“Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional”. So at least Buddha told us and we want to reach that point where we can avoid suffering and reduce emotional pain as much as possible. And we don’t want anyone to feel guilty for suffering, but to open a door to hope. With this phrase, dedicated especially to people who suffer from anxiety and depression, we want to discover the differences between pain and emotional suffering. Do you want to join us in the discovery?
How are pain and suffering different?
- They seem the same to us, they seem synonymous to us, and yet there is a great difference between pain and suffering. When something negatively affects us, we feel pain. And be careful here because there are no hierarchies of what can hurt us. Pain is felt by a person who has been diagnosed with a major illness, who has been fired from work, who has lost a loved one, or who has just broken up with his partner.
- You feel pain when you have problems that you don’t know how to solve. You feel pain when you have an anxiety disorder or depression. You feel pain when your accounts don’t balance to make ends meet, when your partner despises you, when your best friend forgets your birthday, or when your son has gotten bad grades at school.
- Pain arises from emotions or feelings. Sadness, anger, confusion or even lack of vital motivation. It hurts and it’s natural. And not only is it natural to feel pain, it’s also healthy. Now, how do we deal with that pain? Because this is when suffering can come.
- Suffering is one of the possible reactions to pain and it appears when we resist feeling that pain. We don’t like emotional discomfort, we have a low tolerance for frustration and so we try to avoid pain at all costs. But it is a mistake. The pain must be felt, because it is the only way for it to pass.
- If we resist that pain, if we don’t accept it because it’s uncomfortable, it’s violent, it’s heartbreaking… All we get is encyst it in the form of emotional suffering. The pain passes when you find the solution to the problem, when the damage disappears or with the passage of time. However, the suffering stays there, takes root, grows bigger and ends up spreading. Before you suffered for a specific circumstance, but now you suffer for everything in general.
Can emotional suffering be avoided?
- Bearing this in mind and given that suffering is a cognitive and emotional response to pain that is not very useful and very harmful, we can understand that we can avoid it. We cannot avoid being fired from work, we cannot avoid the pain of losing a loved one and we cannot avoid that the wound left by our partner’s cheating stings every day.
- But we can avoid clinging to suffering. And with this we do not want to make anyone who is suffering feel guilty. Many times psychological help is needed to understand this difference between pain and emotional suffering. Or to overcome some of the factors that cause suffering. Do you know what those factors are?
- Well, among other things, obsessive thoughts, the inability to manage the uncertainty that the painful situation creates, the helplessness of not having control of what happens around you or the emotional exhaustion that leads you to think that you can’t take it anymore. Don’t hesitate to seek help if emotional distress is getting the better of you.
- Suffering is indeed optional, although we do not consciously choose that option. We chose it because we don’t know how to respond to pain in any other way, so we will have to learn. And the key is to accept pain, to understand that emotional pain is an inevitable part of our lives and that lives are not less happy or less fulfilling for feeling pain; on the contrary.
- Drop the fight against pain, don’t resist it, accept it as something natural no matter how annoying it is. Do not cling to the idea of trying to avoid pain at all costs because that attitude is precisely what calls for suffering.