Pain, Suffering and Relief

I was speaking with a colleague recently about a possible talk on suffering for their community.  It’s been a while since I had a speaking engagement and I found myself having one of those moments where you meet someone new and you each take turns saying something that really resonates.  It was a fun conversation.  I had to chuckle as I spoke with the friend who referred me to speak on this topic.  She said, “When I heard the topic was suffering, I knew exactly who could speak to that”.

I have been recently launched into another stream of learning in ways to understand this human experience and here is what I am learning as of late.  When we’re talking about suffering, we could be talking about many different things, so let’s separate pain from suffering.  Pain is change we resist whether that is physical, spiritual, emotional or mental pain.  It is what happens to us because we are here, evolving, learning and growing….and yes, dealing with limits, loss and the unpredictable and precarious nature of being alive in a body.  Pain is not an experience we can get out of, avoid or even fix.  All of us will experience this as part of our human journey.

Next comes suffering.  What do we do in response to pain?  Do we move into fear?  Do we make up stories as to why this is happening to us?  Do we pretend nothing is wrong and try to keep going?  Do we fight it or try to fix it?  Do we get curious about it and see what is needed?  Whenever the pain is too much to process or manage, we run the risk of our system being overwhelmed which can lead to trauma.  Because trauma is pain that hasn’t been processed through the body, it can live in our tissues for our whole lives dampening our experience of ourselves, our relationships and the world.

What can help us to experience the unavoidable pain of life, to process it and release it rather than store it?  Strange question huh?  No one really wants to experience pain, but it is good for us to do so.  The problem is that this stored pain doesn’t just hang out unobtrusively.  It runs the show of our lives from a place we can’t see it.  It causes physical illness and a certain amount of distance between the vibrancy of life and our experience of it.  This state of being is one way to suffer and while pain is unavoidable, with suffering there’s a lot of ways to play and prevent.

So, what can help? My dear ones, it’s us.  Isolation is part of the problem that we can’t process the pain in the first place.  When we feel alone, things can get overwhelming pretty fast.  When we are accompanied in our pain by another person we love and trust, it changes the whole game.  Think of a time you went through something big and scary.  Did you have someone to tell, someone to listen and hold your hand?

Now you know that for big scary moments, it’s not just having any other person present, but someone you trust.  To move into a space of healing (aka processing) pain, the conditions held by your companion are important.  Love, kindness, compassion and acceptance are traits that, when embodied and offered, are most likely to help us release and heal pain, avoid or relieve suffering and bring us relief.

Go out and be kind today!  May you find and receive the love that opens you to healing.

One thought on “Pain, Suffering and Relief

  1. I’m not good with algebraic equations, but this made sense to me:
    Suffering=pain X resistance Like you said, let’s separate pain from suffering. When pain is zero, suffering is zero; but while it’s true we’re going to have pain, we don’t have to resist it. When I allow pain to be, it lessens my resistance. Making space for pain, I still feel it, but I don’t suffer (as much). It’s only taken me over sixty years to understand this. And in the moment I don’t always remember to stop resisting.
    Sarah, you are the trustworthy companion. Thanks for being willing to go to the scary places with us.

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