Happy Halloween! Let’s talk about something frightening: how much pain a woman can be in before anyone takes her seriously.
Have you seen those TikToks where people dress up as work or dating “horrors”? My personal nightmare is someone saying, “Let’s set up a follow-up meeting.”
Especially when we have just finished a meeting. About the same thing.
The videos are funny because the horror is familiar. But watching Carrie had me thinking about a different kind of everyday horror: having your pain overlooked until your reaction becomes impossible to ignore.
And then having that reaction become the only thing anyone wants to discuss.
For anyone unfamiliar with Stephen King’s story, Carrie is a teenager raised in an intensely sheltered and controlling home. When she enters a world of peers she has little experience navigating, her desire for connection meets shame, bullying, and public humiliation. She also happens to have telekinetic powers, which makes this a very different high school experience from most of ours.
Overall, I enjoyed the show. It gave me plenty to think about: social media cruelty, school violence, and whether students or faculty have enough room to feel safe, ask for help, or admit something is wrong.
But the question that stayed with me was this:
Why do we seem more willing to understand a woman’s pain when we like how she expresses it?
Whose pain gets our compassion?
Before writing this, I talked with a friend who was disappointed in the direction the story took.
We watched the same show, but our compassion landed in different places. As I brought up Carrie’s repeated humiliation and attempts to connect, my friend focused more on the harm Carrie ultimately caused. She seemed more willing to understand the popular character involved in the bullying than Carrie herself.
Her reaction made me pause.
I could understand condemning Carrie’s actions. I did, too. But I wondered why acknowledging her suffering seemed to require so much more persuasion.
That conversation reminded me of something I have noticed beyond television: likability can influence whose pain we are willing to examine.
Think about the workplace. A woman raises a concern, and suddenly the conversation becomes about her tone. Was she warm enough? Diplomatic enough? Did she make everyone comfortable while explaining what was making her uncomfortable?
Somewhere along the way, the original concern disappears.
Women can express sadness, love, and joy and still be seen as deserving of care. Anger seems to make that care more conditional.
We may agree that something unfair happened, but expect someone to be nicer about it.
Can we hear the anger without excusing the harm?
Carrie’s mother complicated this question for me.
Her controlling behavior causes real harm. Yet, in the scenes where she challenges the school’s handling of her daughter’s bullying, I could also recognize a mother demanding that someone take her child’s suffering seriously.
Both things can be true. She can harm her daughter and identify ways the school is failing her.
Her anger does not make her wrong about everything. Her concern does not make her behavior acceptable.
Carrie requires that same willingness to hold more than one truth.
She endures repeated humiliation. Just as connection begins to feel possible, she is hurt again. I could understand her anger and desperation while being horrified by what she did with them.
Understanding someone’s pain does not require approving of their response. Holding someone accountable does not require erasing what happened to them.
The people harmed by Carrie still matter. Their lives do not become less valuable because some participated in cruelty. And Carrie’s suffering does not become less real because she later causes devastating harm.
That tension is uncomfortable. I think it is also where the most useful conversation begins.
Everyone had a part in the horror
By the end, I saw failures throughout the story.
The school’s leadership seemed caught between accountability and protecting its reputation. Carrie’s mother treated control as protection, leaving little room for her daughter to develop independence. Students used their own pain, insecurity, or desire for acceptance to justify hurting someone else.
Their responsibilities were different. So were the consequences of their choices.
But there were so many opportunities for someone to interrupt what was happening.
Carrie may have had the supernatural powers, but humiliation, silence, control, and looking the other way did plenty of damage on their own.
That is the part that follows us out of a horror story and into ordinary life.
Most of us will never encounter telekinesis. We will encounter a cruel joke everyone laughs at, a concern someone dismisses, or a person whose distress is inconvenient to acknowledge.
What do we do then?
How do we hold pain and accountability together?
I keep coming back to a few practices.
1. Ask what belongs to you—and what does not.
Being mistreated does not mean you caused or deserved it. Someone else’s cruelty is their responsibility.
Reflection means asking where you have choices now. Is there a boundary you need? Support you have been hesitant to seek? A response you need to repair? Have you stayed silent while someone else was harmed?
Accountability becomes more useful when we can name a specific action instead of deciding that we are simply “the problem.”
2. Make room for reflection without turning it into self-punishment.
There is a difference between “I did something harmful” and “I am beyond help.”
The first leaves room to apologize, repair, and change. The second can leave us stuck defending ourselves or drowning in shame.
Ask: What happened? Who was affected? What can I do differently? Then give those answers somewhere to go.
3. Turn insight into a supported next step.
Knowing what needs to change and feeling able to change it are two different things.
That next step might be a conversation, a boundary, an apology, or finding a therapist who can help you work through what keeps repeating. A trusted friend may help you follow through.
Choose someone who can care about your pain and be honest about your behavior. We need people who can do both.
4. Support someone’s voice without feeding their revenge.
The character positioned as Carrie’s friend left me thinking about what it means to offer support while carrying unresolved pain of your own.
Are we helping someone make their own choices? Or recruiting them into a conflict we have not addressed ourselves?
Supporting someone does not mean encouraging every reaction. Sometimes it sounds like: “I believe you. What happened was wrong. Let’s think about what will protect you and what might cause more harm.”
Listen before the pain gets louder
I do not think women should have to become endlessly patient, pleasant, or easy to understand before their pain deserves attention.
I also believe we are responsible for what we do with that pain.
Learning to listen to ourselves with care can help us recognize when we need support, when we need to speak, and when we owe someone a change in behavior. Offering that same care to others means staying curious even when their feelings are uncomfortable.
We should not need a catastrophe to become interested in how someone is doing.
During election season, what helps you stay compassionate while also holding a level of accountability?
I’d love to hear a practice, a boundary, or a moment that changed your perspective-feel free to share below.