Category: Suffering

Categories
Acceptance Avoidance contingency Coping strategies Feel Better Impermanence Meaning Suffering Transcendence Worry

The Three Characteristics/Marks/Seals of Existence: A Practice

I’ve been thinking recently about a buddhist notion that all beings (including us), and in fact all phenomena, are marked by three characteristics. These are sometimes called the three marks of existence, or three seals: suffering (or some kind of “shortfall”), impermanence, and contingency. 

Here’s an acronym to remember them by: SIC! 

I’ve deliberately chosen SIC as it sounds a bit like “sick” when said aloud (as in debilitated, disordered, down in body and mind), but it’s also the word we use in a text to indicate a phrase or quote that looks dodgy but is in fact is exactly what was printed or said. As in when The Donald comments on Boris becoming PM:

“Good man. He’s tough and he’s smart. They’re saying ‘Britain Trump’ (sic). They call him ‘Britain Trump,’ (sic) and there’s people saying that’s a good thing.” 

The idea, as with all buddhist ideas, is that if we can really explore and understand on an experiential level these three characteristics, learn how to recognise them as they arise in our moment to moment perceptions rather than just as conceptual symbols on a screen or in a book, this exploration can greatly help us to live our lives in a more unencumbered way, with more peace and grace. So are you willing to do a bit of exploring? 

If so, here’s a quick overview of the three characteristics and then the simple, no-fuss practice. 

SUFFERING

Dukkha, the pali word for this concept, is often translated as “suffering” or “discomfort”, but I’ve always liked the notion that its etymology can be traced back to something like “a painful, bumpy ride due to a poorly-fitting axle hole in the centre of a wagon wheel”. This is the buddhist version of “life’s a bitch…”. 

Perhaps a better translation might be something along the lines of shortfall or insufficiency: that unsatisfactory or peevish disgruntlement we experience, whenever anything in our experience falls short of our expectations. Once you start noticing the extent to which there is a shortfall between what we expect or desire, and what we actually get, you start to see this phenomenon everywhere, and in everything, a true mark of existence.

It pops up even in ostensibly good times. Let’s say I’m on a beautiful country walk, as I was yesterday alongside my trusty doggy companion Max, and for the most part having a great time. Yet even woven into that walk there were countless example of dukkha. Here are just a few:

  1. On my way to my destination, I find a quiet part of the train carriage to sit in so that I can read. At the next stop, a noisy family gets on the train, sits next to me and yaps away for the next 40 minutes.
  2. The weather app forecasts clear skies, no rain. So I don’t take any rain gear with me. For the five hours I’m out, it’s overcast for three quarters of the time, and rains off-and-on for an hour.
  3. I find a mobile phone in the middle of a forest which someone appears to have dropped. Even though the screen is locked, I manage to text a friend of the phone’s owner, and then agree to walk back to a pub I’d passed earlier, to return the phone. Twenty minutes later, the phone’s owner thanks me in brief, somewhat tepid fashion, the kind of thank you you might expect if you’d just told someone their shoelaces were untied. Effulgent, enthusiastic appreciation was what I’d expected for my do-goodery, thinking how I’d feel if someone reunited me with the expensive handheld computer on which all my unbacked-up photos, as well as the rest of my life was stored. A damp squib thank you was not what I’d planned for, but it’s what I got. My mind of course immediately stepped in to tell me that next time I should just leave the bloody phone in the forest, and let them find it themselves.
  4. I stop halfway through my walk to feast on a few handfuls of delicious wild blackberries, picked straight from the bush. Half an hour later, my stomach is distended and tight, and for the rest of the walk, I feel queasy and uncomfortable. Either the rain (see point 2) didn’t sufficiently wash off the bugs and bacteria, or maybe the high levels of salicylate in the fruit are causing me a few hours of stomach cramps. Either way, dukkha! 
  5. After 12 miles of walking, I get into the station at Cowden, only to find that the 8 o’clock train has been cancelled, and the next train into London is an hour away. The stomach cramps are just starting to abate and I am feeling hungry. At this rate, I will now have to wait until 10:30 for dinner. 

And on it goes. These are not huge traumatic forms of suffering, just the usual, everyday-dukkha, the niggles, the jolts, the stuff that might easily be generated if you just stop reading this sentence and sit quietly for a moment. 

Try it. It won’t take long before your mind points out some kind of shortfall, some kind of gap between how you’d like things to be, and how they are, whether it’s in relation to your mood, or body, or relationships, or surroundings, or the tasks you’ve taken on today. Non-stop dukkha is how it goes, I’m afraid. But keep on reading for some suggestions of what to do with that. 

IMPERMANENCE

I’ve written more fully about impermanence here, but let’s stay with that walk and notice a few marks of impermanence along the way: 

  1. My energy levels wax and wane, as do my levels of bodily discomfort throughout the walk. There is not a single emotion, or sensation held within my body or mind that endures for the length of this 5-hour ramble. The majority of my perceptions lasts for seconds at a time, some like the blackberry-reaction endure for over an hour. But even there, the amount of physical discomfort and the ways in which it manifests (queasiness, stomach cramps, trapped wind) shifts every few seconds from noticeably uncomfortable, to background “noise”.
  2. The walk itself is impermanent, as is everything I come into contact with on the walk. While I am on it, I am fully engaged with the totality of the experience flooding into my senses: sights, sounds, interoceptive responses. But writing about it a day later, it may well have been a dream. Apart from a handful of memories, I cannot bring anything of the walk back with me into this moment. None of it lasts, neither good nor bad. 
  3.  My disgruntlement at the phone-person lasts, but only due to the words above re-awakening and re-minding me of the gap in what I expected and what I got. But in a few days time, I will have forgotten this incident too. And at some point, there’s a good chance that it will entirely disappear from my memory. 

CONTINGENCY

In buddhist literature, this is sometimes referred to as no-self, or non-self, but my understanding of this is that although we see ourselves as separate, self-determined entitites, our experience of the world is inextricably, at every moment of the day, shaped and circumscribed by our environment and life-context, as well as our life course up to this point, the weather, the people who populate our existence, and a million other factors that are not even a conscious part of our awareness. 

If you start to think about yourself in this contingent way, you soon realise that the story-of-me that we tell ourselves (here I am, going on a walk, on a Saturday afternoon, learning a poem, listening to an audiobook, enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells around “me”) is actually something much more mysterious and shaped-by-everything-that-is-not-me, which is to say shaped by my circumstances and surroundings rather than emerging directly out of my body and mind. 

Perceptually, a good analogy for this might be something like the Escheresque Rubin’s vase, where figure and ground get muddled the more we pay attention to the image: are the faces made possible by the vase, or the vase by the faces? 

Of course each shapes the other. Our environment impacts us in ways that we are often hardly aware of. After walking in drizzle and overcast weather for a while, when the rain abates and the sun comes out, I become a different person: lighter, more joyful, if only for a few paces before Impermanence sets in again, and I shift into another way of being. 

And this doesn’t just happen for us. Yesterday, I noticed that even the birds are “moved” or shaped by something as simple as sunlight. A moment before the sun came out, all was quiet. But as soon as sunshine broke through the clouds, rapturous birdsong rang out of the forest that I’d just passed through, sonically matching the uplift in mood that I’d been feeling, and who is to say we didn’t all feel a very similar buoyancy. Maybe even the trees, grass, and insects therein. For a few seconds, bathed in sunlight, we all became slightly different entities. 

—

WORKING WITH ALL OF THIS: A NOTING PRACTICE

So if you’re broadly speaking in agreement with this theory that all existence can be usefully understood as marked by three interlinked characteristics or seals, which we can either fight against or try to work with as best we can, how to make this happen? 

Here’s the practice, a very simple one that I’ve been trying out recently. Every time you notice some form of psychological or physical suffering, see if you can “seal it” with one of the above characteristics of existence: SUFFERING (aka distress/deficiency/disappointment), IMPERMANENCE, and CONTINGENCY. Often, all three are present, in which case you can designate what you’re experiencing with the SIC triple whammy. “Yeah, that’s some serious SIC there, dude” (or however you choose to acknowledge the presence of SIC).

