Facing Sufering

Warning Signs

“The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.”

Thomas Jefferson

According to William James, the greatest discovery of our time is that we can influence many aspects of our lives just by changing our attitude.1 Shakespeare already said poetically, “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on.”2 Or as Ramon y Cajal stated more clearly, “Every man, if he so desires, can become the sculptor of his own brain.”3 In the past, artists and wise men said it—now science also supports it.

“Today we know that self-confidence, enthusiasm, and excitement have the ability to promote higher brain functions. […] When our brain gives meaning to something, we live it as absolute reality.”4 According to the experts, this means that “the healing process greatly depends upon what is happening in the mind of the patient. The challenge for medicine is to find a way to put into motion the body’s extraordinary healing powers.”5

Pain has allies

What happens in a person’s mind is the aspect of suffering that is most difficult to understand and control.6 Running a race with his friends, a young boy falls and scrapes his knee. But in the excitement of winning the race, he ignores it and keeps running. At the end of the race, the pain in his knee regains his attention. Seeing blood, he realizes what has happened, gets scared, bursts into tears, and runs to his mother. She hugs him, calms him, cleans the scratch, and puts a Band-Aid on it. Soon the boy goes back to his toys and forgets about his wound. There are men who work at gruesome jobs (slaughterers, butchers) or who play violent sports (rugby, boxing, etc.) that require a lot of strength and the ability to sustain blows, but they are unable to watch the birth of their own children, or they faint in the hospital when they see a needle approaching.7

There are factors that increase pain perception and others that reduce it. But we ignore them for the most part. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung said that we all have a hidden side of our personal reality that we cannot face openly and that we cannot change. It is our unconscious, which he called simply our “shadow aspect.” We cannot run away from it or make it disappear. “Shadows make up part of our life.”8 We should listen to what they have to say. Now, listening to pain does not mean letting us be monopolized by it, because there are certain attention levels that aggravate situations.

Fear

Fear is, without a doubt, our worst ally against pain. Suffering always grows with the specter of fear. We all fear suffering. But often our own fear aggravates and intensifies pain, turning it into an obsession that is as or more destructive than the actual cause of harm. Fear involves additional stress that can paralyze a life or make life unbearable when it confines the sufferer in a prison of panic. For those who live under the constant threat of a sword of Damocles, it is very difficult to live in a state of tense anticipation.9 But this state does not resolve their problems; rather, it worsens them. Pain may be inevitable, but our sense of misery is, to some extent, optional.10 Hence the benefit of learning to face our problems realistically and to take control of our emotional reactions.

Many people can overcome their fear by relying on some form of outside help, professional or spiritual.11 But how can we overcome it when we don’t have help from anyone?

Loneliness and abandonment

Because suffering is such a private feeling, it is often accompanied by a strong sense of loneliness. People who suffer chronically often aggravate their situation with the feeling that no one understands or sympathizes with them as they deserve. If they then begin to think that they are a nuisance, or a bother, this further increases their discomfort.

There are many kinds of pain that we cannot deal with alone. In many cases, assistance from a health professional is essential. But family, friends, and the religious community can successfully help us to cope with adversity and misfortune. Loneliness is one of the most distressing aspects of suffering to bear. If burdens are shared, they become lighter. If we cannot share our burdens with someone, they often become heavier. So, when we suffer, what we need most is not for someone to explain why to us, but for someone to be with us and express sympathy. At the same time there is nothing that relieves misery—others’ and our own—like doing our best to help others with their pain. To this end, professional training is useful but not essential. The most important thing is sensitivity. Sitting beside someone who is suffering and listening quietly can be enough.12

Frustration and discouragement

A lot of our suffering comes from the mere realization that our reality does not match our desires. One day it dawns on us that we will never have again what we had in the past, or that we will never achieve in life what we had dreamed. And so we further poison our present, incapable of accepting our reality as it is. The wounds of the soul may scar badly, and only those who feel them can know how much pain is caused by a thwarted love, a lost job, a failed marriage, a friendship that ended in betrayal. The passage of time often helps, less so when the consequences are permanent. In that case, time does nothing but aggravate the constant pain of deterioration or of aging. And an endless problem can destroy anyone’s spirit. As the poet wrote:13 “The worst pain in the world

Is not the one that kills with a blow,

But the one that, drop by drop,

Undermines the soul and breaks it.”

Nevertheless, all these trials can help us learn. Experience teaches us to be wiser and more prudent, to protect ourselves. We should also understand that it doesn’t mean that we should put our protective barriers up so high that they isolate us from reality. Because if after a broken heart, we don’t love again, we can fall into the trap of resentment and hatred. Disappointment, if untreated, worsens into bitterness, and bitterness into cynicism. After we hit bottom in the sea of life, it is only by trying to swim that we can float again.

