Self-Created Suffering

Probably a large part of our suffering begins with ourselves. This is the worst kind of suffering, because we know we brought it upon ourselves and now have to deal with the consequences. Or we pretend we don't know that, but sooner or later it will catch up with us. I know every choice I've made in my life has led me to this ambiguous place where I can't count on my brain not to backfire on me when I least expect it. That may not be all my own fault, but the poor coping mechanisms are habits I have to break or I will never make it through this difficult time. And most of the time I do want to get through it, I can sort of see to the other side of it.

What else causes suffering to oneself? My mother wasted about seven years of her life being bitter and angry at my father. Being divorced and having grown children who didn't need for both of them to arrive at any gathering, they never saw each other in all that time. Other than his own self-hatred, my father was not conscious of all my mother's grief and raging in his general direction. She wasted so much time and energy on it that now she strikes me as a scratch in a record more so than a human being, her bitterness worn into a groove against the flow of really living and enjoying her life. I certainly hope I've learned some things from my parents, even if they aren't deliberate lessons.

"Acknowledging our wrongdoings with a genuine sense of remorse can serve to keep us on the right

track in life and encourage us to rectify our mistakes when possible and take action to correct things in the future. But if we allow our regret to degenerate into excessive guilt, holding on to the memory of our past transgressions with continued self-blame and self-hatred, this serves no purpose other than to be a relentless source of self-punishment and self-induced suffering (p 160)."

Excessive guilt is what I feel over not being there physically for my kids. I want to do more and be there more, calling every night to ask how their day went and what they've got going on, mailing them cards, letters, and small gifts when I don't get to see them on any given weekend, I connect and communicate regularly with their teachers and try to keep track of their grades online, but lately I have the added guilt of not actually even being emotionally healthy enough to be there for them in a real enough sense to suit me. They are such kind, understanding little souls, and when I am feeling well I know that they picked up this trait from me, but when I'm feeling bad I find myself thinking that I no longer play a big enough part in their lives, and even sometimes that they'd be better off without me. At these latter times, I am stepping into a quagmire of self-hatred that runs under there as deep as that piece of memory in my flashback, if memory is what it was. I struggle not to over-examine what I saw, since forcing it could be opening a whole can of worms that I'm not ready to suffer just yet.

"Guilt arises when we convince ourselves that we've make an irreparable mistake. the torture of guilt is in thinking that any problem is permanent. Since there is nothing that doesn't change, however, so too pain subsides --- a problem doesn't persist. This is the positive side of change. The negative side is that we resist change in nearly every arena of life. The beginning of being released from suffering is to investigate one of the primary causes: resistance to change (p 162-63)."

"...the torture of guilt is thinking that any problem is permanent." Yes, that's it. That's exactly what I do. I fall into a rut worrying about all the things I don't do for my children that I always have wanted to, and I forget to step back and look at the big picture. Overall, they see me less, but when they see me they get all the best of me in quality time and encouragement. No parent is perfect, so why do we have to be? Or pretend that we are? I know the answer: We, I don't have to be. I have to accept that I do the best I can with the time we are given and disregard all the rest. I think also that this impression that problems are irrevocable is what prompts certain people toward suicide. They don't see the light at the end of any tunnel because it isn't there and they are not aware that they can still build it for themselves.

Then the Dalai Lama says something about adult relationships (not that I'd entirely know what that looks like

-- the most recent personality test I took said I had the mentality of a ten year old, ha ha). I paid some mind to these passages because I'm adjusting to the idea of friendship as a constantly moving thing, something that changes and turns with the tides of our lives, washing us on another's shore for a time, reeling us back in for another time, and we are changing like the shore does as the month progresses. I'm closer one moment, farther back the next. And just to accept that as it is becomes a huge step, but I really like the idea: that it's okay, that in truly loving another human being you have to be patient and accept them for who they are at any given time, just as they should give you a bit of leeway to change and grow as well. It could work for every type of relationship. I've never intended to have such a shallow pool of friends, but time either strengthens or weakens all relationships, and friendship is nice because I do believe it's more flexible, and the other person in the relationship doesn't need to believe you are anything other than exactly who you really are, if that makes any sense. It's tremendously comforting that, despite my galloping post traumatic freak show, I'll always have a caring friend around somewhere, in some form or another, feeling comfortable and letting me be me, whether or not I'm aware of who I am at that time. I love having someone in my life who won't invalidate what I'm feeling or judge me for feeling it, and so far the same goes for my actions.

"In adult relationships, levels of intimacy change, with periods of greater intimacy alternating with periods of greater distance. This is also part of the normal cycle of growth and development. To reach our full potential as human beings, we need to be able to balance our needs for closeness and union with times when we must turn inward, with a sense of autonomy, to grow and develop as individuals.

"As we come to understand this, we will no longer react with horror or panic when we first notice ourselves "growing apart" from our partner, any more than we would panic while watching the tide go out at the seashore. Of course, sometimes a growing emotional distance can signal serious problems in a relationship (an unspoken current of anger, for instance), and even breakups can occur. In those cases, measures such as therapy can be very helpful. But the main point to keep in mind is that a growing distance doesn't automatically spell disaster. It can also be a part of a cycle that returns to redefine the relationship in a new form that can recapture or even surpass the intimacy that existed in the past...We may discover that it is at the very time when we may feel disappointed, as if something has gone out of the relationship, that a profound transformation can occur. ...Our relationship may no longer be based on intense passion, the view of the other as the embodiment of perfection, or the feeling that we are merged with the other. But in exchange for that, we are now in a position to truly begin to know the other --- to see the other as he or she is, a separate individual, with faults and weaknesses perhaps but a human being like ourselves. It is only at this point that we can make a genuine commitment, a commitment to the growth of another human being --- and act of true love (p 170)."\

I think this point is beautiful, just beautiful  --- to come to know someone as they are instead of who they appear to be, and to consciously choose to step back and accept them as a whole with the assurance that they would do the same for you. I have read elsewhere, outside the Happiness book by the Dalai Lama, that he once said that love "is the absence of judgement." I try so hard to be that friend to my friends. Tonight someone pointed out to me that this is also the kind of love that I really also need to extend toward myself. 