Whichever of the three you notice, just label it, using one of three characteristics, and then see if that allows you to live more in accord with your environment and circumstance or not.

The three characteristics of existence in the order  I’ve presented them also perhaps adhere to the most frequent ways in which the mind becomes aware of them in consciousness. 

Some form of distress or unsatisfactoriness is usually picked up very quickly by the problem-finding/problem-solving mind as a form of SUFFERING  (irritation, disappointment, deficiency), or SHORTFALL: whether it’s having to stand in a long queue at Sainsbury’s, or not getting the response we might feel we need from a loved one. 

We notice this first characteristic right away, because that’s usually the part that hurts. And it hurts for a good reason: our minds are saying “Pay attention to this. This is not in sync with your wishes or needs. Maybe we can make it better or easier for you in some way?”

And yes, sometimes this problem-finding/problem-solving stance of the mind is genuinely helpful. Maybe I can find a quieter carriage of the train to read in, maybe I can find shelter under a tree when it begins to rain. But what to do when that suffering or shortfall cannot be eradicated, or avoided, or controlled in some way? What to do when your stomach is cramping and you’ve still got 6 miles to walk before you reach the train station – other than acknowledge what’s going on, and that there is  clearly a gap between what we want or were expecting, and what we actually get. Just acknowledge that, no more, no less, maybe with a simple word like “suffering” or “unsatisfactory” or “shortfall” – whatever works for you. 

I quite like using the pali word dukkha, just because it’s short and a tad brutal: the DU might as well be doo-doo, the KHA a stone in your shoe, or something worse (a scorpion?). Every time I say that word, it’s like acknowledging that life is often this way: you’re tramping along, just trying to get by, or get on with your environment or other people, and suddenly you step in a pile of shit that also harbours a scorpion’s nest. Welcome to the human condition.

Often, the recognition of SUFFERING, requires an accompanying recognition of the other three marks of existence, which are usually to be found somewhere in the mix. At times IMPERMANENCE is what we perceive first, either with or without DUKKHA. When my stomach gripes finally abated, I noted the  impermanence even of that painful phenomenon, and this was accompanied by the opposite of DUKKHA: SUKKHA (happiness, pleasure, ease)! Which of course only lasted for a few seconds before my mind went on to find fault with something else in my surroundings. 

Simply noting all of this and trying not to take it all so personally (CONTINGENCY noting helps a lot with this) can ease things a bit, or even substantially. Why not give it a go – you’ve got nothing to lose – and tell me what you think if you give this a try.

Categories
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Anxiety By Heart Defusion Depression Feel Better Living A Valued Life Patience Refuge Ritual Self-care Self-compassion Strategies and tools Suffering Worry

April Fools?

In many ways, I love being the butt of someone’s joke, I love to be duped and fooled. Love magic tricks, especially of the Derren Brown variety that always reveal something profound to us about ourselves and others. As well as entertaining us in the process of fooling us.

I love Penn & Teller’s Fool Us. I particularly love it when those two Great Foolers themselves get fooled. And I love it when I am able to make a fool of myself (of my often-times pompous notions and ideas, at least when I’m defused enough to see the pomposity and ego-driven nature of them). And if done with love, and a kind of, hey-we’re-all-bozos-on-this-bus cameraderie, I can even enjoy it when others make a fool of me.

But I also feel uncomfortable when I see people being laughed at or mocked, especially if they are unable to defend themselves. I hate to see defenceless animals and children being treated unkindly, or made fools of.  I also don’t like the more cruel spectrum of practical jokes that shock and alarm, or even really dismay people on this day where we celebrate all things foolish and fooling. Would I eradicate the day itself if I had the power to do so? Never. Because life is a series of April Fools’ days you might say, a constant series of small and large practical jokes sent to challenge us and teach us. Here are just two of my favourites:

-We grow up in a culture that tells us romantic love is the be-all and end-all in terms of living a rich, full, and meaningful life. And then when we get into a relationship, and at some level we start to feel duped by that narrative. So we fight, bitch and moan at our other halves, because we’ve all bought into those lovely, lovely lies of Pretty Woman or Sleepless in Seattle. When instead of the happy-go-lucky romcom we get Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Her,  or Fatal Attraction, perhaps even The Shining, don’t we feel like fools? And when we’re not in relationships, we feel outcast or alienated from this Core Romantic Narrative pumped into our minds through everything we watch and read 24/7, embedded in every song we’ve ever listened to.

April Fools y’all!

-Or what about the reality slap, that wonderful term created by Russ Harris to describe the gap between what we have and what we want: of jumping through hoop after arduous hoop (academic, interviews, various forms of social ingratiation) to get that prestigious job, or car, or amazing holiday, or nice house -whatever we think might bring us happiness- only to find ourselves miserable with the glamourous trappings we’ve worked so hard to attain.

April Fools y’all!

And by y’all, I include myself first and foremost in that dupery.

THE ULTIMATE APRIL FOOL

But the ultimate April Fool is the fool our minds make of us on a daily basis. Never out of pure malice – for how can a lump of meat, the brain, sitting between our ears bear malice towards us? Rather, as a function of their problem-solving, pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding programming. Every time my mind tells me that the reason so-and-so didn’t respond to my text message is because a) they don’t care about me or what I’ve written to them, or b) they don’t fundamentally like me, or whatever other narrative they come up with, and I buy into that and suffer. Again: April Fools y’all!

Every time my mind singles out something I don’t like in someone else and then tells me that’s a reason to hold that whole person in contempt – April Fool!

Every time my mind says: that pleasurable thing you want (the extra glass of wine, the seventh chocolate digestive, the checking-of-Twitter or firing off an email ten minutes into a walk, or a yoga session, or some meditation) DO IT NOW – April Fool!

I don’t know about you, but my mind makes a fool of me dozens of times a day. 

What to do? Recently I’ve gone back to doing a particular kind of meditation practice, both formally (as in a sitting practice), but more so informally, which I’ve found really helpful with my foolish mind. It might surprise you, as it doesn’t involve trying to argue with your mind, saying to it “No mind, you’re wrong when you say that your [boss, brother-in-law, mother, father, colleague – choose where applicable] is NOT a [insert choicest, most damning criticism of that individual]”.

Arguing with our minds doesn’t work because the mind is the best barrister ON THIS PLANET! It has hundreds of files, videos, taped phone calls, enough to fill 256 gigabyte’s worth of memory on a standard laptop demonstrating the ways in which that person or situation has said or done something foolish, fallible, unfair, unreasonable, and just generally shitty in a bid to hurt or upset you. And maybe they have. This is not to downplay the foolish, fallible, unfair, unreasonable, and just generally shitty things we do and say to each other. I have been a veritable font of foolish, fallible, unfair, unreasonable, and generally shitty words and actions to other human beings in my misguided and suffering mind-states. And I have also been privy to other people doing some of that around me too.

But if you even attempt to argue with your mind about all of this, it will win. It will prove you wrong, and itself right over and over again. And you will then be left in whatever state your mind gets you into when it plays and replays those particularly juicy, particularly painful tidbits, as verifiably true. So that doesn’t work (at least in my experience – has it ever worked for you?) – that will just lead to more suffering, which is something we want to try and reduce, right? I do. 

Apart from defusion, when our minds start getting Practical Joker/Tormentor on us, what else can we do? A clue might lie in one of my favourite poems of all time, one I know by heart:

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

Man! (Also: woman!) Isn’t that the reality-gap/slap encapsulated in one small stanza?! This bears repeating:

What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

Also:

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

PRACTISING KINDNESS

My cynical/judgemental/critical brain sometimes can be a bit hard on kindness. “Hallmark card sentimentality,” it sneers. And I don’t argue with it when it says that. Yes, Dave, I say (I call that part of my brain, Dave), yes, that’s one way of looking at it, thank you.

You could say, not that I’d get Dave to agree with me on this, that a kindness practice rather than the word itself or a nice Instagram quote on kindness (the word/quote lasts a millisecond, hardly registers in the mind at all) is a “medicine” for all those inadvertently unkind parts of ourselves.