It is human to make mistakes. But one of the most important things we can learn in life is to take away positive lessons from our mistakes and move on. If we are self-indulgent in our status as victims, if we insist on blaming everything on life’s events, if we anchor ourselves in situations of complaint and pity, it will be difficult for us to take charge of our lives. Resentment and frustration do nothing but exacerbate suffering. The cure for bad memories is not fighting them but making good ones.

The shadow of the past

One of the greatest sources of our unhappiness can be the shadow of the past. We cannot will ourselves to forget just by wishing it, and the more we try not to remember certain problems, the more they are on our minds. Memory is fickle and selective. We forget countless good things that we enjoyed, but we remember setbacks, defeats, disappointments, insults, and betrayals…. John Irving said, “Your memory is a monster; you forget –– it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you –– and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”14 If we let it, our memory can take us to the cemetery of disappointment, bury us in the past, and haunt us mercilessly with our dead dreams.

Perhaps nothing causes as much chagrin as happiness lost. After having found happiness, sadness stings deeper and more cruelly than if we had never known felicity to begin with. A famous beauty watches herself age in the mirror, battling gray hair, weight gain, wrinkles or flabbiness. An athlete who was admired for his physique suffers the withering of his body to a greater extent than the rest of us who were always average or unattractive. Those who loved or were loved despair after being abandoned. Those who possessed wealth and lost it are much more unhappy than those who were always poor. Whether we like it or not, our past casts its shadow over our present.15 As Lord Byron said, “The memory of joy is no longer joy; the memory of pain is pain still.”

The actor who was an idol cannot stand to be forgotten. The athlete who dreads being replaced may try to prolong his career by using chemicals…. It is difficult to cure yourself of past triumphs— of glory lost. The writer becomes depressed if her latest book sells fewer copies than her previous book, and the singer grows somber if he books fewer performances than before…. Far from being content with what life gave us for a time, we feel that the past no longer counts, no matter how great it was. Money accumulated no longer satisfies if we don’t keep earning. Admiration once received is worthless if it is no longer given. Beauty once possessed becomes a bitter memory once it is lost…

Why do we place so little value on what we have accomplished, once it has passed? A growing number of people undergo countless operations and inject any chemical into their bodies just to look younger, but they often end up looking deformed…. And there is the vain politician who isn’t adverse to making any compromise to improve his image, trying to get the votes that will enable him to remain in power….

The phrase “time heals all wounds” expresses a relative truth. The wounds, it is true, often heal. The skin pulls back together, renewing itself until it forms a new barrier against infection. But the new skin, the healed area, usually remains more sensitive than the surrounding skin. More fragile. And each time that the scar comes into contact with a foreign object, there is a memory of the initial wound. The injury heals but remains fragile. The same thing happens when a word, a thought, an image, brings back the memory of suffering from long ago. The wound is healed, but the fragility of the memory remains. Years pass and the scar lingers…as long as love or memory remains.16

A sense of failure

We humans are the only living beings that trip over the same stone a thousand times and then blame the stone. Nevertheless, what we suffer from could help us to identify the causes of our failings. This realization can allow us to take personal responsibility for what happens to us, to question the beliefs that society imposes on us, and then change direction. That’s the opinion held by Jose Luis Montes (Spain, 1965), former administrator of several international corporations such as Epson, Xerox, and Tech Data: “I believed that success meant reaching the top and making lots of money,” he admits. “I achieved everything the system says you should to be happy, but when I got to the top I felt empty.”17

Moved by a profound longing to find himself and undertake a life project based on values, not on profit, Montes sold his business a few years ago. What he calls his “inner transformation” has led him to become the founder of the social movement Wikihappiness. This successful former administrator now gives conferences for administrators, at which he speaks of triumph and failure.

“When you don’t know who you are or what you want, you are a slave to your own low self-esteem and insecurity. This lack of confidence leads you to think and do what others think and do. Authentic people are free, consistent, and honest with themselves. When we are very young other people fill our heads with preconceived notions about how we should live our lives. They condition us to triumph at all costs, to take that route into the temple of happiness. But it is a big lie. I have lived in that place and it’s empty. Happiness doesn’t depend on what we possess, but rather on what we are and our ability to live in accord with ourselves. Often the race to possess becomes an obstacle in the path to being.”

“I have proven”—Montes continues—“that if your main goal is to achieve success, power, and money, then you need to be selfish and ambitious, and you end up destroying the innate humanity inside you…. You disconnect from your essence and you forget the values and projects that really are worth the effort. They have programmed us to be unhappy, and the majority of us are—only very few of us have the humility and courage to recognize it. Our worst enemy is self-deception, not wanting to recognize the uneasiness we feel inside. There is no worse failure than setting wrong goals and reaching them. That is why there are so many successful people who are so unhappy: because they have done what the system has imposed on them and not what their heart dictates. Success is to be consistent with yourself, with the dictates of your conscience. If you don’t learn to be happy with yourself, it is certain that you will end up thinking you are a failure.”18

Frustration is produced by depending on others for our happiness. The sense of failure is a major source of suffering. And from frustration to anger there is but a single step.

