Suffering: The Series Pt 7

Why do people become dependent on alcohol? What is the draw to substance abuse or dependency? How does a person come to the decision of sacrificing health, stability or other necessary securities for the sake of a momentary pleasure?

The simple answer is because pain is pain, and, as discussed before, humans are geared toward self repair, both physically and emotionally. Another reason is because pain is a singular event or experience in the midst of general lack of that experience, and it's singularity causes one to think momentarily rather than in a larger scale of perspective.

Put it this way. Imagine it is your job to weed out defective products on an assembly line. Simple enough, right? The assembly line moves, the products come through, you notice one with a scratch or a chip, you pick it up, you put it aside, and return to watching the line for more defects.

Generally speaking, assembly lines like this are paced at a speed that allows you to be thorough enough to catch the defects, get rid of them and then return to the rest of the products without missing any, so altogether, removing one won't have any major effect on the line in general.

But then let's imagine at some point you are asked to do the same thing, this time it's just you manning the line, and you've got your 5 year old son with you. The likelihood of you missing a defective product has increased because you are no longer able to give 100% of your focus to this assembly line, and therefore, your aim is going to be more specifically geared toward the defective products than it was before, because you have a job to do, and your productivity determines your ability to care for your 5 year old son.

In this situation, there are a couple of solutions. One would be to ask for more help. Now, it's not clear what kind of management you have in this situation, so maybe you could ask for it, but who knows if it will come or be granted to you. Another solution is to stop the assembly line after so many products come through to be sure you don't miss any. Theoretically, not a bad idea. Productivity may be lower than normal, but efficiency would stay up ultimately.

A third option would be to find ways to occupy your 5 year old son, whether by giving him something to focus on, or perhaps finding someone in another department willing to watch him while you work. The pressure is still on you to sort out the products by yourself, but you don't have the distraction of your son who will need attention at unpredictable times.

A final option would be to quit altogether, find a different job, work from home, whatever. The problem no longer exists if you are removed from the environment that created it, right?

Ultimately, the situation becomes a matter of accepting a suffering of some kind, but having to choose which kind based on what is more desired and what will produce a more meaningful outcome. What must I suffer now to reduce suffering later?

In each solution there is a temporary suffering leading to a relief of suffering in the future. Asking for help is a minor suffering of admitting defeat in a small way, leading to, if rewarded, a relief of pressure of accuracy. Stopping the assembly line, as mentioned, reduces productivity, but ultimately ensures accuracy.

Occupying your son or having a babysitter would create some uncertainty about his well-being, and could affect his attachment style, depending on how he accepts the care given by someone who isn't someone he is used to caring for him. However, that would reduce your distraction, ultimately increasing your efficiency and productivity.

And of course, quitting would present the challenge of finding a new job, which is a suffering in and of itself, but give the opportunity to work in a better environment which allows your life to develop as it should.

One way or another, suffering will happen, it's just a matter of how, and to what end.

To return to the questions asked in the beginning, those who choose alcohol, illegal substances, etc, as a regular coping mechanism tend to choose similarly to those choosing to stop the assembly line, but with the hopes of those choosing to leave the job for something else. The substance removes the momentary pressure, causing the assembly line to stop. If you're an individual lucky enough to not develop a substance addiction, you can return to the assembly line and continue to do your job once you've regained your focus and energy.

For those not so lucky, what happens is that the assembly line starts itself again, and instead of having the ability to return to it with new focus and energy, the individual either doesn't return, because he or she is of the mindset that it won't unless he or she is ready for it to, or returns but with significantly diminished ability to handle the pace and expectations of it having started again.

In other words, the choice made is avoiding suffering now, with hopes that it won't return in the future. As we've discussed, life simply doesn't allow that to work.

As a result, the reservoir of responsibilities grows deeper and deeper, and therefore so does the suffering the individual must either face and progress through, or continue to avoid. This is why we encounter individuals with serious addictions for multiple years as having a maturity relative to the age they were when their addiction began, as that is when they chose to stop the assembly line and not return to it.

So, the takeaway here is the not the fact that those with addictions have made some unrealistic choice in regards to accepting suffering now vs. later. What is important about this topic is to note that, they, just like every other human, have chosen to solve their problems, as most do, in a very singular, momentary way, due to the nature of pain and suffering as it is. What happens in addiction is not that the individual is addicted to something that is harming them, but rather they are addicted to the newly discovered feeling of not having to choose in general.

And, on their behalf, I can validate that it is an incredibly human conclusion to come to, and there is no shame in becoming addicted to that feeling, especially in these days and times.

Ultimately, the choice is universal, and what connects every person in the world, especially those who find themselves in my office confiding in me about their mental health, is that each human has and continuously makes that choice to suffer now or later, and each of us will encounter the reservoir whether we've made the right choice or not.