Inadvertently unkind because they are trying to be helpful in their sometimes heavy-handed suggestions, comparisons, judgements, lectures and sermons. They don’t realise that, just like our parents and teachers and political figures (at times), they only further torment or make fools of us rather than being useful or helpful. Their comparisons, judgements, lectures and sermons only make us suffer more not less.

A kindness practice, ideally done on a daily basis, in the same way we might take some vitamins or brush our teeth daily, works at the very roots of our mind’s magic tricks, the illusions and delusions it feeds us to keep us safe, but which also separate us from the world, other people, and often times our own deeply held values and beliefs. When I remember to do some of the kindness practices below, it often feels like an almost selfish pleasure, in that the gain for me is huge (over time) but also doesn’t hurt anyone else. In fact might make their challenging, suffering lives a tad lighter too.

A win-win is always great. Bingo! Or “Yahtzee” as one of my kindness gurus, Dan Savage, will sometimes exclaim when he suggests a win-win outlook for his suffering callers. Dan Savage is also a great example of how you don’t need to be all whispery and quiet, all holier-than-thou to practice kindness. His Savage Love podcast is the kindest advice show on the planet, even though Dan is often scabrously blunt and pragmatic, but his advice and wisdom and good humour is always delivered with kindness and a desire to be helpful.That’s the kind of kindness I aspire to.

So here’s a challenge for us in our bid to become kind in a way that some of your Kindness Warriors* are kind.

  1. If you’d like to do a formal practice (I’m aiming to do this once a day for the whole of April) I’d recommend this 15 minute guided meditation from Russ Harris. I think it’s structured in a way to really get us into a kinder space towards ourselves and others, without being sentimental or “spiritual” in a cloying/annoying way (although finding our mind’s response to sentimentality and spirituality annoying, would also give us another way to be kind to ourselves): https://www.dropbox.com/s/xndq9j00b8zpoqa/Kindness%20Practice.mp3?dl=0

2.  Informally, the next time you go for a walk with your whirring, chattering mind, focus your attention on random strangers passing you on the pavement, and then instead of the usual stuff our minds do (commenting, ignoring other people, feeling intimidated by their “otherness”) silently direct some of these well-wishing phrases to them in a mantra-like loop:

“May you be peaceful, healthy, content.”

“May you experience love and kindness.”

“May your life be rich, and full, and meaningful.”

It may feel a bit weird when you start doing it, but notice what happens to the mind if you push past the cynicism and boredom of your Inner-Dave.

3.  Start learning by heart the whole of, or a part of the poem Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye, or some poem that has a similar kind vibe that speaks to you. Maybe Hopkins’ “My own heart let me more have pity on”, or Pat Schneider’s “The Patience of Ordinary Things”, or Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”. Recite these poems by heart when you feel low or anxious.

4. Think of something you’re struggling with at the moment. Close your eyes, maybe even place a hand on your head or chest, and imagine someone kind that you know, or even a pet, saying some simple but kind words to you in sympathy. Whilst writing this today I’m strugging with a stonking head cold and am feeling fairly grotty. I had my kind person, and Max, say to me: “I’m sorry you’re feeling so crap today. Go easy on yourself, give yourself a bit of cosseting, Steve.”

If you try out any of these, please do tell me how they go in our next session together.

—

*My kindness warriors, also my ideal dinner party guests, just off the top of my head: Dan Savage, The Obamas, David Mitchell, K D Lang, Stephen Fry, the Queer Eye dudes, Russell Brand,  Adam Phillips, Caroline Lucas, Steven Hayes, Stevie Wonder, Penn & Teller, Mary Oliver, Ajahn Sucitto, and many many folk from various spiritual traditions. Also, even more so, all those people you wouldn’t recognise if I named them. My clients, each and every one of them: all sensitive bods, and all incredibly kind people. My parents and other relatives, even with all their flaws, their sometimes foolish, fallible, unfair, unreasonable, and maybe even shitty and unkind ways at times. And what about that guy who stopped his car when he saw little Max, my dogchild, running in the middle of a busy road after he went AWOL in Fryent Park a few years back? Or the kind elderly lady and her husband who always stop to say a few kind words about my garden when they see me outside weeding over the weekend. The list goes on and on. As does this one]

Categories
100 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ACT Defusion Feel Better Pain Suffering worry

PAUSING FOR PAIN (BUT NOT FOR SUFFERING)

When were feeling bad and wanting to feel better, perhaps the most important distinction we can make for ourselves is in keeping clear the difference between pain and suffering. The difference can be summarised in the following adage which you may have come across at some point:

“Pain is inevitable and unavoidable, but suffering is optional.”

A quick click around the internet tells me that this idea lies at the heart of 12-step work, is quasi-attributable to the Buddha, and even comes up for how the author Haruki Murakami deals with physical pain when he’s running marathons. But what does it really mean? And how can this distinction help us deal with (unavoidable, inevitable) pain better, whilst suffering less?

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT NEEDLES?

Maybe an example will help. I hate needles. I’m probably not alone in this, but at times this aversion has verged on a kind of phobia. And like any phobia, it has often got in the way of me doing the things I need to do to take care of myself. Like going to the dentist for regular check-ups. In fact, I didn’t go to the dentist from 2010-2017, because…I hate needles! Following on from that rule I’ve set for myself (Thou shall hate needles!) I didn’t go to the dentist until the pain of toothache overcame my unwillingness to tolerate the pain of a needle being pushed into my gums.

Why am I so phobic to needles? As far as I can tell, there are two reasons for this: biological and historical. Another way at looking at this is NATURE (biology) and NURTURE (life experiences, especially at an impressionable age):

  1. BIOLOGICAL REASONS:  I am a Highly Sensitive Person (if you’re reading this, you probably are too!), which means I feel stuff really intensely. Physical stuff, emotional stuff, it really doesn’t matter. When I am in the dentist chair, I often have to tell them to double up on the Lidocaine because a normal dose of the local anesthetic often doesn’t numb my highly reactive nervous system enough and I’m left wincing not only when the drug is injected, but during the drilling and scraping thereafter. 
  2. PERSONAL/HISTORICAL REASONS: When I was about 8 years old, I had a rampant outbreak of warts on my legs. My mother took me to the doctor who proceeded to inject and burn off some of the bigger warts in that unfussy, sorry-mate-just-doing-my-job way that medical professionals get on with things. And it hurt! But more than just hurting, the shock of pain, and the shock of not being given enough time before, or after, or during the intervention to process what was going on, or prepare for it seemed to really affect me. This combined with the insouciant attitude of the doctor, gave my brain a strong negative rule to follow when it came to needles (Steve Hates Needles). This is called classical conditioning: where our brains make the link between one thing (needles) and another thing (feeling overwhelmed, and scared) and forms a Life Rule for us to follow: “Never ever, ever, ever let anyone poke you in the arm, leg, or any part of your body with a needle. Ever. Again.” Often these rules are unconscious (“Needles are EVIL!”), we don’t even know we’re following them, but we are. Some of our Life Rules work really well (“Saying please and thank you and being kind is NOBLE!”). But often, even good rules can cause unnecessary problems for us. Having the rule or belief that Needles are Evil isn’t going to serve me that well because needles, as with other instances of pain (emotional and physical), are inevitable and unavoidable. Unless you’re Superman.

So I know why I’m phobic (nature + nurture), and I also know that my phobic, rule-making brain was given an extra boost in 2009 when I had some root canal treatment which wasn’t much fun, and probably just reinforced the Dentists/Needles are Evil story in my head. Knowing where my stories come from though doesn’t especially help me, although it does give me interesting things to think about. And the same goes for other pain too, including emotional pain. Which is why explanations for our pain are useful and interesting, and have their place in the process of reducing suffering, but they often don’t help that much with the job of limiting the amount of suffering we experience. In fact we might even make matters worse for ourselves by creating a kind of “story” around needles, or someone’s text, or why we didn’t get that last job we interviewed for, and that story can send us into a suffering tailspin.