Anger and feelings of guilt

Anger is an almost inevitable emotion brought on by annoyance. It is positive when we rebel against injustices or abuses. But it becomes negative, and even dangerous, when it interferes with our ability to think, when we are blinded with the desire for vengeance or determined to be destructive, letting ourselves be brought low by violence against others or against ourselves.19 Hatred and anger are the most natural responses to pain, but they are also the most damaging. Hate is a deadly poison, and anger is self-destructive.20 Marcus Aurelius said, with sound judgment, “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”21

Driven by anger, convinced that their problems are dependent on factors outside themselves, many patients develop an additional feeling of hatred that can poison their lives if it is not resolved in time.22 Others, without reason, turn their anger against themselves, convinced that their situation is a just punishment for some fault.23 The antidote to anger is serenity, one of the most useful virtues in life, especially for those who suffer. Mental and spiritual healing—which includes overcoming feelings of hatred, guilt, and remorse—is as important or more important than somatic recovery, if the aim is to achieve total healing.24 But both require patience, and positive attitudes.

Positive attitudes

The wise Solomon said, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”25 To face our existence realistically, we first need to be conscious of all that is positive about our situation and recognize that any glass half empty is also half full. There is always something to be grateful for.

Even in the midst of our pain, we can remember that the body contains countless cells that are working continuously on our behalf:

1 Our brains have countless active neurons that keep our thinking alert and make us conscious of the world around us.

2 Our eyes are wonderful receptors that allow us to enjoy the magic of colors and shapes, the wonder of light, the beauties of nature, the immensity of the universe and relationships with our fellow man.

3 Our ears contain fine filaments that vibrate with children’s laughter, birdsong, orchestra music, the soft patter of raindrops, and the voices of the people we love.

4 Most human beings can move. We can walk, jump, run, dance, or play sports. We have hundreds of muscles and bones coordinated by prodigiously synchronized nerves, ready to obey us and take us where we want to go.

5 Our lungs are amazing filters. Through millions of alveoli, they purify the air that they take in, oxygenate our blood and free our bodies from harmful waste. There is no doubt that we were created for life. We have been designed to be happy.

How can we complain about pain in our arms or legs, when we see others who don’t have any of these limbs and still laugh?26 I have known blind people who are happy, because they know how to see the light beyond the shadows, and I also have met people whose eyes work perfectly and yet live in the shadows, because they don’t know how to truly see…. Why limit ourselves to thinking of the few things that make us suffer and not remember the many things for which we should be grateful?

I must add, however, that it is dangerous to let ourselves be seduced by the siren songs of the preachers of positive thinking who cultivate the myth that we can achieve everything that we set out to do. It’s okay to aim for great things, and we should try. But we all have limits set by nature or our circumstances. In every life, there are situations and moments of darkness, disease, frustration, failure, grief.

We can often overcome them on our own, but sometimes it is impossible to face them alone. Fragility is part of the human condition. We need help in difficult moments. Aside from getting appropriate care, which is most important and most urgent, there are three basic steps that will help us cope with suffering: heeding the warning signs, practicing spiritual serenity, and learning to live with inevitable pain.

Heeding the warning signs

No matter how we prepare ourselves, pain always takes us by surprise. Especially in Western societies, where we have passed on the responsibility for pain management to the experts. We forget that we ourselves are the main stakeholders, and that our own bodies put the most immediate curative resources into action. Patients are not mere damaged machines that need to be repaired. Actually, we are the first involved in our healing process. Each one of us has an “inner doctor,” as Albert Schweitzer called it,27 with amazing abilities to activate our recovery mechanisms. All treatments are, to a greater or lesser extent, a joint effort between the medical team, the patient, and that inner doctor.

Our first reaction to pain should be to listen to its messages. Instead of limiting ourselves to taking an aspirin and going on, it would be better for us to stop and see what’s wrong and ask ourselves, “When do I have these problem? Before or after I eat? During the day or at night? Is this related to my work or to my relationships? Does it have a connection to my fear of the future or with a past event? Etc. Instead of silencing pain at all costs, it would be better to start by listening to its warning voice. Perhaps we should thank it for the warning and act accordingly.

Practicing Spiritual Serenity

Since Dr. Hans Selye28 —the great pioneer—discovered the undeniable impact that emotions have on our health, we know for a fact that anxiety does nothing more than exacerbate pain. Bitterness and resentment, together with the desire for revenge, are negative responses that only intensify discomfort and increase stress.