"A balanced and skillful approach to life, taking care to avoid extremes, becomes a very important factor in conducting one's everyday existence. It is important in all aspects of life. For instance, in planting a sapling of a plant or tree, at its very early stage you have to be very skillful and gentle. Too much moisture will destroy it, too much sunlight will destroy it. Too little will also destroy it. So what you need is a very balanced environment where the sapling can have healthy growth (p 191)."

Emotional extremes are a very real problem for me. When I'm up I'm really soaring, and when I crash down it always seems to be in a violent plummet.

Someone loves me = High in the sky.

Someone does not love me = Deep dark pit.

I'll be so much happier when I learn to love myself. That would be the one essence of balance that continues to elude me. I did not grow up in an environment that even pretended to be healthy or balanced.

My father knocked a vertibrea loose in my spine; the next day my mother was telling the family doctor that I'd "gotten mouthy. You know how teenagers are!"

They both had a good laugh at that one.

I was furious. I'd hoped that maybe a medical doctor would actually have to do something about it if he found out a patient had been abused in some way. I had hoped that maybe my father would be stopped somehow. I think I may well have wasted too much time and thought on what was wrong with my environment instead of coming up with ways to make things right.

"To lessen the suffering of pain, we need to make crucial distinctions between the pain of the pain and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness, and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain (p 210)."

My mind is a snarled up loop of negative thoughts that I've fought all my life to refute.

"Stupid, lazy, and worthless" are the labels I grew up with, lies that poured in unchecked from my father, while my mother stood mutely by and asked me to please not make him angry with me again by kicking up any sort of fuss. See no evil, etc. The underlying theme always ran the same: "Not good enough."

I would accept the screaming in my face or the shove against my back as if I were the cause of those things. My father often complained that he could have done something worthwhile with his life if only he hadn't had kids.

I spent my childhood struggling to make up for that. I'd clean the entire house and he'd still come home angry because I'd forgotten some small thing. I worked hard in school and got mostly A's, an occasional B... and the usual D in math.

Not good enough.

I grew up struggling to appear as perfect as humanly possible so that I could earn the affection of others.

Any time my performance fell short, I'd be overwhelmed by a sickly horror that someone was going to notice that beneath my slip-up there was a gaping hole where my identity or self-confidence should have been. Somewhere down in that hole a little girl would hide, small and insignificant, afraid someone would punish her for yet another error she hadn't covered or identified quickly enough.

At the same time, I would often try to hold myself back and down so as not to come to anyone's attention. No one can hurt you if they don't see or hear from you. For as long as I can remember, every move feels uncertain, and every negative emotion confirms my doubts. I watch the movements and listen to the tone of others, checking to see how I should act or feel. I often secretly feel more like a reflection than a person.

Every time I reach out a little too frantically for reassurance that I'm worth something, I feel instant guilt for asking for more than I'm entitled to, crippling shame for needing approval or validation so badly. In the culture of our home in childhood, no one's thoughts or feelings were respected or  validated.
Years of fighting to look perfect if I couldn't be perfect, of living in my head and not seeing around me ever very clearly are dysfunctional coping mechanisms indeed.  I'm learning healthy alternatives, one of which is writing about it in detail and showing a trusted friend. It hurts to move any portion of my face, but I still find things to smile about, and I'm still able to poke fun of myself. Today I'm the troll that lives in my sister's basement. Give me all my food in a great swimming bowl of sadness piled high with depression. But no. Instead I choose to keep writing, keep coming up with positive, productive things I can do to improve my surroundings, and how I view those surroundings.

My favorite part of the Dalai Lama's thoughts on pain and suffering is  when he says: "In the same way that physical pain unifies our sense of having a body, we can conceive of the general experience of suffering acting as a unifying force that connects us with others. Perhaps that is the ultimate meaning behind our suffering. It is our suffering that is the most basic element that we share with others, the factor that unifies us with all living creatures (p 211)."

I probably didn't need this one lesson. My ability to emphasize based on my own painful experiences is something I've got down to the tiniest details. When I work in any school, I'm teaching tolerance and compassion with every lesson right along with how to conjugate a verb. I can't teach any other way. I bring to the table all that I've got, jump into it with banners flying and eyes alight with compassion for the lonely ones, the angry ones, the abused, used, frightened, talented, special-needs ones -- all of them. I show them how we all have basic human qualities in common, such as the capacity to love and be loved, a sense of justice or right versus wrong, a desire to latch onto a skill that makes us special, that separates us from the rest (though admittedly there is a sub-genre of teens who prefer to blend in without infamy, I do try to inspire them toward greatness or personal satisfaction).

I reach the people around me, too. Every bit of human contact counts. The people on the phone at work, the people receiving the calls, the man who shuts out the lights at the end of the night, friends on face book, some of whom I only know through other friends. 

And I do feel better when I can take what I know and use it to extend encouragement and compassion toward others. That is why I keep writing blog entries and making myself vulnerable to the judging eyes of strangers. Some of them out there somewhere really need to know that they are not alone in their suffering.