How to Decrease Suffering
Have you suffered a wound, swift and deep, leaving a pain so sharp that it took your breath away and left you at a loss for words?
Yeah. Me too.
The funny thing about pain is that we tend to hold onto it, clinging to it as if we hold on tightly enough we can get it to stop. Perversely, it causes us more suffering. We focus on the actions, the words, the memory – and then we dig deeper, conjuring up past injuries and slights, adding to our pain and misery. We think if we can just figure out why that the pain will go away, but instead we’re re-traumatizing ourselves and increasing the pain.
We can do this with anything:
Moods (I’m in a bad mood- let me list the reasons. Let me tell you the reasons. Let me expand on why I’ll be in a bad mood tomorrow too!)
Feelings (My feelings are hurt. I can tell you what they did and am glad to continue with every time they said something slightly offensive since we met, and I’m pretty sure it was ON PURPOSE!)
Thoughts (Oh, the never-ending death spiral of negative thoughts that focus on anxiety: “what if???” to depression: “why didn’t I????” and no answer or feasible way to control the past or the future.)
Emotions (I feel sad. I feel angry. I feel defeated. I feel worthless. I feel out of control...)
And pretty soon we are identifying so strongly with our negative mood, feeling, thought, or emotion that it becomes our identity, and we are miserable!
The Buddhists have a way to decrease suffering – which, apparently, I was supposed to learn because when I thought I was going to do a meditation, I ended up with a talk describing this technique instead. And –Spirit often nudges me – it seemed like the perfect thing to share.
You know, physically, when we start to get hurt...say burning our hand, we pull our hand away right away? Our body and our mind work together to stop the painful experience.
The Buddhist principle is NOTICING. When you are in emotional or mental pain, notice what you are doing:
Are you re-living the memory that brought you pain in the first place?
Are you creating a list of all the other ways you’ve been hurt?
Are you telling yourself a story with the person who hurt you cast as the villain who never had any positive intentions toward you?
What are you doing that is prolonging your pain? What rabbit hole is your mind taking you down that is causing anguish? Notice it! Have you latched on, gripping so tight that your knuckles are white and your hands are bleeding?
If only a little, we will release our grip when we notice what we’re doing. We will decrease the pain we are feeling. If and when we do it over and over and over and over again, we will continually release ourselves from the pain we are inflicting upon ourselves.
I’m imagining this being done primarily during the quiet times – when we are trying to go to sleep, perhaps when we are driving, or doing chores around the house – and those invasive, repetitive, hurtful thoughts enter our mind. Then we notice and get a little relief. Then our ego protests and starts up the suffer-train again. And we notice... and shut the suffering down. But the ego is persistent and thinks if we just try to figure out the answer, “WHY”, that we’ll be safe – and we notice, and let go one more time, because we know we can’t think our way out of hurt. And on and on it goes, gripping tightly to our pain, noticing and releasing for some sweet relief. A new thought pops up, and we latch on and notice ourselves latching on and let go again...ahhhh!
And we suffer, grasp, notice, abandon so many times it becomes a habit.
For our emotional pain is not happening to traumatize us repeatedly, but to teach us a lesson. Instead of replaying the trauma, re-injuring ourselves, what if we release the pain and find the lesson?
Of course, a good therapist can help you with those especially deep-seeded traumas – but take a page from Buddhist wisdom and try noticing. See if that doesn’t give you some relief?!