But hang on, didn’t me and Haruki Murakami say that Suffering, unlike Pain, can be reduced, limited, or even dissolved? How?

MORE (PAINFUL) NEEDLES, AND SOME SUFFERING

Let’s look at how suffering works. My problem with needles is, if I really think carefully about it, a Suffering Problem, rather than a pain one.

Let me explain. If I were to dig the fingernail of my right index finger into the back of my left hand, or the crook of my arm, and really push it into the skin, I would feel the kind of pain a needle might deliver to my nervous system. And if I push harder, I might feel even more pain than a needle could ever do to me. And guess what (try it for yourself if you don’t believe me): this is all perfectly fine and dandy, not really a problem at all. Of course it doesn’t feel great. It’s uncomfortable, it’s painful, but it’s just that: pain. So maybe it’s not Pain that’s stopping me from going to the dentist or getting my bloods taken, maybe it’s more an issue of SUFFERING.

What’s the difference? Pain as I’ve shown above is all about…pain. Physical pain in all its manifestations, as well psychological pain, the emotional pain of not getting our needs met from other people, or the world in some shape or form. That’s Painful too. If you turn to me after I’ve just told you something about myself that concerns me (e.g. “I’m really scared of needles”) and you say “Come on, Steve, don’t be such a snowflake”, then I’ll probably experience a good dose of psychological pain. Your reply would be painful for me because we all have core needs such as the need for love, care, and understanding. If you’ve responded to something I’ve said in a way that seems dismissive then I’m probably going to feel a good amount of pain. But no suffering. Not yet. Although it won’t take long. A couple of nanoseconds usually.

Here’s how I suffer, and perhaps this is how you suffer too. I take the pain of your dismissal, the pain of you not being sensitive to my anxiety, of not validating me and my issues with needles, and I add stuff to that. The stuff I add (often unconsciously) is Suffering. 

Non-suffering pain might look like this: “Ouch! So my worry is not something you can relate to, or perhaps show empathy towards. And that’s painful because my need for understanding and validation is not being met. So: ouuuuuch!”

This is pain, but still no suffering. Just me feeling and acknowledging how painful your comments are to me. But of course our brains are not designed to just experience pain. My brain (your brain also?) will also probably jump into an angry, hurt monologue about your dismissive comment. My defensive (me trying to defend myself because I am in such pain) outburst might sound a bit like this:

 “Well fuck you too and the horse you rode in on! Excuse me for burdening you with my anxiety! Some kind of friend/partner/therapist/parent you are! Doesn’t this prove what I’ve always thought: that it’s fine for you to get upset about stuff and for me to be there for you, but when the tables are turned you’re not able to give me an ounce of basic understanding and compassion.”

Or some version of the above. Maybe a bit less fraught and dramatic. And maybe a great deal more fraught and dramatic if my experience of Suffering has taught me anything.

This is suffering. Suffering is ANYTHING painful our storytelling brains/minds do in response to a painful trigger. Recognising this, we might also wish to forgive our brains/mind for doing this whole suffering routine. We can’t help it! Our brains/minds really thinks that having this reaction, filling our heads and hearts with all these suffering thoughts, rants, images, memories, and retributive urges, is actually going to help us process our pain. What usually happens though is that it only doubles, triples, quadruples the pain we already have. Suffering is the addition of extra (optional) pain to ourselves when we are already in (unavoidable, inevitable) pain. Now, not only am I in pain because my need for understanding, and validation hasn’t been met by you. Now I’m in pain because my brain has spun a very convincing story about how little you care for me. The pain of the Unmet Need, which is painful enough, has become Operatic in its scope for suffering. And suffer I/we do.

SUFFERING IS LANGUAGE/LANGUAGE IS SUFFERING

I suffer because my mind/brain is “designed”  to try and solve internal problems the way it solves external ones. If your front door is jamming, you look at the problem, diagnose why the door is jamming, and then come up with a solution to fix it. The only problem is that internal, existential, emotional issues, don’t respond to our brains Jim-Will-Fix- It strategies in the same way. This is because the most sophisticated technology we have for “fixing” our internal problems or pain is with something called language! All those thoughts, beliefs, internal conversations and monologues, memories, beating ourselves up, threatening to beat others up, could not occur without language. We’re very particular in this way.

Which is why we are the only animals to suffer, but not the only animals to feel pain. When my dog Max is sick because he ate some human turd in the park (true story!), he feels pain. This is the same pain I would feel if I were to eat human turd in the park and be sick afterwards. But there is no suffering accompanying his retching and puking and shitting blood. He doesn’t beat himself up for having eaten the human turd. He doesn’t go into a twisted, blaming rant about the person who decided to defecate in the park rather than walk 500 metres to a toilets at Morrisons Supermarket. He doesn’t get angry at me for not watching him carefully enough, or at the person who relieved themselves under a tree. He feels pain, but there is absolutely no suffering. And when the pain of his mistake has passed, he is as happy as Larry. Bless him.

We however. are completely different animals. We feel the pain of the needle, the pain of someone not responding to a text message in the way we would have liked, the pain of not getting the job we wanted, the pain of having the job we have (if we’re unhappy at work), the pain of getting a low mark on an essay, the pain of seeing the people we want to go out with us swiping left, as well as the thousands of other painful situations, both large and small that fill our lives. And then, on top of that, our story-telling brains ladle a massive helping of Suffering just to make things feel proper awful. Even to the point where the original pain itself is miniscule compared to the ratio of suffering we’re experiencing after the fact.

Pain is crappy, but suffering can feel intolerable. I didn’t go to the dentist for seven years because whenever I thought of the pain of that little needle, I added a big dose of suffering-inducing, language-constructed mental activity, far far worse than the two second pain created by a Lidocaine jab. Instead, my brain fed me over those seven years hundreds if not thousands of excruciatingly painful thoughts, images, memories. All created with language. Here’s just a sample:

I hate needles. I can’t deal with needles. I hate them, and I can’t deal with them.

I can’t face going to the dentist.

Why was Dr Levin so insensitive to my needs when I was 8 years old!?!

Look at the trauma he has left me with! He has incapacitated me in this regard.

Doctors are so insensitive and uncaring. Dentists too. Fuckers.

I blame my mother for not recognising how traumatised I was by the experience.

Why can’t I just get on with it and be less sensitive, like Dad?

I’m such a fucking wuss. I should just man up.

I can’t believe I still haven’t gone to the dentist for a check-up. I’m useless at this stuff.

And here is a sample of the Suffering Images that played for seven years on my Internal YouTube Channel:

Gigantic syringes, gigantic needles, gigantic needles entering my sensitive wee gums, dentist not stopping when I yelp in pain, me yelping in pain, me embarrassing myself by yelping in pain, dentist thinking I’m a wuss for yelping in pain etc.

And that’s just a small sample of my suffering loop. Times that by 1000 and you’re just about getting close to the Hell Realm of me not going to the dentist for seven years. And that’s just the suffering I’m willing to share on a public website to prove my point. That’s just the tip of my iceberg needle. Because pain isn’t the problem. I’ve already proved to myself that I can tolerate a modicum of pain by digging my fingernail into the back of my hand, or the crook of arm. It’s suffering that’s driving me/you/anyone crazy!

Which means that if only we can, when in pain, separate out the pain from the suffering, we might be better placed to experience the unavoidable, inevitable pain of being alive, but without the extra lashings of suffering. That’s the best I think we can aim for: experiencing Pain as cleanly and uncomplicatedly as we can, but dialing back on Suffering! Especially as that’s the only dial we have access to.

Remember: Pain is unavoidable, inevitable (no dial for us to twiddle). Suffering: also somewhat inevitable because of our weird story-telling brains, but much more avoidable and diminishable.

Let’s now look at how to reduce psychological and physical suffering.

 

REDUCING YOUR SUFFERING: THE P.A.U.S.E.

