How to Decrease Your Suffering

Everyone experiences pain. But pain does not have to lead to suffering. Whether you are an athlete, a business person, a performing artist, a healthcare provider, a young person, or a parent, everyone can benefit from learning to decrease their suffering and be compassionate with themselves.

You may have already discovered that much of your suffering related to a painful situation is due to your thoughts and feelings about the situation. And, perhaps you have noticed that (like most humans) much of your thinking and feeling focuses on the past or, more often, the future: “I really screwed up” expands into "I always screw up.” “I lost my starting spot” becomes “I’ll never start again.” “This pain is intense” solidifies into “this pain will always be unbearable.”

The essence of most of our upsetting thinking and feeling is resistance. Put simply, resistance is wanting things to be different than they actually are.

The following mathematical equation from Buddhist meditation teacher Shinzen Young may help you understand this connection:

Suffering = Pain x Resistance

If you are dealing with either physical or emotional pain, the equation probably makes sense exactly as it is written. If you are dealing with other challenges, you can think of suffering as the intensity of your upset, pain as difficulty, and resistance as how much you want things to be different.

Upset = Difficulty x Resistance

When something unpleasant happens, how upset you are depends not only on what happened but also on how much you want things to be different. Often, though not always, the level of pain (or difficulty) is fixed and cannot be changed. And the only part of the equation we can change is our resistance (how much we want things to be different).

Let’s make the equation more real with an example using a pain scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being very little pain and 10 being extreme pain). For an athlete, not being chosen for the regional team may be a 7 on the pain scale. Parallel examples include a business person not being promoted, or a performing artist not booking an important gig. Resisting the outcome with thoughts like “The selection process was political and unfair” might be a 7 on the resistance scale. So in these scenarios, the suffering score is 49.

A different way of thinking, such as “I am really disappointed, and I’m going to work hard and try again,” might carry a lower resistance score, perhaps 3. This thinking doesn’t change the pain of not making the team (getting the promotion, booking the gig) but it does decrease the intensity of the suffering, from 49 to 21. A bonus is that usually the less resistive, more accepting type of thinking gives you a way to move forward—­ a wise next step, a specific action to take.

Many people find the equation really helpful when dealing with painful situations. As you read this you may be working with a profoundly painful situation, such as a serious injury, financial hardship, the end of a relationship, or an illness or death in your family. If you’re dealing with an extremely painful situation, take some time to tenderly acknowledge the pain. Go easy. Be gentle.

Remember that wanting things to be different increases your suffering or upset. Accepting things as they are, no matter how terrible, helps us choose our next sane step, such as working on specific skills, requesting feedback, or getting coaching.

When you are suffering or upset

• Acknowledge how painful the situation is and give your pain a score on a scale of 1-10.
• Consider how much you are resisting—wanting the situation to be different—on a scale of 1-10.
• With compassion, calculate your suffering score.
• Then, explore less resistive, more accepting ways of thinking “This sucks, and now….”, and recalculate your suffering score.

As you apply the equation to difficult situations in your daily life it is important to remember a few things:

• Wanting things to be different isn’t bad or wrong; it’s very natural.
• Accepting things the way they are doesn’t necessarily mean giving up and not doing anything to change the situation.
• If your pain score is higher than 10, seek support from a friend, counselor, therapist, coach, religious leader, or doctor.