What makes the difference, significantly, is how we approach the idea of suffering, and how we regard it as either avoidable or unavoidable. Because truly, as long as we understand that it is unavoidable, we can change it from being a drop in a reservoir to an extra drop of force in a river funneling energy into our own growth and progress to self-fulfillment.

Suffering: The Series Pt 6

Ok, so we're going to start this one with a teachable moment here.

In the world of psychology, there exists what is known as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and over the years since it was created it has been a successful tool in gauging what parts of a person's past are still lingering in the present, specifically in terms of what "needs" they currently have and what needs may not have been met when they were younger.

The hierarchy of needs are presented in a pyramid, with the most basic, important needs on the bottom. It looks like this:

These are the things which, at their essence, are important for a person to have, or feel that they have, throughout life in order have the security needed for full actualization, or becoming their "optimal" self.

Often, when a person comes to therapy, their presenting struggles can be linked to the lack of security in one or several of these areas. For example, typically, a person struggling with anxiety has experienced or is currently experiencing a need in some amount of safety and also love or belonging.

The need for safety is present in the struggle to trust their own emotions and thoughts, especially since anxiety tends to be very convincing with the arguments it produces for those feelings and emotions, despite generally being irrational in nature.

The need for love and belonging is also present, and often more easily identified, as the subject of anxiety typically has a basis in feeling accepted by one's environment due to the irrationality of one's thoughts, regardless of how convincing anxiety can be.

Anxiety can also come from a lack of security in the other areas as well. A person's experience with a lack of physiological safety as well as the two higher levels. In a future article, I will go deeper into anxiety and discuss its mechanisms in regards to suffering. But for now, we're going to stay with the hierarchy.

Generally speaking, it is necessary for a person to obtain security in the lower levels in order to reach security in the higher ones. If I am still struggling to feel love and belonging, obtaining security in my own self esteem is going to be a difficult endeavor, because the way that my environment accepts me, or feels to be accepting, will validate the truths I believe about myself. If it doesn't validate feelings of positive self esteem, or feels as though it doesn't, my belief about myself will reflect that, lowering my self esteem.

So how does suffering play into the hierarchy? Simply by being the catalyst of any lack of security throughout our lifetime.

Here's what I mean.

If I grew up in a home which was lacking substantial amounts of food, warmth, physical comfort, etc, that would be considered a form of suffering. I am subject to malnourishment, hunger, etc, as a result of this condition of need. Now, developing in that environment, I have a greater likelihood of growing up to focus on pursuits which allow me to satisfy that need more acutely. I might focus on higher paying jobs to eliminate the possibility of not being able to provide those needs.

For some, this need and pursuit of satisfaction works itself out to the point where a person has also obtained awareness of where their need has come from and is able to separate their pursuit and success or lack thereof from their own identify. For others, the suffering they experienced in that regard remains as a more neurotic desire to keep from returning to the state of suffering they were subject to. (This is where anxiety enters as a harbinger of sorts, because the idea of returning to the past is more of a haunt than a motivator.)

Already, I've mentioned two levels on the hierarchy which have been involved in just one area of mental health. And if you notice, what I began speaking about was mostly within the physiological realm of need, and as my hypothetical self grew older that lack of security developed into both a physiological need and a need for safety as well. It wouldn't be unusual if "I" also grew into a state of anxiety which told me that the ways in which my security was "in danger" were intertwined with the feeling of love, acceptance, belonging, etc from those in my life, as my anxiety is likely telling me that I may lose them as well if I don't keep things in line.

See the point?

Bringing this back around, the presence of suffering is something that is pivotal in how a person develops, and more importantly, how they fashion themselves as person in society. Want to know what a person in the midst of suffering values the most? Find out what they didn't have enough of growing up. In other words, if you want to know what a person is and aims to be, find out what suffering they endured as a child or adolescent, and then ask what they learned from it. Whatever their answer is will tell you how suffering formed their worldview, which will give you insight into what they need, what they are striving for, and what all of that has convinced them about those around them.

We'll go deeper into this in the next article, so stay tuned for more talk of the benefits of suffering, especially in the lens of providing mental health. Thanks for reading!

Suffering: The Series Pt 4

So here we are at part 4 of the series on suffering, and, although I had planned on publishing articles on one or two other subjects on the matter prior to this one, I can't help but reflect (currently sitting in my therapy office) on grief and loss and the way it has made its way into my conversations with the clients I see, whether that was the reason they came to see me or not.

Before I dive into my mind space about this, let me share an insight first. When I say the words "grief" and "loss" what I am referring to is not just the result of the death of a loved one, or the feeling of having lost someone either suddenly or to more natural causes. I am referring to an entire spectrum of losses and shades of grief, to include loss of love, loss of friendship, loss of financial security, and so on. And the grief I am referring to is simply any amount of emotional response as a result of that loss, indicating any level of sadness related to it.

