One of the experiences the recent pandemic has given us all is suffering. Suffering is one of the experiences of being human, and it has the potential to shape our lives significantly. Pain can be a negative influence forcing us to avoid dealing with painful things. They don’t disappear; they hang around inside us, often growing in power and influence throughout our lives. Some instances occurred when you were a child, something someone said that harmed you, or a situation that made you feel pain and suffering.  We learn to push these things aside rather than deal with them. They do not push aside; they follow us continually until you finally deal with them. The unhappiest people have more of these entities of past suffering following them than others.

But it can all change with a bit of self-honesty to recognize where these situations came from and take away their power. Suffering will disappear like a ghost when they are illuminated by honesty.  Painful life experiences are meant to teach and lead to growth, not make us meek or angry or less than we are. It is up to you to decide when to face it, shine a light on it, and let the negative energy of emotional pain from your past go. Once you do, you create room for new positive experiences.

Awareness of Your Suffering

Your relationships will improve and become more durable if you learn to communicate your pain to those you care about in life.  How else could they possibly know what you are going through? If you feel angry because your life has been turned upside down, your freedom is limited, and you can’t do what you have always done. Talk about it.  It is through understanding and dealing with our suffering. We can then understand the suffering of others and how to lessen it.

Your ability to show compassion and understanding will strengthen your relationships. Think of the opportunity you have lost if you deny your suffering; you will lack the tools to be genuinely empathetic and compassionate toward others.  In every relationship you have, have ever had, or ever will have, take open and honest communication to be healthy.

Compassion for Others

Once you have honestly understood and communicated your suffering, it loses its power over you and gives you an understanding of how others are suffering in their lives as well. Not only do you understand, but you have compassion for their issues. All suffering brings pain and knowing the pain in yourself is understanding how another feels dealing with it.

Finding these things out is as simple as noticing when they occur and tracing the thoughts back to their source.  What is the situation that led to you feeling this way? Crowds of people make me nervous, and I am working on this.  I notice the feelings of anxiety, see what causes it, and then look back on life and seek other times I felt the same.  Connect the dots of similarity in these events, and then you have the common denominator.

Take some time when the pain arises to experience it and observe what it is. Please don’t close the door on it and push it away from your consciousness. That is how it gains power over you and becomes an almost automatic response to situations in your life.  Some pain within you allows it to enter your life. Resolve that pain, and you let those painful things go.  When we experience pain for so long, it is difficult not to identify with it.  For me, I’m not too fond of crowds, which isn’t true. I don’t particularly appreciate how being in groups of people makes me feel. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Conscious Thought

Once you have noticed where your suffering comes from, then it is up to you to shine a light on it and not let it hide back into the background of your thoughts.  It is simple to make the pain recede from your mind as just a part of life. Until it returns with more power, we want to deal with unresolved things but sometimes don’t realize we can do anything about them. But we do, and the best thing is to deal with them with our conscious attention.

Allowing your thoughts to stay with the suffering and where it came from, who it came from is an enlightening experience.  The initial pain could be caused by something serious, like the death of a loved one, but not very often because those things are apparent, and most people understand that sadness and pain revolve around those events. It is OK to have emotions, and most are resolved in the natural way of things. It is the small hurts that we shouldn’t let bother us. Those are the things we have problems dealing with in our challenges.  We are told to “be tough” and not express emotions.  Emotions are our natural way to understand ourselves, and to repress them only gives situations power over you.  Notice these things that cause you pain, and stay with them, experience them once and for all, and you will sever the ties of control they have over you.  Conscious thought is the light you shine on the darkness of your suffering.

End of the Suffering

Once you have exposed the suffering and held it in your conscious mind, it is easy to see where it comes from in life.  Was it a thought expressed long ago by a teacher? A parent? A classmate? A sibling? Whoever it was, many of these things have no real relevance in your life as an older adult and dealing with them head-on removes them and the suffering from your life.

An example would be that someone said something negative to you in the 7th grade, and you chose to allow that thing to be relevant to you. It continued to travel with you in the form of suffering because you never dealt with it. Now here you are many years later, still letting that negative situation exist.

Take a moment and document your causes of suffering. What causes you pain in life?  Do you require drama in your relationships? When do you suffer anger or irritation to someone or something? What sets you off?  Do you ever desire to cause pain to others? Notice all negative or undesirable moods you have and find the thoughts you associate with them.  Most often, that will lead you up the path to the creation of these emotions. Creating a conscious thought about these things reveals that you are no longer there at the beginning when something happened to cause you pain. You can let it go and live your life free of that suffering.

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ― Rumi

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teachings and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.” ― Charles Dickens

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?” ― John Keats