Buddhism distinguishes between pain and suffering. Pain is an unavoidable fact of life. Suffering is optional and comes anytime we try to avoid pain.
Imagine something really bad happens, say you lose someone close to you. The pain is the grief itself. Suffering is what grows when you can't attend to the grief, maybe because work and responsibilities leave no room, or because your childhood taught you to ignore your feelings. That extra suffering can look like depression, hopelessness and worthlessness, withdrawal, irritability, angry outbursts, substance use, disordered eating, or mysterious body ailments.
This idea of ongoing suffering applies to every kind of trauma, including our earliest experiences that we may have forgotten.
When we bottle things up and try to “just get over it,” we live with a background hum of danger and unease, which over time can turn into physical pain and other symptoms. That suffering is the body's way of saying something hasn't been fully processed. If we won't listen to our emotions, the body has to use pain to get our attention.
Think of emotions as knocking on the door of your mind. Open the door and let them in, and they'll say their piece, loudly perhaps, and after a good while they'll go on their merry way. Keep the door shut and they'll just keep on knocking endlessly until you answer.
Therefore, somatic practice makes room for what can be thought of as productive pain. We open a feeling space to unburden the pain we have been carrying. We titrate this old pain, little by little, until it can be tolerated and digested.
We turn around to face the dragon and feel what we've been avoiding. Usually, it's not even that bad once we finally invite it in!
As always, we're here if you want a helping hand with this work and we offer free consultations.
Practice: Urge Surfing (4 mins)
A way to practice feeling a wave of feeling or craving without acting on it.
To learn how unprocessed feelings get stuck in the body, read When the Body Becomes a Battle Zone. And if you’d like a helping hand with this work, you can schedule a free consultation anytime.