To be more concise, my point here is a person does not need to have lost a loved one to experience loss, nor do they need to have lost someone to death in order to have their response categorized as grief.

An example. I've spoken to people who have had lost loved ones either to murder or suicide and counseled them on the ways their grief has affected their lives and mental health in general. I have also spoken to people who have had to downsize from a full residential home to an apartment due to financial hardship from COVID, as well as those who who have lost the jobs they have had for 30 years because of the pandemic--and I have also counseled them on how grief has affected them as a whole.

So long as there is something lost, grief will be present and is an appropriate response.

Another prevailing issue that has arisen in conversation with clients and acquaintances alike is the fact that, in general, people in society struggle greatly to manage, navigate and respond to their own grief because as a whole society struggles to do so with the grief of others. (In a future article, we'll go deeper into the typical ways people respond to grief an loss that are ultimately not as helpful as they have been taught to believe.)

(For this next bit of conversation, I tip my hat to It's OK That You're Not Ok by Megan Devine. It is an excellent book, and an insightful look into the problem of how we have been taught to respond to grief and loss, and how much damage that has done.)

Referring to previous articles, the idea of pain in general has become more topical, not just in therapy sessions but elsewhere in the "outside world" as well. And it's no surprise, anyone who's been awake and alert the past 5 years or so would be able to attest to the emotional turmoil that has seemingly increased due to the economy, politics and the number of domestic shootings we've had to hear about at an alarmingly frequent rate.

And yet, I still see people who have suffered much and still feel as though their environment is supportive of the level of grief they are experiencing. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard, "I know I shouldn't still be hung up on this, but I can't seem to move on from it," I'd probably be able to retire 20 years ahead of time.

Which brings us to the first problem in grief and loss, which is this: For some reason, there is an expectation that one must "get over" loss at an inhumanly rapid pace, otherwise they are considered "hung up on" or "wallowing in" their grief.

About once a week I consider locating the person who decided this and set this expectation into motion as a societal norm and write them a strongly worded letter. And perhaps it wasn't one person, but a society of people long ago before mental health was considered to have been important. That sound more likely. Still, what I hope is the takeaway is that grief, no matter what for, has absolutely NO timeline. A person who has had a falling out with a close friend may take as long to process through that as someone who has just lost a spouse of 30 years, and that bears no reflection on how "well" or "appropriately" that person is responding to their particular suffering.

In fact, what it really reflects upon is the depth of feeling and connection that person felt between themselves and their lost friend, loved one, etc.

This segways to problem number two: As implied up to this point, people in general have a mentality about suffering that is almost completely backwards from what it should be.

Put it this way. If a person who has injured their leg for some reason came to a hospital and mentioned that "It's been a week or so and it's still hurting just as much as it was a week or so ago!" the response to this would not be, "Hey, it's been a week, maybe you should not wallow in it so much and just let go of the pain and move on!"

Why not? Because, for lack of better terms, only a monster would tell someone their possibly broken or even just fractured leg that has been hurting longer than a week is a matter of them wallowing, or getting hung up on their pain. This is because even those only basically familiar with medicine and anatomy know that pain means something has happened that requires attention, time and care to heal--not ignorance and overt machismo.

And yet, here we are, in a society where emotional pain is seen as a problem of someone's ability to cope with life as it happens to everyone, not that a person is responding as they should to life happening as it happens to everyone.

If someone has lost the love of their life I would hope that it takes them a while to get through it!

Which brings us to the third and final problem to be discussed in this article: Society at large views suffering as the problem, not the way it is regarded. Referring back to the first article, the way people think about pain, loss, hardship and so on over the last century has changed, at the very least in terms of how often those words are being used. At the end of the article, I surmised that those words have been used more in recent years due to the rise in support in mental health in general. Another possibility, considering the prevalence of war and related events in the years prior, is that suffering was anticipated or at least accepted as a part of the times.

In other words, people knew that where there is war there is suffering, so avoiding it was pointless. It wasn't received with excitement, but it was received as a reasonable consequence. And certainly, with the recent rise in mental health awareness and the increase of people seeking therapy for their suffering, there isn't anything negative to say about the rise in conversation about it, it makes a lot sense.

However, as I mentioned, there is a an extra weight placed on those who come to see me, namely that of the assumption that their experience of suffering qualifies them as someone who is broken, or attention seeking, or to some degree a burden to the rest of society which struggles to adequately lighten the burden that individual already carries as a result of being a human being in the midst of suffering.

So, in summary, the problem with suffering is largely the way that we have been taught to think about it. There hasn't been one person who has sat in my office processing a grief, a loss, or an emotional injury of any kind which I would consider broken, attention seeking, or in any way incorrect about their own suffering. In fact, I consider those individuals the most attentive to life around them, as they have noticed the disorder that occurs as a matter of life and seek to make it right.

