How to Make Suffering Your Friend
A compiling of all my notes on suffering so far (and how not to make an enemy of her).
*(This is not professional psychiatric advice, it's only my personal, subjective experiences with suffering and how I deal with it).
One of the first major instances where I noticed that suffering does not have to live up to her name, (or even that her name can be seen as beautiful), was when I was cold weather camping in the mountains of Romania (below freezing temperatures). I couldn't feel my toes or fingers for a week straight. I started my period on the second day there (no, there wasn't a shower or toilet and I was all out of pads. Yes, I am a pads girl). It was also just too freezing to ever dare to take off my clothes to change them, resulting in me not seeing my body for a whole week, which was truly a strange addition to the experience. I was quite ill prepared since this was the first time I was ever truly camping, (save for car camping, but does that really count?) and so I only had a cheap sleeping bag that was meant for at least 10 degrees warmer weather than I was using it for. The tent was on a hillside so I kept sliding down off of my sleeping mat every hour making it even colder, and I'm someone that is extremely sensitive to sleep deprivation. All of this while I was simultaneously going through the most devastating breakup I've experienced so far, I had been in quite a depressed state and was having heavier than usual dissociative episodes. Safe to say, it would've been easy to slip into a negative pattern of suffering at that time. But what actually happened was one of the most special, euphoric and transformative experiences of my life. And not despite of the suffering, but BECAUSE of the suffering.
And this was when I realised that suffering had the potential to be my friend. Each time I would be having an uncomfortable sensation, whether it was mental or physical, I would truly say to myself "OOF, I really am alive right now aren't I?" Any suffering would just immediately bring me right back to the unique present moment which I was experiencing and surrounded by. I remember walking down the trail back to camp with my friend, my foot was hurting and I was so exhausted and my uterus was in pain and I said to him that I felt hyper-grateful to my suffering at that moment because it was this thing that kept alerting me, "Hey! I'm here right now! Experiencing what it's like to be alive in the Romanian mountains in the winter in my 20's!” And the suffering made it that much more vivid. Suffering started to occasionally give me this elated feeling from that moment on. It was all just starting to click. (I'll get into a more in depth description of how I truly view suffering nowadays in a bit.)
I'll tell you some notable tips that helped me to begin being able to lean into these, typically awful, sensations, and flip it to feeling (somewhat) ecstatic union from them (and there are even more potent tips at the end of this essay under the "EXTRAS" section)..
I think when I first started discovering a more easeful approach to my suffering was a few months before the trip to Romania. Me and my boyfriend at the time, (who I lived with) were on a "break" before the inevitable big breakup. I was just feeling absolutely destroyed. And I was having a lot more depersonalisation episodes than usual. When I would get that way, in the past, I never knew how to deal with it, there wasn't ever anything that worked. I would just try my best to distract myself to no avail. But I suddenly started to try this new thing. I would notice this overwhelmingly uncomfortable experience come over me. (dissociation is hard to define, I can only ever really describe the actual emotions it comes with as "severe uncomfortability"). So, it would rise up, and I'd notice it, and I'd look right at it and say, "oh, I'm feeling uncomfortable right now! That's what that is." And it would almost immediately cut its dull, bleeding edge. It would no longer be this oozing, morphing blob which can spread and spread, it had a box to fit into now. It had a shape. The shape of "uncomfortability". Ever since then, it just clicked. I had to stop distracting myself from these uncomfortable situations and emotions, this was just giving them room to grow, and they also then had to SCREAM to get my attention. I had to just give it a place to rest itself. We all just want a place where we belong.
So, I started doing this with my heavier and more sharp emotions as well. I would get this overwhelming sadness about my (ex)partner, and I wouldn't reach for the distraction, I would simply sit there, at the edge of my bed, and give the feeling a shape. I would acknowledge it and say "Oh, I'm feeling despair right now". And it would just immediately feel less like impending doom after that, it would stop spreading to other regions of me, there would be no more need for it to do that, because there was no war anymore, we were all just surrendering and living at ease with one another. Now I'm not saying this takes away all your pain, I'm simply saying it's a start, and a really helpful one at that. To acknowledge, and to give your emotions a shape to fit into, just like how you immediately give a form to your joy when it comes around without batting an eye. No one likes to be ignored. No one likes not to have a place where they fit in. That leads to rebellion. Don't let your suffering get to the point where it has to rebel against you to get the attention it craves.
