Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional

you know I have been leaning really Heavily on my own practices so that I can not use that internal wiggliness and that internal momentum to further make things worse for me I firmly believe that pain is inevitable in our lives, pain is a part of a human being but that suffering is really optional and I don’t know about you guys but for me personally the stuff that I do inside when I’m feeling pain like the self-talk and lack of self-care like it creates suffering rather than just feeling the pain of it and if you haven’t heard me talk about this before 

  well I’ll now like maybe I should wait for a little bit no I’ll just tell you it now so what I want to tell you is that the difference between pain and suffering is that pain is inevitable but suffering really is optional and the way that I like to think about this there’s a concept called the two arrow concept and that what happens is when we feel the pain that’s like one arrow being shot into our heart and it causes actual pain but most of us don’t stop there we don’t stop with just feeling the pain what we most of us do is we shoot a second arrow and this is the second arrow of suffering and this arrow also goes straight to our heart and it looks and is shot by this it’s the self-talk it’s the I feel bad therefore I’m a bad person I feel bad right that’s the first arrows I feel bad therefore I did something wrong I feel bad therefore I’m not going to take care of myself I feel bad thereforeI’m going to be mean to myself and you know deprive myself of things and punish myself it’s it’s the Self-punishment and that trickles out into all of our other relationships of course not just to ourselves but to our kids to our partners to our co-workers anything that we’re doing to ourselves is going to be trickling outward so that’s the second arrow that’s being shot first there’s the just the infliction of the wound or the pain and then there’s the suffering and all the things that we do to create that suffering and the more that we can get aware of when we shoot that second arrow for me it’s always around um you know things like beating myself up that was like you know my thing for much of my life i i felt bad and i beat myself up for feeling bad so it’s like i have the feeling bad and then on top of it i had that double whammy of you know just being mean to myself and beating myself up and if you can relate to that you’re you know you’re not alone but that’s the second arrow so anytime that there’s that beating yourself up awareness you know that you’ve shot the second arrow and the thing to do is to more and more first of all always create awareness because that’s alway going to be the first step more and more realize when you’re shooting that second arrow and just be in the pain of that first arrow being shot it’s just painful and the reason why we do it is that when uh when we’re feeling Pain most of us were not taught how to absorb pain how to feel pain and how to work through it and so our instinct is to run away from it in some way or another and even though beating ourselves up for feeling bad treating ourselves badly when we’re

feeling bad even those feel like it’s worse it’s actually a place worse than the original pain it’s actually a place to hide because then you’re not dealing with the actual pain you’re dealing with the second arrow so it’s this convenient not very Functional uh place to hide but it comes across as if we’re actually dealing with the pain because we’re in even more pain but it’s not the second arrow is that suffering and that does become a place to hide from actually feeling the impact of the initial heart and what to do to move through that hurt And the what to do is going to be different depending on what the herd is who caused the pain you know when did it happen is it revisited from the past or is it going to be something that just happened recently did it trigger something from the past but dealing with that actual pain in a parenting example would be you know if your child is yelling at you and it’s feeling bad we’re so used to then shooting that second arrow into ourselves and saying you know our kid is bad or i’m a bad parent or of course this went you know sideways and i’m just so bad at this and i can’t do this anymore right that’s like the mental trip but that’s the second arrow the first error was Just oh my child is yelling at me this is really painful this actually hurts okay now what do i want to do about that sitting in that pain for even just a moment can help you chart a different course rather than turning it inward making it all about you and not actually dealing with the fact that your child’s yelling at you right and how much that hurts then from that place you can set boundaries you can talk to them calmly you can talk to yourself calmly right and see what comes up for you but once that the second arrow was shot and we’re I’m a bad parent, they’re a bad kid we’ve taken the focus off of what actually is going on and what is actually the the consequence of the natural consequence of our child yelling at us is it feels bad that’s what it is we most of us were not raised with effective ways of how to manage pain emotional pain, in fact, we were talked out of it we were shamed out of it we were frightened out of it we were punished out of it we’re too sensitive all these things right and years and years of training and telling ourselves that uh you know we don’t know how to deal with pain leads us to shoot that second Arrow that’s why we do it so the answer is to be aware of when you’re shooting that second arrow try to stay present with just the impact of that first arrow of pain don’t cause yourself unnecessary Suffering and then learn how to walk through that pain so you can actually get to the other side of it and do some real Healing rather than hide in that place of feeling worse but not actually addressing the problem so I hope that helps