In the next article, we'll cover the "Suffering Rulebook" in society and how to change it (or do away with it...) to improve the suffering of every human.

Suffering: The Series Pt 1

Alright, so let's start with some definitions here. According to Google, pain and suffering are defined as follows:

Pain: physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury.

Suffering: the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.

Right away, what strikes me as interesting about these two definitions is the fact that they apparently cannot be defined without including each other in the definition. This is to say, that according to our English language, a person who is experiencing pain is necessarily also experiencing suffering, and a person who is suffering is also experiencing pain.

Ultimately, I can't find much to refute about that. If you break your leg, you will experience pain, and until that break is heal, you will be suffering through the pain of a broken leg. It certainly makes sense from a linguistic standpoint, and from a therapeutic standpoint, it holds true as well.

My clients who come to me reporting symptoms of emotional pain--depression, anxiety, grief, etc--could certainly say to me, "I am suffering from mental illness," and I wouldn't try to correct them or reframe it even, it just makes sense.

Let's go further. Suffering, according to Google, may include hardship or distress as well. Those words are defined as such:

Distress:

1. extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain.

2. the state of a ship or aircraft when in danger or difficulty and needing help.

3. suffering caused by lack of money or the basic necessities of life.

Hardship: severe suffering or privation.

Again, neither can be defined without suffering to qualify them, and vice versa. At least in terms of lexicon, an English speaking person is unable to conceptualize suffering and pain without imagery or connotation of hardship, distress, sorrow, anxiety, etc, because of how they evidently qualify each other.

Why am I caught on words and definitions? Simply because in my existence as a therapist and also someone who has an obsession with words and their connotations, I have come to learn, know and witness the effect of words that a person chooses to use on how they experience the situations and conditions they live through.

For illustration, here are some graphs (also from Google) showing the prevalence of usage of the words above over time, up to the year 2019.

Use of the word Pain

Use of the word Suffering

What do we notice here? For one, apparently those in the 1950 through, say, 2000ish era weren't using these words nearly as much those in the time frames surrounding them.

When a word decreases in a language over time, you could probably wonder, reasonably, if it has to do with the introduction of new words or vocabulary that expresses the same thing. For example, if a child stops using the words "I'm mad" it's conceivable that the child has learned to specify more with words such as, "I am upset because things are not going the way that I want." This is the idea of word substitution.

Substitution could explain why the 50's, 60's and so on to 2000 stopped using those words as often, from a certain standpoint. Therapy and psychotherapy in America started to really increase and become utilized on a larger scale than before, so certainly people had the opportunity to learn new ways to express the concepts of pain and suffering beyond the statement "I am in pain" or "I am suffering."

But then again, therapy was new still, and it wasn't like people were lined up out the door for it in the beginning. And, presumably, even without that being the case, you might expect the decrease of those words to mean an increase of opposite words, such as "happiness," or "peace."

Let's look at those words.

Use of the Word Happiness

Use of the word Peace

See what I'm seeing? Use of the word "happiness" is perhaps lower in that half a millenia than that for the words "pain" and "suffering" was trending. People in those times were not using words like pain or suffering, but they also weren't using words such as happiness either.

Looking at the word peace, however, might give us a different avenue of thought, specifically that of what was being experienced, and how that affected use of words within that time period.

Question for you. If you ran a graph of your own language over your life time and found that in one area of your life you were using words like peace more than the words pain or suffering, what would you assume about your life at that time? Probably, and very reasonably, that in that time, nothing was happening to you in that time that was cause for pain, suffering, etc, and therefore, your language reflected that.

I would grant you that, it certainly would make sense.

One more graph for us to look at.

Any guesses as to what this graph represents? Love? Health? Stability?

If your guess was any of these words, or anything related, unfortunately you are incorrect.

This graph represents the use of the word "war. "

If your memory for history is as inconsistent as mine, I'll fill you in. During the 1950's, America was occupied by talk, implementation and all other dealings surround the Korean War.

So, yeah, people were talking about peace more than anything because at the time, war, it's opposite, was heavy on the minds of the government and the American people at large.

Enter the concept of word opposition, this being the idea that the absence or decrease of a word in time signifies that the current mindset of the population is preoccupied with what it doesn't have, what it believes is necessary to be spoken about, etc. This is to say that, in some cases, a word is used less when there is more reason to use it because the human mind is looking to identify and solve the issue of it being there by pursuing its opposite. In this case, talk of peace was greater than talk of pain and suffering because there was a lack of peace; There was no need to talk about pain and suffering because it was something that was obviously present, to the point where talking about it was a moot point.

If I don't have a job, I'm more likely to be occupied with thoughts of financial stability. I can certainly think and talk about not having a job, but my preoccupation will be centered around the pursuit of financial stability, the opposite of the thing I have.

