Why do we compulsively cling to our pain and unpleasant experiences? According to psychotherapist and clergyman Nancy Kohler, this is a slightly strange and poorly understood, but highly sought-after way to feel alive and take care of yourself. How to get rid of this unreasonable and useless habit?
Have you ever noticed how much time you spend thinking about negative or painful situations and replaying things that go wrong in your head? The problem is not specifically with you. The last statistic I saw was that 80% of our thoughts are negative and 95% are repetitive. And the more negative the experience, the more often we return to it. As obsessed, we reach for what hurts. As the Buddhist saying goes, we want happiness and yet we are chasing suffering. What for?
By returning to experiences over and over again, we are essentially trying to make a negative experience turn into something else. Our flashbacks are attempts to better understand our pain, spend more time with it, and make it go away. If we find out the cause, find out who is to blame and what to do about it, everything will be fine.
It sounds paradoxical, but we hold on to our pain, trying to figure out how to let it go.
There are many unpleasant sensations associated with pain or any negative experience. In response to our unwillingness to feel all this, the mind directs us in a more familiar direction. He rethinks the problem over and over again in an attempt to avoid immediate sensations. The mind will always prefer to think about pain rather than experience it directly.
In the same way, we, contrary to common sense, cling to suffering as a way to take care of ourselves. Constantly thinking about its cause, we feel that our pain matters, that it happened for a reason and will not be forgotten. These reflections give our suffering a special value. If we suddenly stop coming back to the pain, it may seem like we abandoned it, moved on before it was actually heard or taken care of.
On an existential level, the return to suffering allows us to feel our “I”, to feel that we exist.
If we don’t constantly remind ourselves of our history, we may forget who we are, and then what? Who would we be and what would life look like if we did not relate to the already formed idea of ourselves?
On an existential level, the return to suffering allows us to feel our “I”, to feel that we exist. Solving a problem, our mind feels alive and active, and because we identify with it, our self-awareness is also involved in this process. It is in the process of thinking that we create our “I”. We literally think we exist.
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Stopping negative thoughts from running through your mind can seem dangerous at the most basic level. How do we know we’re here if we stop engaging the mind in problems, in the very activity that allows consciousness to perceive itself? What will happen if we stop constantly recreating the idea of who we are? Without tasks that need to be solved, we literally lose our “I”, our separation from the world.
So, our addiction to suffering is to some extent driven by the desire to feel better. But as a result, we feel worse and suffer more than we need to. What then can be done to get rid of this dependence?
Possible solutions
1. Develop mindfulness. This is the key to breaking any habit. Start noticing those moments when you decide to direct your attention to events or circumstances that bother you. Be aware of your tendency to include tidbits of suffering in moments of peace. Note that you are doing this.
2. Admit you got caught. When you find yourself walking down the rabbit hole into your sick story, acknowledge that you are there. Say out loud, “Yeah, I got caught” or “I’m really doing this right now.” Freeze for a moment and, without losing your goodwill, admit that you are powerless to change anything, that you are captured by your suffering.
3. Ask. Without judgment, ask your mind what it hopes to accomplish by drawing your attention to suffering. Does he want to find out what the problem is? Try to find another solution? To let your pain be heard? Do you need to remember her to protect yourself another time? Or are you scared to feel good? Or maybe scrolling through your head painful thoughts calms you down?
In the end, you will find that trying to reach agreement with the mind is like trying to open a lock with a banana: it is simply the wrong tool. The next time you want to deal with pain, remind yourself that it is useless to think about it: you have learned it from your own experience. Failure is a great teacher.
4. Move your attention from thinking about the problem to actually experiencing it. Feel where and how you experience this pain in your body. You can put your hand on your heart and even say a prayer for healing. Turn off your head and immerse yourself in the bodily experience.
5. Say “no” or “stop” out loud. We can learn to say no to the aspirations of our mind just as we say no to a child who does something that will harm him. Sometimes the wiser part of us has to step in and put an end to the harmful behavior of the mind. Be sure to say “no” out loud so that you can hear and perceive it sensually, and not just another thought of a negative mind.
6. Ask yourself what you risk if you let go of your pain. Find out what is so dangerous waiting for you in life if you do not remind yourself of the bad. Make a willful decision not to fill your present with worries of the past or (possible) future. Be bold: create a different identity that is not pieced together from personal stories, but always new and constantly changing.
As you work, you will find that you can be perfectly healthy and happy in the moment without going back and doing what you did before.
The author is Nancy Kohler, a psychotherapist, social worker, interfaith minister and author of The Power of Switching Off: A Mindful Way to Stay Sane in the Virtual World.