So how do we experience as “cleanly” as possible whatever dose of psychological or physical pain that is next coming our way without getting trapped into having a double dose of suffering alongside it? Here’s a five step process which is easy to do and remember. But it does require practice, until it becomes second nature. Which is where the acronym helps. P.A.U.S.E! P.A.U.S.E. stands for

PAIN

ACKNOWLEDGING & ALLOWING FOR PAIN

UNDERSTANDING/UNMET NEEDS

SUFFERING

ENGAGING WITH OUR PAIN

 

P.A.U.S.E. STEP ONE: P stands for PAIN!

Think of something a situation or a conversation you had with someone, or just something ongoing in your life that is causing you pain. Make a note of your pain on a piece of paper or on your phone.

Here are some examples:

PAIN: Gavin said in a text message that he doesn’t want to see me at the moment.

PAIN: My back’s really hurting at the moment.

PAIN: I haven’t done any work today, just faffed around.

PAIN: I feel like my life isn’t going anywhere.

PAIN: Yesterday I ate too many carbs and sugary things and today I’m feeling like a beached whale.

P.A.U.S.E. STEP TWO: A stands for ACKNOWLEDGING & ALLOWING!

In this step, you set the intention to allow yourself to feel some of this pain without reaching for the jar of suffering to start slathering all extra pain on top. Think for a moment how willing are you right now (out of 10) to just experience the pain as it is, without any additional thoughts, analysis, or “stories” about the pain?

Don’t feel bad if you  discover that your willingness is only about 1/10, as this will also give you an indicator of how strong the pain is, as well as how tenacious our story-telling brains are when it comes to adding lots of thoughts, images, and explanations about our pain. 

We also need to consider that when we are in a lot of pain, and especially if we are very sensitive, our default FIGHT-FLIGHT-FREEZE stress response kicks almost instantaneously, and so we might find ourselves invariably fighting the pain with lots of extra thoughts, internal monologues/rants (FIGHT-STUFF), or just trying to get away from the pain by either numbing or distracting ourselves, or telling ourselves even more stories about the individuals or world that has triggered this pain in us (FLIGHT-STUFF). Sometimes we also freeze up entirely, unable to think or do anything, caught in the pain like a rabbit in the headlamps (FREEZE-STUFF).

So let’s try and not do that, just for a few minutes.

See if you can turn up the dial on your willingness to experience the pain, even just for the five minutes it takes you to do this exercise. Being willing to experience pain without moving into lots of thoughts, analysis, or story about the pain is an incredibly hard thing to do because our brains are designed to respond to pain in the way that brains always respond (via language), but it is also a courageous and wise thing to do as it gives us a chance, even if just for a minute or two, to just take in and process our pain. Before our brains turn it into a Suffering Extravaganza.

So maybe at this point, give yourself a little pat on the back for gently taking offline (to some extent) your highly resistant, won’t shut-up-about-it, default fight-flight-freeze nervous system and storytelling brain, so that you can give all of of your compassionate and available attention to this horrible pain. This is the first step to becoming your own therapist who is there to help you process painful events in your life 24/7. It may take a couple of years of practice, but this is where it all starts.

P.A.U.S.E. STEP THREE: U stands for UNDERSTANDING/UNMET NEEDS

In step three, you offer understanding and compassion to yourself for why you are feeling this way. It’s a tricky step, because often the “why” can take our brains into a place where either we blame others or ourselves. This is why we focus on Unmet Needs in this step (another “U”), because 99.99% of the time, these unmet needs lie at the core of our pain. In fact, I’m so confident of the fact that ALL our psychological and physical pain stems from Unmet Needs that if you can find a painful event in your consciousness that isn’t connected to an Unmet Need, I’ll give you £100.

So come back to the sentence you wrote, and see if you can find the unmet need from this list of core needs:

  1. The need for CERTAINTY and COMFORT: our need to feel in control and to know what’s coming next so we can feel secure. This is also the need for basic comfort, the need to avoid pain and stress, and also to create pleasure and stimulation (physical, mental) for ourselves.
  2. The need for UNCERTAINTY and VARIETY: paradoxically we also need things to be different at times, for there to be surprises in our life (but maybe not too many, and not painful ones, even if unavoidable!)
  3. The need for SIGNIFICANCE: is my life meaningful to me, and am I meaningful to other people?
  4. The need for LOVE and CONNECTION: am I being appreciated, acknowledged, understood, valued by those people I care about. Am I being heard? Are people making space for my self-expression, hearing me out in a way that feels supportive and kind?
  5. The need for GROWTH and CONTRIBUTION: am I growing, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually? Am I able in some way to contribute to other people’s growth and well-being, or to the world in what I say or do?

Invariably your pain will be connected to an Unmet Need, and you can make a note of that underneath your pain.

PAIN: Gavin said in a text message that doesn’t want to see me at the moment.
UNMET NEED: need to be appreciated, accepted understood by others (LOVE and CONNECTION)

PAIN: My back’s really hurting at the moment
UNMET NEED: the need for certainty and physical comfort

PAIN: I haven’t done any work today, just faffed around
UNMET NEED: the need for SIGNIFICANCE and meaning, also GROWTH and CONTRIBUTION

PAIN: I feel like my life isn’t going anywhere
UNMET NEED: The need for SIGNIFICANCE, GROWTH and CONTRIBUTION

PAIN: Yesterday I ate too many carbs and sugary things and today I’m feeling like a beached whale
UNMET NEED: the need for certainty and physical comfort

If you can’t find the unmet need that is foundational to your pain, ask yourself this question: “What do I need at the moment? What would make me feel better? That is often a way of discovering your Unmet Need.”

When you have found the Unmet Need that is shining a particularly glaring spotlight on your pain, this is also a good time to see if you can find a little self-compassion for your pain-afflicted self. Maybe just calling to mind the notion that because these needs are universal (we all have them), the fact that you are in pain at the moment is invariably because this need is not being met. And that is COMPLETELY understandable and OK. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT (no matter what your Inner Critic tells you). You might even want to say that to yourself a couple of times: “It’s not my fault for feeling this pain. It’s really not my fault.” I would also be in pain if that need was not being met for me, and so would that person who perhaps triggered your pain, if the pain stems from a relational issue, as many of our painful moments do.

Often when we are in pain, the pain can be accompanied by a strong Inner Critic who tells us that we shouldn’t be feeling this way, that it is our fault, or that there’s something wrong with us for being so uptight about whatever we’re struggling with. Pausing to focus on Unmet Needs can help us to see that our pain is not only natural and normal, but that it is wholly unavoidable and inevitable. If a need is not met, there will invariably be pain of some sort. And if you are a sensitive person, there will probably be EVEN MORE PAIN. This is just a law of our (human) universe rather than some deficiency in you, or some blameworthy lack in the person or thing that triggered your pain. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. Really. It isn’t. 

P.A.U.S.E. STEP FOUR: S stands for SUFFERING!

Now here’s the fun part. Ish.

Sit back and watch (mindfully, jotting down on the same piece of paper) the ways in which your Storytelling Brain begins to fill your head and heart with Suffering Thoughts, Suffering Internal Monologues and Conversations; Suffering Images, Suffering Memories, even Suffering Intentions (which is to say: intentions to do something that will probably just cause us more suffering).

PAIN: Gavin said in a text message that doesn’t want to see me at the moment.
UNMET NEED: need to be appreciated, accepted understood by others (LOVE and CONNECTION)
SUFFERING: How could he be so cruel? Doesn’t he realise what this is going to do to me? (SUFFERING THOUGHT); “I can’t believe you’re doing this! After all the times I’ve been there for you! After all the kindness and care, and consideration I’ve shown towards you and your struggles, and you shut down like this when I’m now struggling (SUFFERING INTERNAL MONOLOGUE/CONVO); Him Just Getting On With His Day, Laughing, Having Fun, Not Even Sparing Me A Single Thought (SUFFERING IMAGE); the two of us connecting and getting on (SUFFERING MEMORY); “Well fuck him, I’m going email him and tell him what I think about him. Or maybe I’ll just let him stew – don’t respond, stop engaging with him” (SUFFERING INTENTION).