Again, why bring this up? So the people in the 1950's used words like war and peace more often then pain and suffering--what's the big deal?

Two things.

One, words are, have always been and will always be important when it comes to a person's perception of their current experience and what meaning there is within it. If a graph shows that in a time of war, people were talking about it's opposite, a positive opposite, at that, more than the obvious negative effects of the situation, it says a lot about the ability of the people at that time to make meaning out of a situation which involved a great deal of pain and suffering and focus on the solution, the goal, the positive outcome, rather than the negative realities and reasons to dwell on them.

Even stepping out of the 50's and going back toward the 20's and 30's, where we have the Great Depression and World War II, the graphs don't change. There is still, generally speaking, less negative vocabulary in those times than there are apparently in current times, even though we as a country aren't in a world war, nor are there any known replications of the Holocaust either.

Which is point number two. What do these graphs indicate about what a society believes is suffering, pain, war, etc? If the change is best explained by word opposition rather than substitution, does that mean the rise of the use of suffering and pain indicates more of a preoccupation with those words in recent times than before? And, if that is true, why have the numbers jumped higher than they have been since the 1800's when there were more larger movements of oppression, segregation, slavery, etc?

Maybe, as a people, we've grown soft, sensitive, unable to differentiate between trivial inconveniences and socially and historically validated reasons for feeling pain and suffering.

Or maybe the fact is that after centuries of humanity deciding what suffering should mean, we are finally starting to realize that our past ideas and perception of what it means is not only inaccurate, but has created generations of humans who now have no choice but to process the negative results of it handed down from generations of those forced to live under the weight of emotional torment because of it.

Because, let's face it. We don't have a world war II on the homefront, nor do we have concentration camps anywhere (that we know of), and slavery has been outlawed for many many decades--and yet, people are still suffering. People are still dying based on a prejudice of color, race, religion--really, any identity those responsible do not agree with--which is to say, that after generations of "positive change" we are still somehow dealing with scars from sufferings from long ago.

My thought, which will be continued in a future article, is that any and all change has been made in the past generations to alleviate these societal sufferings has been a band-aid over a bullet hole. Sure, doing away with segregated bathrooms is great, but it doesn't heal the agony and suffering of the people who it applied to.

What we're dealing with not is a tragic misunderstanding of what suffering is, how to talk about it and process it, how to resolve it, and how to be sure the same suffering is not repeated.

More on this to come next week--feel free to leave comments, critiques, points of view, etc, and of course please share as much as you can!

Suffering: The Series Intro

Back in 2015, 22 year old me chose the subject of pain as focal point for my senior thesis, entitled "The Gain of Loss: The Benefits of Suffering." Recently, I decided to dig up the 24 page analysis of the universal experience of pain from the archives of Google Drive to critique my navigation of the topic, which leaned very heavily on the works of Viktor Frankl and his insights within his book Man's Search of Meaning."

To be fair to my younger self, I was young, hadn't even earned my degree in psychology yet and although I had endured my own share of pain and suffering throughout my life at that point, I still barely scratched the surface of what could possibly be a comprehensive understanding of how pain and suffering affects a person either positively or negatively.

In all honesty, considering what I recall to be my experience with the subject of pain, the thesis was somewhere close to the best I could have done at the time, with time constraints, limited resources and what little experience in the mental health field I had then. Still, reading it now, I view this 24 page document merely bullet points of a larger, far more vast topic that puzzles people of all educational levels and theories today.

Naturally, then, my therapist brain came to the conclusion that the only thing to do about this barely adequate thesis was to dive back in and see what more light I could shed on the subject, especially considering the state of mental health that has been created by the pandemic. Using "The Gain of Loss: The Benefits of Suffering" as a springboard of sorts, I could expound on its main points of focus, namely "What is Suffering?" "What Makes Suffering Positive?" and "What Makes Suffering Negative?" and then provide even more light on the lesser known concepts of pain and suffering in a way that helped those reading to make sense of their own experiences in life and the pandemic as well.

So the question became, "Where do I start?" With the subject of pain being as vast and universal as the people of the human race who experience it, how do I start this open conversation with the people of the world, when, despite my advance in education and mental health experience, I still have not come to know all there is about pain and suffering?

And how do I present this in a way that doesn't lose you, the reader, by the end of the first paragraph? After all, few people in this world enjoy anything related to pain and suffering, let alone reading about it.

Enter in Suffering: The Series.

Instead of publishing one, large document of 50+ pages filled with as much information on suffering I myself can find and analyze, I've decided to publish weekly "installments," we'll call them, of isolated subjects, so as to give an equal amount of time to each possible subject, and allow the topic to be an ongoing conversation (open for input, critiques, resource sharing, etc from you!) about this thing called pain which each of us is intimately and uniquely an expert on in our own ways.