Soon after discovering that subtle technique, I started reading this book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (which is just one of the most insanely beautiful titles i've ever read, by the way). To be honest, I never finished the book, but even after just the first few pages, my world view had changed. Here's my notes from the first bit of the book..
"Which is positive and which is negative ? The lightness of being or the heaviness of being ?
The lightness is inherently a negative as it is taking away, the weight is disappearing. Less and less and less life.
The heaviness is positive. It is adding. More and more and more life. Is it truly good to be less LIFE? "
I started realising that I didn't want a life of lightness. When I look back at my life, at the times that were the most painful, those were also some of the times where I felt most human. I was miserable, but very presently aware of the fact that I was alive and truly experiencing awareness in all its depth. (even if i didn't want to be at that moment). But now I wanted to figure out how to take the misery out of it and just keep the alive-ness. That's what we're working towards here. That's what I've now started to achieve. (I'm not discounting the feeling of joy and love in its ability to make me feel alive, oh it does, it does, it does. But that's not all of life. We have to learn to live with the other half as well, and not just live with it but be willing to interact with it, not be afraid of it and to WANT to be present through it all, because that's your life too! The pain and sadness and suffering is a part of you! Be present for all of it, you don't want to miss out on something that could be bringing you so much).
Suffering does not need to make you hardened, suffering has softened me, suffering has opened me, suffering has made me bloom, It brings me closer to the source of it all, unveiled, just unadulterated sensations and awareness, pure, it’s a beautiful experience. Suffering has given me meaning, I haven’t given meaning to it. It gives me meaning because it is a part of my life, and my life means something!
Nowadays I actively go into situations where I am expecting suffering to unfold, with a really positive attitude and excitement for what I will learn from her this time. I begin a new journey, fully aware that it’s going to stress me out and cause me to become disheveled and I look forward to it. Because I feel so open nowadays to learning from and embracing my suffering and how present it makes me feel. She has turned me into a puzzle master of sorts, she forces me to discover new paths and new ways of doing things, expanding my horizons and my mind. It's like an adventure story. She genuinely helps me learn how to be strong, resilient and full of optimism and perseverance for life. once I am through each challenge that she presents me with, then I know I won’t be afraid as much the next time something like that comes around. And I get to “level up” in a sense. I know more of what I’m capable of and I widen my window of tolerance each time. Life isn’t a straight line, it’s a spiral. We come back to the things we thought we understood time and time again and learn a deeper truths from it each time ! I try to be open to as much suffering in my life as I can be nowadays because of this.
Look, most people never gain anything from their suffering. You have to have true courage and a completely open heart to hear what suffering is trying to teach you. And what a miraculous teacher suffering truly is. I’ve created some of my most incredible art, learned the majority of my most potent lessons, gained the most relevant wisdom, forged the deepest bonds, and been able to see the true essence of myself with such clarity all from being open in periods of great suffering. Don’t make suffering have to scream and shake you to get your attention. If you are soft, she will be soft with you too. She will tell you her wisdom.
Suffering has made me understand what it’s like to be alive, suffering has given me access to more LIFE than I could’ve known without it. Sorrow and suffering make me vulnerable. The more vulnerable I am, the more open I am for love to come through me and into me.
Suffering just IS, and you can either make it your friend or your enemy. But once you make suffering your friend, it’s no longer really suffering anymore, is it ? It’s just another part of the experience. It’s just another sensation, it’s just going to be okay.
EXTRAS: Tips & Tricks, Final Notes.
The fear of suffering is far greater than the suffering itself. Stop and think, are you actually suffering right now, or are you borrowing suffering from an imagined future? Actively stopping yourself from projecting your long term fears of suffering onto your actual experience of the current moment by choosing to take things one day, one hour, or even just one minute at a time, makes a profound difference. When I'm in a period of great suffering where living even just another hour seems unbearable, then I start to utilize this system. Am I truly suffering right this instant or am I just so scared of what my loneliness/fear/pain might build up into in the next hour that I'm creating my own suffering? Let me just focus on getting through this next 60 seconds and DO NOT LET MYSELF think any further than that. This 60 seconds has enough problems of its own, I don't need to worry about the problems of the 60 seconds after this as well. The 60 seconds of the future will come eventually and I can deal with its problems once I get there, but not a moment sooner. Take it one step at a time, as cheesy as that sounds, it is really crucial.
