Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.

“Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is... The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds. ”  -Dan Millman

June has been tough, already.  I can admit it and know that my emotional pain is worse than physical pain.  I am struggling with conflict, emotional pain that causes suffering.  I am not alone in this.  

I try to avoid/deny any physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual suffering.  It has ground me down these last few days.  

We spend so much time denying and avoiding pain, it wears us down.  When we are hurt, no matter be it physically, intellectually, emotionally or spiritually, there is an effect and affect.  We try to avoid pain of any kind.  There are things to pay for such avoidance and from those things which make us suffer.  

I have spent a week with heightened chronic pain and I fight it for all I am worth, but the fighting, I have noticed, the quiet suffering, takes a toll on me, emotionally.  I spend the day with an ache that is like a toothache, from hips down and in my hands.  By afternoon, my whole body sets itself up for a nasty night.  I am exhausted and aware of the pain intensifying as the evening wears on.  I realize that my suffering supersedes the pain itself.  This is the way I most likely react to any pain that might be inflicted on me, be it physically, intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually.  I have a sense, that aging resides in the realm of losses, pain and different levels of suffering.
I have to be careful that I do not let any pain to cause me to withdraw and prepare like a haunted doomsday prophet.  I have to not fall into feelings of anxiety, or irritability, of fear, of anger, of a hopelessness sense of frustration and self-guilt.  It is all there; swirling at the depths of my helplessness.  I am so careful to suffer alone so there is loneliness in it all, as well.  

This goes for any personal suffering I see about to happen, or sense happening before the actual pain.  Loss is huge with me and so, I equate the pain to losses and a helplessness to stop it.  It is true, I can only stop the pain through positive thinking, for a short time, until I am up all night trying to dissuade the pain because lying down only intensifies it.  I am the same when my intelligence has been insulted, my heart is hurt from whatever hurts it, my spirit aches because it feels everlasting and I cannot stop it by self-denial, with anything intelligent or spiritual.  In the middle of the night, there seems no nirvana, indeed.

I know that apprehension can rev up stress levels.  I have to keep a tight rein on my feelings, when it all is at its worst.  I know what it can feel like to become desperate. 
All the clichés in the world do not help.  When I hurt, I withdraw.  I stay far away from conflict.  I do pain well, from the outside, but, within, a whole different thing when it lasts for days and days and I tend to be working like a duck swims;  calm on the outside but paddling like heck under the surface.  Pain, real or on the cusp of being that 10, causes many kinds of suffering.  I am well aware of that and refuse to let it all have me suffer emotionally.  Physical pain can have its cure.  I am my own cure, for emotional hurt.  Suffering comes when emotions get into it.  

How do you hold the reins to your own conflict, pain and suffering?  In other words, how do you hold it together?

©Carol Desjarlais 6.9.19