Therefore, starting today, with this introduction, I will publish one thought, idea, concept or what have you, related to suffering which you, the reader, may remark on, critique, tear to shreds, share with your Facebook feed, or ignore completely. Ultimately, to me, the value here is the presence of this conversation in a world and society where suffering is taboo, despite the evidence that all have, are and will experience suffering at least once and more likely often throughout their lives.

“It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.”

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning

Suffering: The Series Pt 2

Let me paint an all too familiar picture, which I'm sure everyone has seen or experienced, and, let's be honest, is guilty of themselves.

You call a friend (or they call you-- it truly doesn't matter how this happens) and you both start sharing experiences since the last time you spoke. You've started working out, they've taken on more projects at work, you've started a book that started off kind of boring but you really feel as though it's growing on you more and more as you read on--you get the idea.

Then it happens.

One of you decides to start venting about something. Maybe it's a complaint about a boyfriend, or maybe it's situation at work where a coworker or a boss is being extra ornery about something. Insert normal variety of suffering here.

Then insert this response: "That's not half bad compared to what I've got going on!"

Immediately, the conversation becomes a "Who is suffering more" style game of chess, instead of a healthy conversation of validation and support.

Virtually everyone has done it, myself included, and that the very least virtually everyone has experienced it. But why does this happen? What good could a person possibly intend with that kind of response.

A few things are going one here.

First of all, it has become very apparent, as suffering and pain are being given more attention as the years go by, that ultimately, those who aren't trained to have a therapeutic conversation don't know how to do it, or if they do, they aren't confident enough to do it well.

At the end of the day, this is acceptable, but only because there simply isn't a huge workforce of people trained in mental health. A Google search about mental health stats will show that a very small percentage of people in the workforce today are in the mental health field, meaning a very small percentage of people in the population have been trained to speak about things such as grief, loss, pain, etc, amongst myriad other mental health concerns.

So, in that respect, a response like this is understandable. But then again, there are certainly people who aren't trained to speak about things without feeling the need to compare, and yet are able to respond and hold space in an affirming way.

Is this an anomaly? Hardly.

The reason I say that is because there is something about therapeutic listening and responding that cannot be taught in a textbook, but rather comes from the experience of talking to other people simply to hear them. In other words, everyone one of us has had at least one encounter with someone who let our accounts of suffering exist without trying to modify it, qualify it or "size it up" by offering what they believe is a worse ordeal that they happen to be experiencing.

A simple example of this being perhaps a situation in one's childhood, when sustaining a scrape or a bruise during play outside. When one runs inside to tell one's mother about it, one's mother responds with, "Oh, ouch that looks like it hurts! Let's get you a bandaid!" In this interaction, mother is validating that the injury has occurred, that it ought to come with some amount of pain, and that she has an interest in being a catalyst for healing if possible.

Much different, let's say, than if the mother responded with, "Oh quit crying, it's not that bad! I've had worse injuries than that and survived!"

What sort of message do you think that sends to the child? For one, the child will probably learn that for some things mom simply isn't the one to turn to for comfort or help, which is a tragedy in and of itself, because that will influence who the child seeks help from in the future, possibly to point of not asking for help when necessary as an adult.

Secondly, and possibly more importantly, the child will learn that there is some type of pain or suffering which "doesn't count" as suffering, because someone else has suffered "worse," thereby also teaching the child that someone else can always hold the power to qualify the pain they are feeling.

And, to be succinct, those are the people who end up in my office, saying things like, "I'm don't like calling what I went through as abuse, because there are definitely people who have had it worse, but..." when the fact is, compared to other people or not, this person had one bad hand dealt to them as a child, over and over again, and absolutely has every right to call what they went through as abuse, and feel as though they have suffered because of it.

And truly, there is not one situation in which someone else has not had it worse. If I suffer a snake bite, painful and poisonous, there will always have been someone who sustained a snake bite and did not survive it. Does that mean my snake bite should not be painful to me? Of course not.

So why do people feel the need to compare their pain to others?

For one, humans are creatures of comparison. I know I am successful, because compared to the national average, my numbers of client retention are above the norm. I know that I am feeling well, because even compared to myself on certain days, I don't feel nearly as unwell as I have in the past, based on my knowledge of symptoms, which is based on norms found in psychological studies of the average human experience.

It's kind of what we do. And in the comparison game of pain, this is definitely a primary factor.

And, to be fair, often times, this is not used maliciously. There's good quality to it, albeit often received differently, that follows more of a "I am actually just trying to relate to you and my delivery is not helping" intentionality. And I really do believe most people don't intend to disqualify the pain of another with their own comparisons, it is truly a matter of delivery and communication of intend.

But then, on occasion, there are those who, however unintentionally, do mean to disqualify the pain of another person. One reason for this is that their experience with pain in the past hasn't been validated, and therefore, they are still trying to have their pain heard by others by way of making it tower over others' pain. This is to say, " Your pain must be validated after mine is deemed to be as great as it feels."

