Suffering

 

Suffering

 

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Don’t fall in love with suffering as if it were your destiny. The appreciation of pleasure is the anchor of your humanity.

Do something today that will cause you to be unrecognizable to yourself. Eat a hot fudge sundae, order pasta that rolls in your mouth, bake a pie or cake of the flavor that you love. These are harmless pleasures that put you in touch with your outrageous passions that will help you to know that pleasure, not pain, is your destiny.

Dance with it!
Bathe in it!
Live it!

From: Kiss Your Life... 365 Reasons to Love Who You Are

Reason: 42 Page: 60

By: Ann Mody Lewis Ph.D.

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Commentary:

Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid suffering,

dreading suffering

or recovering from it.

Suffering is the part of human life that demands our attention, while at the same time we look for ways to escape from it.

Where do we find the perfect answer to what suffering should mean? In modern times, psychiatry offers medication, psychology offers talk and various methodologies to reframe our suffering so the pain will stop!
Street-cures of drugs, alcohol, sex, and spending are all creations of our need to avoid suffering.

The wise mystics of old told us to embrace pain, because our patient endurance can mature us. They didn't mean to wish for suffering, because they knew suffering is inevitable...a fact of life.

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
― Marcel Proust

As a psychotherapist, I share the suffering of many persons. Those who accept their suffering learn from it, as it slows them down, threshes
them into self-conflict, strips them of what is familiar as it pushes them into new insights. The problem is we can't know the richness of suffering without experiencing it. To tolerate pain, we must have faith in life.

Miraculously, those who heal worry less about suffering, because
they have grown to believe in the strength of their survival. Life's
problems cause less anxiety, because we are fortified by courage.

Getting real about suffering may end up being the most liberating lesson in your life, so let's take this journey together.

Let's talk!

Ann