Pain vs Suffering: On Dealing with the Hard Stuff

Image of palm trees and desert plants with mountains in background.

I recently heard psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach say something that I thought was profound. She referenced a simple formula that was a great insight and reminder for me:

pain x resistance = suffering

I come across this everyday with my clients and it points to the human condition. 

We don’t want to feel pain. 
We will try to avoid it or we will try to numb it.

This avoidance and numbing comes at a cost. When our focus is on not experiencing something painful our focus often also moves away from living the life we want. Life becomes smaller and less vital. We miss out on what is meaningful. This makes us suffer more. In fact, we often suffer more from all the avoiding and numbing than the actual pain we didn’t want to feel in the first place. 

Here’s a deeper dive into this very human process and how to work with it. 

Something painful happens

First, consider something that could happen that triggers pain. Someone says something to you or you witness something or you even read something in the news that causes you to feel pain.  It doesn’t have to be something outside of yourself, you could recall a painful memory of being betrayed or feeling ashamed or feeling scared. Or perhaps nothing seems to trigger this pain, it just shows up inside of you. 

You notice the pain and immediately react by resisting it. 

You resist

Consider what happens next: in some way you probably resist, avoid or try to escape the pain.

I don’t want to feel this now. I don’t want to feel this ever. 

You might try to numb the pain with alcohol, food, sex, or bingeing on Netflix. Or perhaps you work really hard to avoid situations and people where the pain might show up. Or perhaps at the first hint of the pain, you find yourself dreading its return. Your mind starts chewing on what is going on and you get more and more upset.

As humans, we have a million ways of resisting the painful things in our lives, and we all do it.

You suffer

Whatever path you choose to avoid or get rid of pain, the resistance to the initial painful experience often makes the pain more intense, more difficult, and more overwhelming. Even attempts at numbing really don’t help because the pain usually comes back with a vengeance when you aren’t numb. This suffering is in addition to the actual pain that you experienced in the first place. Here are some examples: 

You feel really bad about yourself after talking to someone at a party who seems to have it all together (pain). This feeling of worthlessness can trigger avoiding behaviors. Why socialize with others when it makes you feel more worthless? So you avoid social situations (resist). The cost of this is that you end up feeling lonely and sad as well (suffer).

You’ve had a panic attack before and you absolutely don’t ever want to experience that again (pain). The slightest feeling of anxiety can trigger fears that you might have one. You begin to feel that anything that might cause anxiety could be very dangerous so you start avoiding more and more situations that make you anxious (resist). This leads to a constant state of vigilance and anxiety and to a life of avoiding people, places and things that matter to you (suffer).  

On a less dramatic level, a lousy day at work (pain) can lead to emotional overeating as a way to comfort yourself (resist). The challenge is that this leads to feelings of shame about your body and a sense of worthlessness (suffer). Rather than just feel worthless, you now also feel shame about your body. The suffering has intensified. 

In all these examples, something painful is resisted and it leads to more suffering. And, in the bigger picture, all the struggle, avoiding, and numbing often mean that you experience less of the things that make your life one worth living.

How to lessen the resistance to pain

This is the challenging part. To suffer less, you will have to be willing to experience some pain. As humans, we don’t usually want to do this. 

The interesting aspect of this is that painful emotions almost always have a natural course and it usually follows a wave pattern. They build up, intensify, and then lessen. Feelings do not last forever. Resistance, however, usually sustains them. 

Whether it is through therapy, a meditation practice, reaching out to a friend, writing in a journal, or whatever path you choose, coming into contact with the pain you are experiencing and making space for it is what will change the relationship to the pain and allow you to address it.  It will also allow you to engage in life in new ways that feel more vital and meaningful.

Something to try when you feel pain

The next time something painful comes up, whether it is a memory, thought, feeling, etc.: take a long slow breath. Try to explore how the pain manifests in your body: where do you notice it? What does it feel like? Be present to it in some small way. And see if you notice a difference in how the pain affects you as a little time passes. Does it change in intensity? Do you notice some space emerging?

This practice can help create some space. Once you create some space (and your pain possibly lessens) what might you gain from choosing different actions that are less about resisting pain and more what feels meaningful? How might your life look different?