Another reason however, is because, due to all the above mentioned reasons for a person to not know how to hold space for another person, the idea of suffering being meaningful is barely a thought. Why would I believe that suffering can be meaningful if I was never taught that it was even worth mentioning? Probably, I wouldn't!

So if someone is telling me about a bad day at work, and I don't have a concept of pain that allows me to see that, even and especially as a creature of comparison, I can use that shared experience of pain to foster validation through solidarity, my response is going to be based on the assumption that the other person is trying to garner some sort of pity, extra attention, or even some sort of admiration for having suffered in the way that they have.

Because, after all, suffering, not being meaningful in any way, is simply another human thing of comparison, in this line of thinking.

So how do we change the game?

There will certainly be more on this in future articles, but for now, here are some therapist-verified ways to change the game of comparison, or at the very least, use it to hold better space and foster a conversation where suffering can hold as much value and meaning as it possibly can.

Changing the Game:

I will preface this with the disclaimer that changing the game, depending on what you're used to is the harder of the two options. Simply because this involves rewiring thinking and changing the foundational thought altogether.

An example of this would be, say, in the case of the phone conversation with a friend who is venting about work, changing the thought from, " I am expected to fix this, or be a therapist in this situation, I am only expected to listen and validate."

The reason this is the more difficult route is because, in addition to being creatures of comparison, the human race is also a bunch of Fix-it Felix type creatures who are geared toward self-maintenance. Again, this is a very good thing about humanity. It is where we get the pursuit of medicine, science, even therapy. We simply are creatures bent on improving and actualizing as best as we can.

And, in the case of humans who care about other humans, we are willing and eager to help each other "fix" what is wrong. So the difficulty is rewiring that need, or perhaps just informing it better.

What I mean by this is simply that, often times, in situations where we are met with the decision to help someone, we tend toward, "what is the problem and how can I fix it?" What is often misinformed is our perception of either the problem or it's solution, such that, what we believe is the problem may not be the reason we are being confided in, or our idea of the solution to the problem may also not be what the person doing the confiding needs within that moment.

How do we change the game?

We ask.

(Rocket science, I know. I went to school for 6 years to learn that trick, so please appreciate this free information.)

I say that not tease anyone more than myself, for even as a therapist, my brain filled with solutions sometimes overlooks the fact that the client in front me may not be here for any of them, at least not at the moment.

And the magic question is one that is easily overlooked by myself, as well as friends and mothers alike: What can I do to make this better for you? Or, What do you feel you need right now and how can I help you with that?

Believe me, this question does a lot of hard work and saves the conversation from just about all instances of "No, you're not hearing what I am saying," which very easily turns into a comparison of who has had more suffering and therefore understands the situation better.

*Myth: Asking someone what they need does not indicate incompetence, that you were not listening to the person, or that you shouldn't be trusted with their feelings in the future. Rather, it indicates that you are interested in helping them and are willing to admit that you don't know the answer, or at least that you would like to make sure that your intentions are what the person needs. This actually communicates caring, empathy and understanding on a level that is impactful to someone.

Using the Game:

Let's return to the analogy of the child with an injury. Obviously, the preferred response from the mother is that of validation and intention to help. Now, let's pretend mom herself is one of the many who struggles holding space for others, for whatever the reason might be. To change the game would certainly be in the realm of possibility, but let's assume mom has a lot on her plate, and for now the idea of completely changing her language is a daunting idea.

That's no problem! Mom doesn't have to change much at all, because she is already aware that she also has suffered and therefore can relate to the child. In this case, mom's solution is to simply exit on the ramp just before the one that leads to disqualifying her child's pain, which is the Solidarity exit.

What this might look like, in slow-mo processing, is something like this:

C: Mom, mom! I fell off my bike and now my knee hurts and it's bleeding!

M: *thinks* Oh gosh, this kiddo should try birthing three kids, then he'd know what real pain is! (Again, this isn't mom of the year, but she's trying, she's got a lot on her plate!)

M: *Continues thinking, because she realizes that wouldn't be helpful to say to her child, because after all, he is bleeding* On that note, I do know that any amount of pain is uncomfortable, and for a kiddo, pain is pretty big since he's still little* Oh geez, kiddo, that looks like it hurts! I remember falling off my bike when I was your age, did you get hurt anywhere else?

What happened here, is mom evaluated her conclusion that her child wasn't trying to take any "spotlight" away from her experiences of pain, nor was he trying to to say that it was the worst pain anyone could ever feel--he was simply trying to say it happened and it was affecting him. Which, as it happens, is precisely how it goes for every human, whether it is physical or emotional pain we're dealing with.

So, all that being said, what are your thoughts? How much do you struggle with this? What do you think about the comparison game and its presence within a conversation like this? Let me know in the comments! See you next week!

