, turning those into a negative.
I said:
“You’re allowed to feel it all but that doesn’t mean you have to feel it all right now.”
They are in a difficult living situation. It is emotionally complex, prolonged, and practically inescapable for the moment. The kind of daily reality that asks them to keep going while everything inside them wants to fall apart. Resolving the situation and changing the circumstances will take time. They will feel it all, in time. But in this moment, they also need to function. They need to get through their days without collapsing under the sheer weight of it.
I reminded them: postponing is not failure. Boxing emotion, shelving it until later is not necessarily avoidance. It can be a strategy, an emotionally healthy one at that. It’s wisdom in the face of overwhelm. Not every event or experience needs to be fully unpacked while our world is still burning.
“Sometimes the Greatest Abyss Is Best Crossed on the Surface”
It is a proverb I saw once, underneath an illustration of a person in a tiny wooden boat. It was scathing the surface of a giant water filled abyss. It is a truth I like to keep close in myself and my practice.
Radical presence ≠ forced presence
In my practice, I often talk about radical presence, not as a state I require from others, but as a commitment I make to them. I will be here. Fully. I will sit with what you bring, whether it’s clarity or chaos, numbness or grief. I will not flinch.
But I will also never ask you to be fully present with something you, your body aren’t ready to hold. Presence is not a goal to achieve, a state of being to attain, that will magically wand away your all worries or pain. Besides, presence is not always safe. For some, especially those living with trauma or medical trauma, presence can be a site of re-wounding. It is definitely a dimension where we need to tread carefully.
We’re often told in healing spaces that we need to “be in the now,” “face our pain,” or “sit with discomfort.” I was listening to The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts, written in 1951. He sees addiction as a result of seeking stronger stimulae to compensate for a lack of deeper meaning, sees chasing success and wealth as materialistically motivated “purpose” in the absence of religion. In his eyes they are all ways to avoid the hard existential questions.
Avoiding pain and only seek pleasure sounds, to me, a little simplistic. I see it as perfectly possible, and reasonable, to acknowledge and accept that pain is an unavoidable part of life, without forcing yourself to be fully present with all of it, all of the time. Allow yourself some reprieve. Trust the other parts of you that turn inward, when it is time to be protected.
(When I say ‘radical presence,’ I borrow from the lineage of thinkers like Tara Brach, who use ‘radical’ not to mean extreme, but rooted, as a return to the core of compassion and acceptance. The fundamental nature of something.)
My own dissappearance
When I had a 9-hour abdominal surgery for sarcoma, the epidural was placed incorrectly. As the anaesthesia wore off, I began to feel everything. I told the doctors something was wrong, but they didn’t believe me. Not for sixteen hours. Instead of checking the morphine pipeline tucked in between my vertebreas, they put the psych ward on standby, thinking I was slipping into a post-surgical psychosis.
I will never forget that pain. Not just the physical pain, but the pain of being dismissed like that. The pain of being trapped in a body no one would help. And I can say with full clarity: you do not stay present for that kind of pain. You can’t. Your mind leaves because it has to. That’s not spiritual bypassing, it’s neurological mercy. A natural state of grace in which your body and mind join forces to shield you.
Healing is not linear, and presence is not always the path. Sometimes survival is. Sometimes the body needs to drift. My role is not to drag you into the present but to be present when you're ready, in whatever form that takes.
And yes, presence sometimes is a powerful, even blissful moment of pure being. I felt it, once home after my surgeries, when for a brief moment I knew that whatever happened to me, it was all perfect. The physical pain from my body fall away, the emotional torment lifted and all there was, was light and pure being.
But sometimes it’s too much. And when it is, leaving the moment is not a weakness. It is a lifeboat. One that has carried many of us through the unbearable.
“There are experiences that no one should be asked to stay present for. I know, because I survived one. Dissociation wasn’t avoidance, it was mercy.”
Delaying is not always denial forever
When I tell clients, “You can shelf this for now,” I’m not just offering science based theory as advice. I’m speaking from a place of my personal lived knowing as a human being who has experienced hurt. Dissociation, distraction, even denial are not enemies of healing. They are often its first stage.
We do not have to face everything head on, all the time. Not in the moment it happens, not in any moment of processing, understanding, reconnecting and healing that comes after it. Sometimes the moment is simply too much. Sometimes the present is a fire, and dissociation, zoning out, numbing, going still, is the only thing that saves a person from burning alive.
