Pain Vs Suffering

For me pain is inevitable.  Suffering, I always was taught to believe was optional but I seem to have done my fair share of this aswell.

I have never fully understood how pain and suffering were different from each other.  I kind of took it for granted that one was the inevitable consequence of the other.

Yesterday, I had a very emotional day, I also had a very sleepless night.  I sit here writing this and look back on some very painful episodes in my life.  In some of my painful episodes, the immediate visceral pain was searing, then afterwards I felt overwhelmed with grief, quite naturally.

Suffering is the added extra our mind adds to an already painful situation.

Pain cannot be avoided, it's the price of being a human being with a heart, there are ways we can reduce this kind of self generated suffering.  I remember over the years reading this time & time again.

In the midst of difficult situations, I’ve sometimes said to myself, my life will never be the same again.  Change is always happening. Sometimes the change is for the good, often it can be very painful.

Often, I have found that what seems horrible today may in the long run turn out to be just what I needed to take me to the next step in my life.

Over the last 7 years and even before that, suffering has occurred because I have been so broken and completely ground down. For a while, I can’t seem to think of anything else.

Over the years, my pain has made me feel incredibly alone and isolated.

Suffering is a function of imbalances in physical, mental and emotional functioning.  Whatever affects the mind or the body will inevitably affect the other, regardless of which side of the fence an issue originates, imbalances in thinking can create imbalances in physical and emotional functioning. Recovery from any long term condition or life challenge is a gradual, progressive, and ongoing process of restoring balance. 

Suffering is both a cause and an effect of distressing emotions associated with chronic pain: anxiety, irritability, anger, fear, frustration, guilt, shame, loneliness, hopelessness, and helplessness.  I know that negative thinking only makes situations we believe to be “bad,” worse. Our thoughts have the capacity to make us miserable, and negative thinking can be especially insidious, feeding on itself. 

Suffering can only disappear when people become consciously aware of this chain reaction and learn how to respond differently to their pain. Believe me this is no walk in the park, it isn't easy but it is possible. 

I have had to completely adjust how I think and how I think about my own thinking, we can all change our emotional responses, the extent to which we suffer, our level of tension and stress, and in turn, our experience of pain.