Here’s another one:

PAIN: My back’s really hurting at the moment
UNMET NEED: the need for CERTAINTY and COMFORT
SUFFERING: Why me? What have I done to deserve this? There are people in their eighties who are relatively free from pain – it’s so unfair (SUFFERING THOUGHT); “You want me to sit with this?!? You want me to sit like a little Buddha and just focus on the sensations in my body?!? YOU SIT WITH IT!” (SUFFERING INTERNAL MONOLOGUE/CONVO WITH THERAPIST/FRIEND/MEDITATION TEACHER); Pain Driving Me To The Point Where I Just Go Crazy and Throw Myself Off Hornsey Lane Bridge (SUFFERING IMAGE); remembering myself pain-free, without a care in the world (SUFFERING MEMORY); If I don’t have some let up from this constant pain, I’m going to throw myself off Hornsey Lane Bridge! (SUFFERING INTENTION).

Once you’ve done this for a while with a particular painful event you will notice that your suffering thoughts, images, internal conversations, and intentions have a somewhat limited repertoire. This is because the intrinsic plots of our storytelling brain are really just a series of variations on a theme. What is important in this step of the P.A.U.S.E. is to intervene in some way with the the Suffering Thought, Internal Conversation, Image, Memory, or Intention, and not just let it continue to loop itself over and over again, going deeper and deeper into the Suffering Story until you are well and truly suffering. Instead: make a simple note of what your brain is doing (“Ah, Suffering Thought…Ah, Suffering Internal Conversation…Ah Suffering Image…Ah, Suffering Memory…Ah, Suffering Intention – thank you brain.”)

And then. Stop.

Of course your brain will probably ignore you and keep on spinning its stories. So you then make another gentle note of how the invitation to suffer is being delivered in the shape of a THOUGHT, an IMAGE/VIDEO, an INTERNAL CONVERSATION or MONOLOGUE, a MEMORY, or INTENTION, and then once again, you say: ENOUGH! STOP!

You don’t need to be harsh or hard on yourself, but just willing to interrupt yourself (your brain) in the way that you are able to interrupt (if you choose) someone who is relentlessly bombarding you with THOUGHTS or IMAGES or INTERNAL CONVERSATIONS, or MEMORIES, or INTENTIONS that are making you suffer. If all of that stuff was being pumped out of your television set and you were getting no joy or pleasure from it, you would switch it off. We can’t switch off our brains, but we can interrupt whatever is being broadcast to us.

You can devise your own way of doing this, or we can talk more about it together. I quite like to use the word “stop” or “enough”. So if you were a fly on the wall, you would hear me talking to my brain like this:

“Ah, suffering Thought! Stop!…………Ah, that’s now a suffering image, enough! …….. Suffering Monologue, stop! Focus on the pain. What’s the Unmet Need? Feel that pain, just that. ………Suffering Monologue. Enough! Ah, now a Memory. Suffering. Enough.”

Sometimes, when my brain is really set on suffering, and I’m doing something which doesn’t require my full attention, so that my brain can focus entirely on the suffering story, I might need to note and say stop/enough again and again and again. The STOP is especially important when our Suffering Minds are trying to get us to carry out some Actions (revenge, rebuttal, rehash). A Suffering Mind is so skilled at finding ways to convince us that writing an angry email or text will really help us to suffer less, that often, before we know it, we end up doing the very thing that will only make us suffer more. In my experience, lashing out and blaming another human being for the ways they have triggered in me pain, only makes me suffer more. Because then I have to deal with either the anxiety of how they will respond, or the unpleasantness of their defensive words, or whatever their Suffering Brain spins the story to try and make it better for themselves.  

Of course your brain might obstinately refuse to stop suffering. And that’s fine too. Because as long as you are aware that you are having a Suffering Thought, a Suffering Image, a Suffering Internal Conversation/Monologue, Memory, or Intention, you are winning. Because you are at that moment making a distinction between Pain which is inevitable/unavoidable, and Suffering which is not. At the moment in which you ask or demand of your brain to stop making you suffer, you are shifting into a place where you are once again in control of your brain, rather than the other way around, even if it continues to pump out Suffering Thoughts, Images, Internal Conversations, Memories and Intentions. Simply doing the P.A.U.S.E again and again and again,  will eventually reduce suffering. I promise.

But you’ll also need to give some time to the final step, which is:

P.A.U.S.E. STEP FIVE: E is for ENGAGING WITH LIFE

Once we have made space for inevitable/unavoidable Pain, but also respectfully told the Suffering Word Machines that we call “our brains/minds” to stop overloading us in a mistaken belief that it can “fix” our pain, it’s time to engage with something out there in the real world that feels meaningful to us. This also sends an important message to our Suffering Minds that there is life beyond Suffering in some shape or form, nudging it to note the tangible differences between outer experience (life) and our inner-world of images, memories, thoughts, beliefs (i.e. LANGUAGE).

What might this engagement with life look like?

1) Getting On With Value-Driven Activities

All this involves is doing something that is meaningful and has value to you, whilst at the same time being willing to have your Brain/Mind playing the Suffering Channel in the background. So for example, you might go for a walk with our Suffering Mind, or write an article for our website with your Suffering Mind droning on in the background, or do some Yoga with Adriene with your Suffering Minds occasionally interrupting Adriene’s instructions for Side-Reclining Leg Lift with suffering thoughts, images, and internal monologues.

2) Getting On With Healthy(ish) Distractions

Similar to the above but perhaps involving more Netflix binges, Amazon Wish-List making, and tidying or cleaning. Loads more examples here: https://wiredforhappy.com/100-smart-ways-to-calm-your-anxious-mind/

3) Go Back, with Open Arms, To Your Pain:

Perhaps you’ve done all of these things, and still the pain of your Unmet Need is hurting you a great deal. Returning to that hurt, with self-validation and understanding (“Anyone would be feeling this pain if the core need for X wasn’t met! It’s not my fault!”) and going right back to the P of the P.A.U.S.E is a great, and sometimes necessary thing to do.

Maybe you haven’t given your heart and your head enough time to fully take in just how painful this upset is. So don’t see it as a failure if you maybe need to do the whole P.A.U.S.E. process a number of times, perhaps even with the same material. Eventually, the pain will become more manageable, and the suffering will reduce. I promise this will happen. But it does require consistency and working that P.A.U.S.E.

Looking forward to hearing how you get on with it.

Categories
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Avoidance Feel Better Living A Valued Life Pain Suffering

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

There’s a wonderful poem by Mary Oliver where she talks about pain, suffering, and our relation to it.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The key shift in the poem begins with that line Meanwhile the world goes on. It is a move out of the teeth-gritting effort of being alive and struggling as we often do with this, into that more transcendent, open, peaceful place, a place we sense other animals inhabit more readily, as well as the rest of the unthinking, non-language-using natural world. And we want to live there, not here, where it sometimes feels like we’re walking on our knees for hundreds of miles weighed down by our being-humanness. We want instead to be there, high in the clean blue air. And sometimes we experience that feeling of being there: maybe whilst meditating, or doing yoga, or walking in the countryside, or listening to a podcast that intrigues us, or after vaping some cannabis or three glasses of wine. We know what it means to crawl, and we have all had experiences of flying. Don’t we long, like those wild geese to have wings and take flight, again and again?

It may even seem unfair that we’re slithering along on our bellies, like slugs, when others seem to be soaring. At least according to social media updates and what we see in the social realm when out and and about. Soaring!  If we’ve been struggling for some time, we’ve maybe plagued ourselves with different forms of the “why?” question: “Why can’t I just get over it?” “Why can’t I feel better?” “Why is life so hard?” “Why hasn’t therapy worked?” “Why can’t I be a normal person?” “Why can’t I be happy?” We may feel victimized somehow by questions that seem not to have any ready answers. Cornered by your own emotional pain and our struggle with it, we may feel as if your life is narrowing in around us.

If you’ve been fighting a war inside your head, what would it be like if instead of trying to win that war, you knew a way to step out of it? This doesn’t mean that the war would stop; it may continue. Rather, it means that you would no longer try to live inside a war zone, with your psychological survival seemingly dependent on the outcome of the war. What if that were possible?