Dissociation is not a failure.
It’s not the opposite of healing, it’s often the precondition for it.
For trauma survivors, especially, “presence” can feel like annihilation.
There is wisdom in numbing, not forever, but for now. I have chosen to challenge that overly tidy spiritual narrative that forgets about the body, forgets about trauma, forgets that survival is sometimes the bravest, wisest, most sacred thing a person can do. It is where I feel very at home with teachers like Gabor Mate. He cuts straight through the shame and pathology that so many people carry about how they survived. To reframe dissociation, numbness, denial, even addictive patterns as wisdom, not damage sets us free from labelling, judgment and the idea of failure.
“That is the wisdom with which you survived.”
It acknowledges that the body and mind made the best possible choice with the resources available at the time. Not a flaw. Not a failure. A strategy, often brilliant, always human. Mate made space for this, when many others could or would not, and it resonates.
There is space for nuance. For knowing that presence can heal, yes, but only when the person is ready, resourced, and safe enough. Until then, dissociation is not the enemy. It’s an ally. A protector. A strategy with its own fierce intelligence. Respect it. Trust it.
What happened to me wasn’t just a medical failure. I experienced it as a betrayal of trust, of care, of dignity. Sixteen hours of unmanaged post-operative pain after massive abdominal surgery. Dismissed. Disbelieved. That’s not just trauma, that’s torture. And my nervous system did exactly what it had to do: it left the collapsing building. Because staying would have meant being buried under the rubble.
This is where certain spiritual or therapeutic narratives collapse. When they deny the brutality of real-world experiences. I know. I’ve teetered on the edge of what a body and mind can contain, I have crossed it and came back, and I say: No, presence is not always the way.
Presence in practice
Jeff Foster has a very gentle way of reframing presence, not in relation to being shielded from trauma, but as the joy and relief of allowing yourself to not be present.
I found Jeff back in 2011 when I was digging deeper into the concept of non dualism. I was questioning why we are taught to perceive the world in definitions that always seem to come in pairs of polar opposites. Presence good, dissociation bad.
Presence, consciousness and awareness are triangulated for good reason. They are interdependent. Over the years Jeff has evolved from his perspective of seeing presence as the holy grail of being pure consciousness. Non dualism is a spiritual philosophy which emphasises the illusion of separation and the realisation of oneness or unity consciousness. In this space suffering is sometimes framed as misperception. Healing is seen as the dissolution of ego. Surrender to what is, the requirement to attain it. Jeff has since moved from abstract, transcendent frameworks to a more embodied, emotionally grounded understanding of what it is to be human.
He cites talking to a man who struggled with being present, something he desperately wanted to achieve. After talking to him Jeff said: in the present moment, you are very good at not being present and there is nothing wrong with that. Give yourself the permission to not be present.
What I am referring to as radical presence isn’t about forcing another person to sit in their pain. It’s about me being willing to sit in it with them, without flinching, without fixing, without requiring them to be somewhere they’re not ready to be.
There is a critical distinction here:
Being present for someone is not the same as demanding they be present too with their own pain, at all times.
I offer safety by holding the space, not by pushing them into the fire of their own experience.
For many people, presence has been a site of violence, where they were trapped, helpless, overwhelmed, disbelieved, or unprotected. So prescribing it, without context, without regulation, without trust, is not only naïve, it’s cruel.
What I am doing is: modelling radical presence while honouring someone’s right to temporarily leave. The paradox lies in holding space without invading it.
Radical presence in my work means I will meet you exactly where you are not where I want you to be. I will not drag you into the present. I will sit with you, whether you're here or far away, and hold the truth that both places can be sacred ground.
This is what I believe.
Sometimes, surface is survival. Surface is wisdom. Surface is walking forward, just enough to get through the day. That is not the lesser. It’s often the only path across.
Healing is not a constant state of presence. It’s a dance between holding and releasing, opening and retreating. It is sometimes quiet, slow, non-linear. And you get to decide the pace.
In my practice, dissociation is not treated as failure. It's not a sign that you're avoiding healing. It is a brilliant, adaptive part of your system keeping you safe.
My role is not to push you into the deep end. My role is to sit with you on the surface, if that’s where you need to be. And when you’re ready, but only when you’re ready, we wade into deeper waters. Together.
Until then, walking on water counts. Floating counts. Surviving counts.
And the abyss will still be crossed.