Suffering: The Series Pt 3

Alright, so jumping back to part 1 where we talked about definitions and connotations and whatnot, there is still more to say about the meaning of these words and concepts in terms of how it is presented and perceived in today's culture.

As mentioned before, the frequency of the word usage over the past century implies some sort of outcry, or at the very least some recent change of tides where the verbiage is slowly being introduced into common conversation, as if it is finally starting to fall away from being taboo.

But now, as more people find themselves in my office telling me stories of their own suffering and their personal interpretation of what it says about them brings to the forefront another question about suffering: How does a person's religion influence how they receive, navigate through and grow through suffering?

The short answer? Almost entirely. Let's unpack this.

Overall, the pursuit of a religion is one's pursuit of the meaning of suffering. Specifically, it is a person's attempt to make sense out of the uncertainties of life and the existence of things such as suffering, pain, disorder, etc. Ascribing to a higher power, whatever that may be, is essentially saying "As a human, there are things in my existence I cannot understand unless I assign the meaning to them as a part of a greater plan or design of someone or something who knows the world to a greater degree than I do."

That interest in understanding the uncertain, or at the very least handing that pursuit over to a higher power is as much an inclination to the spiritual as it is an acceptance or statement that there must be meaning in the things we do not understand or cannot control, otherwise life as a human is just a lottery of chaos and serenity which we can win or lose at any given moment without any significance or reason.

That being said, a person's use of religion in that way speaks to the human desire to understand things beyond comparison to another human being, as mentioned in Part 2. This is to say, when I cannot make meaning out of the fact that you and I both suffer sometimes seemingly at random, and my experience in life doesn't resemble yours at all, I will naturally look to find meaning from something that I find either exists in both cases regardless or does not exist in both situations at all. I will seek something that either explains it, justifies it or transforms it.

(NB: The struggle or inability to do this is typically what manifests as depression and often anxiety as well. This is NOT to say that depression and anxiety have any bearing on or reflection of a person's faith in their higher power, not even a little bit. These two sufferings result from mental health and one's environment, entirely separate of their ability to believe in their "God" of choice. However, the "theme," we'll say, of each is a struggle to feel hopeful (depression) and a struggle to relinquish control or the feeling of responsibility over things or events outside of one's control either in the moment or ever. Regardless of strength of faith, a person may find themselves struggling with this temporarily or chronically depending on their perception of suffering in general--More on this in a future article.)

Typically, religion does satisfy these needs. However, there certainly have been cases in which religion has either harmed or at the very least not affected these needs positively, which begs the question: Why not?

Let's go back to word usage in general. If I grew up learning to associate the word suffering with pain, distress, hurt, or whatever, my approach to any amount of suffering is going to be "This is a bad thing, whether it comes from a chaotic existence or a life in which everything has a meaning or explanation." So to speak, it doesn't matter what my religion explains about it--I could believe that my God of choice has assigned this suffering to me for the best reasons possible, and yet in my mind it is still something that exists as a negative in my life. Because my language has taught me to think suffering=bad.

So, in a scenario where religion is present and a person not only struggles to find meaning in suffering, but also uses religion to overlook the meaning there is in each encounter with suffering, the root comes not from religion but from the idea that no matter what, suffering is a bad thing that must either be tolerated for sacrificial reasons or explained simply by the idea that one has been assigned this suffering for some greater spiritual cause by the higher power of choice.

Before I go on, I would like it to be known that neither of those concepts are "foolish" or misled at heart. The point here is to highlight the damage that thinking can do if one approaches suffering from the perspective that it can never be a good thing or used for good, both on a personal level and a spiritual level.

Because, someone of more atheistic inclination can also have similar thinking despite the belief that there is no higher power. Alternatively, that same person can have even healthier views about suffering than someone of theistic inclination, simply due to the fact that without a higher power, suffering must either be approached as meaningless or as meaningful as the individual can ascertain, since there is no higher power to explain it. (If I were trying to become and stay physically fit but did not believe that a personal trainer was a worthy investment, my pursuit will either result in me giving up based on my inability to train myself, or it will result in the gain of a knowledge of my own habits, needs, weaknesses, etc.

Ultimately, the way a person navigates their own suffering, whether by use of religion or not, depends greatly on what they believe about the sufferings every human endures, and what a person believes about suffering is often greatly impacted by what a person believes is waiting for us at the end of our lives. Such that, if two people are victims of the same car crash, with the same injury, same prognosis, everything, can endure the same suffering and come to two different conclusions about themselves as a result.

How can that be? What affects a person's view of suffering, pain, hardship, etc and what affects the way a person does or does not apply religion to it? Certainly many things. To start with--and this is a part of life which impacts a person's entire life in general--is a person's individual upbringing.

Which I will dive into in the next article. Until then, let me know what you think about this one in the comments! See you next time!