The different modes of therapy that I use (ACT, DBT, Schema Therapy and IFS) invite you to examine your perspective not only on what psychological pain is and how it operates, but on the very nature of your consciousness, even your identity, that is, who you take yourself to be. No issue is too “basic” if it seems necessary to address it. And for that reason, these concepts and methods may shake you up a bit. Initially, some may be hard to swallow and may even fly in the face of what you’ve been taught are the “solutions” to your problems.

Concepts like:

  • Psychological pain is normal, it is important, and everyone has it.
  • You cannot deliberately get rid of your psychological pain, although you can take steps to avoid increasing it artificially.
  • Pain and suffering are two different states of being.
  • You don’t have to identify with your suffering.
  • Accepting your pain is a step toward ridding yourself of your suffering.
  • You can live a life you value, beginning right now, but to do that you will have to learn how to get out of your mind and into your life.

Often many people we meet in our daily lives seem to have it all. They seem happy. They look satisfied with their lives. You’ve probably had the experience of walking down the street when you’re having a particularly bad day, and you’ve looked around and thought, “Why can’t I just be happy like everyone around me? They don’t suffer from chronic panic (or depression, or a substance abuse problem). They don’t feel as if a dark cloud is always looming over their heads. They don’t suffer the way I suffer. Why can’t I be like them?”

Here’s the secret: They/I do suffer, and you/we are like them in many ways. Although I also believe, and Elaine Aron’s research into high-sensitivity has shown this, that about a quarter of us do feel things a tad more strongly than others. And that matters too. We all have pain. All human beings, if they live long enough, have felt or will feel the devastation of losing someone they love. Every single person has felt or will feel physical pain. Everybody has felt sadness, shame, anxiety, fear, and loss. We all have memories that are embarrassing, humiliating, or shameful. We all carry painful hidden secrets. We tend to put on shiny, happy faces, pretending that everything is okay, and that life is “all good.” But it isn’t and it can’t be. To be human is to feel pain in ways that are orders of magnitude more pervasive than what the other creatures on planet Earth feel.

SO WHY DO WE FIND OURSELVES IN THE POSITION WE DO?

If you kick a dog, it will yelp and run away. If you kick it regularly, any sign of your arrival eventually will produce fear and avoidance behavior in the dog by means of the process called “conditioning.” But so long as you are out of the picture and are not likely to arrive, the dog is unlikely to feel or show significant anxiety. People are quite different. As young as sixteen months or even earlier, human infants learn that if an object has a name, the name refers to the object. So what, you might say?

This capacity for language puts human beings in a special position. Simply saying a word invokes the object that is named. Try it out: “Umbrella.” What did you think of when you read that word? Alright, that one’s pretty harmless. But consider what this means if the named object was fearful: anything that reminded the person of its name would evoke fear. It would be as if all the dog needs to feel fear is not an actual kick, but the thought of being kicked.

That is exactly the situation we are in. That is exactly the situation all humans are in with language.

Here is an example: Take a moment now to think of the most shameful thing you have ever done. Take a moment to actually do this.

What did you just feel? It’s very likely that as soon as you read the sentence, you felt some sense of either fear or resistance. You may have tried to dismiss the request and quickly read on. However, if you paused and actually tried to do what we asked, you probably began to feel a sense of shame while you remembered a scene from your past and your actions in it. Yet all that happened here was that you were looking at patterns of ink on paper. Nothing else is in front of you but that. Because relations that verbal humans learn in one direction, they derive in two, they have the capacity to treat anything as a symbol for something else. The etymology of “symbol” means “to throw back as the same,” and because you are reacting to the ink on this paper symbolically, the words you just read evoked a reaction from you; perhaps they even reminded you of a shameful event from your past.

Where could you go so that this kind of relation could not take place? The dog knows how to avoid pain: avoid you and your foot. But how can a person avoid pain if anytime, anywhere, pain can be brought to mind by anything related to that pain?

The situation is actually worse than that. Not only can we not avoid pain by avoiding painful situations (the dog’s method), pleasurable situations also might evoke pain. Suppose someone very dear to you recently died, and today you see one of the most beautiful sunsets you have ever seen. What will you think?

For human beings, avoiding situational cues for psychological pain is unlikely to succeed in eliminating difficult feelings because all that is needed to bring them to mind is an arbitrary cue that evokes the right verbal relations. This example of a sunset demonstrates the process. A sunset can evoke a verbal history. It is “beautiful” and beautiful things are things you want to share with others. You cannot share this sunset with your dear friend, and there you are, feeling sad at the very moment you see something beautiful.

The problem is that the cues that evoke verbal relations can be almost anything: the ink on paper that made up the word “shame,” or a sunset that reminded you of your recent loss. In desperation, humans try to take a very logical action: they start trying to avoid pain itself.

Unfortunately, a number of the methods we have of avoiding pain are incredibly unhelpful in and of themselves. For example, not getting out of bed when we feel down, or drinking a bottle of Malbec may temporarily reduce pain, but it will come back stronger than ever and further damage will be caused. Denial and learned numbness will reduce pain, but they will soon cause far more pain than they take away.

The constant possibility of psychological pain is a challenging burden that we all need to face. It is like the elephant in the living room that no one ever mentions.

The approaches we will explore in our sessions are suggested by the word “suffering.” The primary root of suffer is the Latin ferre, which means “to bear or carry” (the English word “ferry” comes from the same root). The prefix “suf” is a version of “sub” and, in this usage, means “from below, up (hence) away.” In other words, suffering doesn’t just involve having something to carry; it also involves moving away. The word “suffer” connotes the idea that there is a burden you are unwilling or unable to carry, perhaps because it seems “too heavy,” “too unfair,” or it just seems “beyond you.” That connotation refers to more than pain alone; in fact, it provides a different way to address the problem of pain.

EXERCISE: Your Suffering Inventory

If you like, why not write down or say aloud a list of all of the issues that are currently psychologically difficult for you. This is something we’d probably talk about in our consultation session, but you can do that here too if we haven’t looked at this together.

When compiling your Suffering Inventory, do not write about purely external or situational events, independent of your reactions to them. What I’m most interested in is how you react to these situations and events. For example, “my boss” would not be a good example of a difficult issue you experience; but “getting frustrated with my boss” or “feeling put down by my boss” might be. This is because, not everyone is triggered in the way you are by the personality type of your boss. S/he may even be universally loathed, but you probably realise that not everyone gets as upset or angry about, say, your boss as you do. And this is key when working with our issues.

You may also want to make a note of any of your thoughts, feelings, memories, urges, bodily sensations, habits, or behavioural predispositions that may distress you, either alone or in combination with external events. Don’t overthink it. Just write down what plagues you and causes you pain. Be honest and thorough when creating your “suffering inventory”. It may take some time, but it will be time well worth spent.

After you’ve completed your list, go back and think about how long these issues have been a problem for you. Write that down as well.

Now I’m going to ask you to organize this list. First, go back and rank these items in terms of the impact that they have on your life. Then, in the space provided below, write down the same items, but rank them in order. The order should range from those items that cause you the most pain and difficulty in your life to those that cause you the least trouble. We will use this list as a guide throughout our sessions, referring back to this list as your touchstone for the events and issues that cause you pain.

Finally, in the area to the right of this list, draw arrows between every item on the list that is related to another item. You will know that two items are related if changes in one might alter another. For example, suppose one of your items is “self-criticism” and another is “depression.” If you think the two are related (that is, the more self-critical you are, the more likely you are to feel depressed, or vice versa), draw a two-headed arrow between self-criticism and depression. You may find that this area becomes cluttered with arrows. That’s fine. There is no right or wrong way to do this. If everything is related, it’s important to know that. If some items relate to only a few others, that is useful information too. The higher on your list the items are and the more other items they connect to, the more important they become. This may suggest a reranking of your problems and you may find that you now want to combine some items or to divide them into smaller units. If that is so, you can create your final working list below, ranked from highest to lowest in order of impact on your life.

