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The Comfort of Suffering
Huh? What kind of weirdness is that — thinking that suffering could ever be comfortable?
As many of my clients discover, the suffering that you know, your familiar pain and struggle, actually can be more comfortable, a safer place to stay, than stepping out into the unknown.
You may be wrestling with loneliness and isolation, or with anger, or shame, or a whole host of other emotions and feelings. You may be, as I suggested in an article a few weeks ago, opening to facing these feelings fully and honestly, allowing them to arise and expressing them.
Don’t get stuck there. Yes, it’s important to do all of that. And it’s important also to lift your perspective, to look around you and see the beauty of life, to remember what you’re grateful for. When you do both — expressing the honesty of your feelings, and remembering to appreciate the brighter side of your current experience — the buried pain lets go of you. You don’t have to do anything — there’s no letting go of it — it simply moves through you and moves on.
When you get stuck in the single perspective, looking deeper and deeper inside and drowning yourself in the darkness of your struggle, it can become too familiar. And you can find reasons to stay there, to cling to your suffering instead of allowing it to let go.
Here are some of the reasons my clients report for staying stuck, clinging to their suffering, hanging on to it out of habit and, yes, a sense of comfort.
It’s familiar
There’s an old saying: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Your suffering, the painful emotions you feel — it’s all familiar to you. It’s like a job you know you should leave: difficult to deal with, frustrating, painful in may ways, but on the other hand, at least you know what to expect every day.
When you change your perspective and question the reality of your feelings, anything might happen — and probably will. Not knowing can be frightening. Expecting the unfamiliar can be scary.
So no matter how much you may think you want to stop suffering, if you find that instead you’re plunging deeper and deeper into it, ask yourself who you’d be without it. Like many of my clients, you may be surprised to find how unsure and even fearful you are about your alternatives.
It brings sympathy
Many of my clients tell me that the only times they can remember feeling cared for, nurtured, listened to, understood, and sympathized with occurred when they were sick, dealing with a bad or difficult situation, or in emotional distress.
As one client wrote, “I want to hang onto my suffering because it’s the only way I know to get any attention and nurturing at all.”
Clinging to old, painful stories and their emotions is — as she began to realize in writing to me — an awfully high price to pay for attention. Especially since she, like many of my clients, has also realized that as she becomes more truly herself, responding to others and to situations from what’s really true for her, she’s getting a correspondingly deeper, richer, and more authentic response from the people around her.
The trade-off starts to look a lot less appealing.
That’s not me!
That same client wrote, “It’s oddly terrifying to think that by allowing my suffering to let go of me, I might become someone who doesn’t feel a need for nurturing. I don’t want to not need nurturing!”
When you ask yourself who you’d be without your pain, as I mentioned earlier, you may find that it feels uncomfortably, even frighteningly, strange.
At the same time, as my client gradually began to realize, opening to the natural, unconditioned state allows her to be free, powerful and fearless. The natural state has no pain-imposed limits, no need for protection from other people, no need to hide vulnerablities behind masks.
In this natural state, she just is. And that’s true freedom.
“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” Thich Nhat Hanh, 1926- , expatriate Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet, and activist.
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