It has been proven that suffering is alleviated by maintaining a calm and positive attitude. In all cultures, prayer and meditation are traditionally associated with the solution to certain personal problems. Modern medicine has demonstrated the beneficial effects of these and other relaxation techniques, without understanding their mysteries. Meditation and prayer positively affect respiration, heart rate, and consequently, the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. The muscles relax and inner calm neutralizes the stressful situation. Current research29 shows that individuals who have a deep spirituality have a much lower risk of heart problems, arteriosclerosis, and hypertension.

As we will see later in the book, hope is a deep conviction that provides us with the inner strength to keep going in the midst of adversity. There is nothing we need more when we are suffering. And there is nothing worse for healing than hopelessness. As one patient said, “My dignity consists of not giving up and continuing to fight.”30

Learning to live with pain31

Serenity emerges when we accept our reality and we have the courage to face it until the end. It’s not about mastering the art of autosuggestion. It’s about learning to implement mechanisms that lighten our burdens. It’s about learning from the past to know how to live in the present and face the future, whether it is to accept fate or to fight to change it.

Barbara Wolf recommends conscious distraction as an effective way to cope with chronic suffering: working, reading humorous books, doing a hobby that we enjoy, playing sports, amusing ourselves with something that interests us (nature, music, art, etc.). That is to say, enjoying any positive activity, preferably creative or useful, that pleases us and can somehow distract the mind from the reality of suffering. It means using our own faculties as allies against suffering. Immanuel Kant, Robert Schumann, and Blaise Pascal all declared that when they began to write, compose, or reflect deeply, they forgot—at least partially—their suffering, while resigning themselves to wait until their pain was relieved in order to do those things made them suffer much more.32

Mary Craig wrote: “The only cure for suffering is to face it head on, grasp it around the neck, and use it.”33 In this struggle between submission and resistance, there is nothing better to help us forget ourselves—if only for a few moments—than doing something for someone else.34 When we are determined to give more to life than we have received, being useful to others is, without a doubt, a huge pain reliever and a wonderful therapy.35

1 . William James, The Principles of Psychology, Harvard University Press, 1983 (1890),

2 . Sentence that William Shakespeare puts in the mouth of Prospero en The Tempest. Along the same lines, Ellen G. White says: “Life is what we make it, and we shall find what we look for. If we look for sadness and trouble, if we are in a frame of mind to magnify little difficulties, we shall find plenty of them […]. But if we look on the bright side of things, we shall find enough to make us cheerful and happy. If we give smiles, they will be returned to us; if we speak pleasant, cheerful words, they will be spoken to us again.” (The Adventist Home, p. 430).

3 . Santiago Ramón y Cajal was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906.

4 . According to Dr. Mario Alonso Puig, it has been shown in several studies that one minute of entertaining negative thinking puts the immune system delicate situation for six hours. The prefrontal region of the brain, where more advanced thinking occurs, where our future is determined, where we weigh strategies and alternatives to solve problems and make decisions, is tremendously influenced by the limbic system, which is our emotional brain. So, what the heart wants to feel, the mind will end up showing (See Mario Alonso Puig, Reinventing yourself: Overcome Your Anxiety and Fera When Faced with Lifes’s Problems and Challenges, London: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2011).

5 . Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey, Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants, New York: Harper Collins, 1993, p. 61.

6 . Johann Wolfgang von Goethe rightly stated that “thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thought into action is the most difficult thing in the world.”

7 . This is called the “Anzio Effect”. When It Hurts: Prayer, Preparation and Hope for Life’s Pain, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006, p. 33.

8 . Daniel Gottlieb, Letters to Sam: A Grandfather’s Lessons of Love, Loss and the Gifts of Life, Sterling, 2008, p. 134.

9 . “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself ” (Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, Harper Collins, 1993, p. 130).

10 . See Nelson Hochberg, “An Explanation of the Quotation: Pain is inevitable, Suffering is Optional.” (http://www.nosuffering.com). “Even in the midst of the trials of life, we can choose joy.” (Tim Hansel, You Gotta Keep Dancing, Elgin [Illinois, USA]: David C. Cook, 1998, p. 83.

11 . The Bible contains many words of encouragement so that we can face fear, such as: “Be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged! For the Lord your God will be with your wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9; cf. Psalm 27:1; Matthew 6:45-52, etc.).

12 . Simone Weil said, “compassion is the visible presence of God here below.”

13 . Francisco Villaespesa, Spanish writer (Laura de Andarax, 1877 –– Madrid, 1936).

14 . John Irving, Une prière pour Owen Meany, William Morrow, 1989, p. 50.

15 . See the books by Ruth Carter Stapleton on inner healing: The Gift of Inner Healing, Waco (Texas, USA): Word Books, 1976, and The Experience of Inner Healing, New York: Bantam Books, 1977.