Finally, you may also want to think about all the things you’ve attempted to do to “sort out” or “get rid of” or “fix” in some way these issues you’ve been struggling with. Let’s join the D-O-T-S on those! Our most common strategies for dealing with pain are:

D- Distraction: I (Steve) often try to distract myself from painful thoughts and feelings (eg Netflix, surfing the web, downloading music or books etc)? How about you?

O – Opting out: I (Steve) often opt out (quit, avoid, or withdraw from) people, places, activities, and situations when I don’t like the thoughts and feelings they bring up for me. How about you?

T -Thinking: I (Steve) have more often than not tried to think my way out of pain? (e.g. blaming others, worrying, rehashing the past, fantasizing, positive thinking, problem-solving, planning, self-criticism, ‘What if?’, ‘If only …’, ‘Why me?’, ‘Not fair!’, analyzing, trying to make sense of it, debating with myself, denial, beating myself up, etc.) How about you?

S – Substances, Self-harm, other Strategies: I have often tried putting substances into my body (including food and prescription medication) to replace the pain. These can become quite extreme in terms of self-harming activities (overeating/undereating is also a form of self-harm), as well as suicide attempts or reckless risk-taking. These are not the only way we try and avoid our pain. There are hundreds of strategies, e.g. excessive sleeping, or being on our phones (Twitter, Instagram, Bumble etc.)? Do you do this too?

Have any of these strategies helped? Many might have helped in the short term, and quite often they’re good things to do in and of themselves (going on a meditation retreat always makes me feel great), but what about the long-term? Perhaps this is part of your frustration. It’s certainly part of my frustration. Surely there has to be something out there to sort all this suffering out?!?

You can also do this exercise for what’s going on for you right at this moment by looking at this worksheet.

If we were working together, once you had created your Suffering Inventory, we would begin looking at each problem and thinking about the ways in which our interaction with that problem (on the whole) might, despite our best intentions, may only have made matters worse (so frustrating, isn’t it?).

Here’s a flavour of the way in which we’d dissect this together: Worksheet Link.

This would then give us a clearer understanding of the particular shape that human suffering has taken in your life, and we can start to think about what to do with all this pain.

THE PROBLEM WITH PAIN

Psychological pain hurts, by definition. But it does more than that. Often pain holds you back from living the kind of life you want to live. There is no question that a person with a panic disorder would rather not experience the feeling of extreme fear, because it is so unpleasant. But that discomfort is compounded by the fact that the panic seemingly gets in the way of living itself.

If you have a panic disorder, you may have begun feeling too afraid to engage in the activities you normally would because of your fear that you might panic. It may be that you no longer go to the supermarket because you are afraid you might have a panic attack there. Perhaps you are uncomfortable in social situations, because you don’t want anyone to see you panic. You cultivate friends with whom you feel safe, but then you are dependent on their schedules and availability. You start to live your life in ways to accommodate your problem, and, as a result, your life becomes narrower and narrower, less and less flexible.

It is worth noting how much of the pain we feel is a focus of attention because it seems to interfere with other activities. One way to get at this core issue is to imagine how your life would be different if your pain went away. Imagine that someone has waved a magic wand over you, and your pain has vanished. Imagine that you wake up one morning and suddenly, for no reason at all, the chronic depression you’ve suffered from all these years (or the anxiety, or worry, or whatever your core struggles may be) is gone. The cloud has lifted and the pain is over. What would you do? This question isn’t a rhetorical one, we mean it literally: What would you do? What would you want your life to be about? How has your current psychological struggle interfered with your goals and aspirations? Let’s explore that in the exercise below.

EXERCISE: The Pain is Gone, Now What?

Take an item from your suffering inventory. It could be any item, but it might be best to start with an item high on your list and connected to other items. This is probably an issue that greatly inhibits your life. Now go ahead and fill in your problem, but don’t fill in what you would do if it were gone.

If …weren’t such a problem for me, I would….

If I didn’t have … , I would….

Now, think about what you would do if that pain were suddenly lifted. The point of this exercise is not to think about what you might like to do on a given day if your problems weren’t plaguing you. The idea isn’t to celebrate by saying, “My depression is gone, I’m going to Disneyland!” The point is to think more broadly about how your life course would change if your constant struggle with emotional pain was no longer an issue. Don’t worry if you think that you don’t have a good grip on this yet. Just go with your gut instinct. Somewhere within yourself you have some idea about the things that really matter to you. Concentrate on those.

Here are three examples to give you an idea of what I mean:

If anger weren’t such a problem for me, I would have more intimate relationships.

If I didn’t have so much stress, I would work harder at my career, and I would try to find the job I always dreamed of having.

If I wasn’t so anxious, I would travel and participate more fully in life.

Now, go back and fill in the blank lines about what you would do if your pain disappeared. Be honest with yourself and think about what you really want. Think about what has value to you. Think about what gives your life meaning.

Now, let’s do that again but this time, let’s use a different area of suffering (although it certainly wouldn’t hurt to do this exercise with all of the items on your Suffering Inventory). This time, choose an item that appears to affect a different area of your life than the first one you chose. (Although after thinking about them you may find that they are not as different as they seem to be.)

If …weren’t such a problem for me, I would….

If I didn’t have … , I would….

THE PROBLEM WITH PAIN: REVISITED

You’ve just discovered that all of your problems provide you with two sources of pain. It is not just your anxiety or depression or worry that creates pain. Your pain is also holding you back from living the life you want to lead. There are activities you would be engaged in if it weren’t for your pain and the role it has played in your life.

The problem you wrote down in the exercises above refers to the pain of presence (issues that are present that you would prefer to go away). Social anxiety might be an example of the pain of presence. The anxiety you feel on social occasions is real and present in the moment you feel it. You may wish it would go away. Nonetheless, it persists in the face of your best efforts to defeat it. This is the pain of presence.

Those activities you would engage in if matters changed, represent a different kind of pain: they are called the pain of absence. As an example, consider the same socially phobic person above. Perhaps this person truly values engaging with other people but their fear keeps them from doing so in ways that are meaningful. The connection with others that is so yearned for is not there. This is the pain of absence. You have pain on top of pain, suffering on top of suffering. Not only must you deal with the immediate pain of your thoughts, feelings, and physical ailments, you also must deal with the pain caused by the fact that your pain prevents you from living the kind of life you want to live.

Now see if this next sentence is true for you: Generally, the more you live your life trying to ward off the pain of presence, the more pain you get, particularly in the form of the pain of absence.

Remember, I asked for honesty and openness about your own experience. Even if it doesn’t seem logical that this should be so, look and see if it isn’t true. While you’ve focused more on getting rid of the pain of presence, you’ve been feeling more of the pain of absence. If that’s what’s been happening for you, it may feel as though life is closing in around you. It may feel as though you’re in some kind of trap. If you’ve been experiencing those kinds of feelings, then a therapeutic modality like ACT is about finding a way out. There’s an alternative to living as though you’ve been trapped.

LIVING A VALUED LIFE: AN ALTERNATIVE

Often, we attach ourselves to our pain, and we start to judge our lives based on how we feel and not on what we do. In a way, we become our pain. The answers you’ve filled in as your responses to the four sentences in the two exercises above contain the seeds of another kind of life: a life in which what you do is connected not to your pain, or to the avoidance of your pain, but to the kind of life you truly want to live.

The therapeutic modalities I offer are not about solving your problems in a traditional way so much as it is about changing the direction of your life, so that your life is more about what you value. Moreover, the unnecessary amplification of pain stops. When that happens, the issues you’ve been struggling with will begin to diminish. Your life will begin to open up and become more wide-ranging, more flexible, and more meaningful.

These ways of thinking about our pain ask us to allow the possibility of living a life you value to be our guide. They aren’t asking us to go out and lead a different life right this minute. There is a lot of work to do first. None of this will be easy because the traps our minds set for us will continue to be laid.

In a therapeutic mode like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) we’ll have a set of processes that do seem to empower the people who work with these processes to improve their lives and to dismantle troublesome traps and dead ends. Gradually, step by step, I can walk you through those processes in the service of living a vital, valued, meaningful life.

If you are willing, let’s talk more.