Pain vs. suffering

One of the most common problems of clients is to discard pain as emotion. It should not be there, because it is pain, and we need to avoid it because it is bad. Because pain means something is not going well. And for the most part, they are right, especially if we break our arm we should probably go to a doctor (no medical advice here but I'd guess). Similar strategies we put on to emotional pain though, far more often than we notice.

And I think sometimes avoidance is fine, really, cause you can't be confronting everything all the time. I think you would go crazy then; let's say being focused selectively and consciously is an important skill, which involves focusing on one thing and therefore de-focusing another one, if that is an emotion, thought etc. But sometimes avoidance becomes our default and is on all the time when something is uncomfortable. And then we enter a slightly different territory: suffering.

First of all: Pain is unavoidable. Because we can't control everything in our lives, because we share this earth with others that are not us (and that on top of that have their own free will…). Things happen, we get broken up with, people pass away (how dare they), you make mistakes or just stupid decisions. Resisting and avoiding this very natural emotion (of pain in the form of grief, loss, anger….) can become self-generated suffering. It is like throwing good money after bad when you try to save your 50 bucks in the casino that you have just lost and you lose 100 again. Felt like you were doing something, but you actually just delayed the pain hitting you in the moment to hitting you 20 minutes later (with a bit of hope in these 20 min as the cherry on the shit pile).

Suffering includes layering a story on top of a story in your head about what has happened, why it happened to you, how unfair that is, instead of being with it and facing the reality. It includes: avoiding decisions that are important that you will never get certainty for, delaying confrontations or conflicts with close people, doing what you know is right, standing up for yourself, setting boundaries and more. Instead of doing so, you basically dive deep into suffering, replay things a hundred times, ruminate, self-destruct, digging overly and unnecessarily in the past without intention, replaying regret, and of course: avoid. And then, some time later: you have more of what you already tried to avoid, and more suffering is coming etc.

I cannot count the amount of clients (and honestly, everyone has been there, me included), when trying to avoid causing pain or feeling pain (which is similar; causing pain is feeling pain for many) and it turns into bad moments later on in life. You didn't confront your partner about inhaling your whole ice cream behind your back and it comes to bite you back as resentment, instead of carrying out the feeling as anger and upset in the moment and letting it go (and then learning your lesson of hiding your ice cream next time better).

We have much more power than we think about it. We cannot always decide about what is going to happen to us, in the good or bad, but we can decide to relate differently to our pain if it should be there. Which can be so hard sometimes, especially when something hurtful has happened. But allowing it to ourselves shows us our capacity and resilience, and gives us a lot of freedom back. It gives us trust to handle it better in future and to trust other people to handle pain as well (which decreases our own fear of causing pain to others, through setting a boundary for example, as we know it is part of life and can be endured).

I guess the summary is: let yourself feel it, act according to your values and do not involve yourself in stories your mind is trying to make up.