I know I talk a lot about "being alive", and maybe that's not your cup of tea because maybe being alive isn't something you're really into right now. But typically the reason for not wanting to be alive is because you can't handle the suffering that comes with it all. (Or feeling nothing is another reason, but the feeling of numbness is also its own kind of suffering in and of itself, almost worse than the "typical" kind of suffering, which is feeling too much.) But that's what I'm trying to help people with here, because when you alleviate that suffering, the "simply being alive" aspect is actually quite exciting and lovely and a great reason to go on living. :)
Give your dislikes a bit more attention now. What exactly makes you so afraid, so against suffering? What makes you hate suffering, but love joy? Think about this a bit further than suffering = bad, and joy = good. Both joy and suffering are just brain chemicals. So what makes us decide that we like one of the chemicals more than the other? Other brain chemicals made us decide that right, of course. But what if we went a bit further than that. What if (barring life threatening and truly dangerous situations and extreme chemical imbalances that cause full psychological disorders) we started making the (very difficult) effort to notice when our "suffering" brain chemicals start to rise, and we started to actively redirect our typical habitual thoughts we have when that happens? So usually, these pain chemicals are rising and we think "oh no! Bad!", but what I've started doing is to just notice them and say "Oh, more brain chemicals, just like when joy comes. That must mean I'm alive right now. Nice, cool reminder. Just another part of being a living human being." When we take out the habitual negative thought patterns we have around suffering, it just becomes another sensation like all the rest.
My personal spiritual perspective: (skip if you aren’t into dat spiritual stuffz) "God breaks our heart again and again until it stays open.” (Hazrat Inayat Khan). I believe that every single emotional state (and especially states like suffering which cause intense reactions) is a doorway to the divine. I think that working with your suffering as an extension of your personal karmic work that needs to be done on earth in this lifetime is extremely potent. Pain, grief, mourning, loss, sorrow, fear etc. are all experiences that bring us into an extremely vulnerable state. And as I said earlier, the more vulnerable you are, the more open you are, and the more open you are, the more susceptible you are to learning these karmic lessons and having these divine realisations that you were meant to have at that exact moment. And they are lessons that are only able to be learned in that exact way. Sometimes it takes years to understand what you’ve gained from these situations, but in my experience, it always comes if you are willing, patient and open, and it’s always so incredible, profound, comforting and in the perfect timing. “You can’t rip the skin off the snake, it has to come off when it’s ready. The next message will come at the exact moment in which you are able to hear it and not a moment sooner.” (Ram Dass) I believe that it is true GRACE when suffering comes in (as with anything that comes in). It brings me one step closer to God. One step closer to the source of it all.
You don’t stop experiencing these “negative” emotions, you simply just stop interacting with them in a negative way. There's still victimisation that comes, there's still anger and pain and sadness, you’re just not buying into as much anymore. You still experience them, but you don’t regard them as negative. (Or perhaps pain is just not something you are afraid of anymore, it’s just another sensation, like bliss.)
Now I'm not saying the specific situations i've mentioned in this essay were the epitome of suffering in any way, shape or form, (they are not even close to my own personal harshest experiences with suffering in my life), but when you think about everyday moments when you're really miserable, a lot of the times it's not from some grand misfortune that happened, it's actually because of an accumulation of small things. For example, you're going through a depressive period and your stomach hurts today but you also have a big meeting you need to attend in ten minutes and you just stubbed your toe and you have to go to the dentist later and you're so anxious and you just feel like saying, "Why does God give his toughest battles to his weakest soldiers??" But this is where we can start from. I don't think you'll immediately be able to get through your greatest tragedy with my advice right off the bat, but you can start with getting through your day to day things, which can help you to get through big tragedies. If you are going through something unspeakable, and you really break down the exact things that make the tragedy so hard to deal with, it's usually not *THE TRAGEDY* itself, it's "getting through your mundane daily life things while this tragedy has recently struck you" simultaneously. So, having to make yourself breakfast when your parent just passed away yesterday and you feel utterly alone. Or having to do homework when you just experienced SA. or having to do your taxes when you're going through a psychosis. It's the little things that push us over the edge. And I hope my words might have helped someone to be able to deal a little bit better with the little things (and maybe even some of the big ones).
Amazing piece! Really loved how personal it was but was still able to convey such a universal lesson, and a really hard lesson to learn too.
Also loved the Unbearable Lightness of Being takeaways, super poignant. Nice job : )