how do you process suffering?

How do you process suffering?

If you are a healthcare provider, a caretaker, or a therapist in any field, you expect to encounter suffering. It's part of your job. It's the reason you chose this kind of work: to alleviate suffering. To provide comfort. Care. Healing. 

Whether you are treating a patient with chest pain, or a child with a broken leg, or a patient who has overdosed, you don't hesitate out of fear or dread because you can't bear the sight of blood or the smell of pus. You don't abandon the patient because you're hungry, or tired, or because your shift is coming to and end you have other plans. You do your job. You take suffering in stride because it is your calling in life.

"The simple act of caring

is heroic."

~Edward Albert~

The fact that you can provide comfort and relief is its own reward. It motivates you to continue. It is both satisfying and fulfilling. It takes the sting out of the insecurities, fears, and prejudices that might otherwise make you hesitate. However, this is not true in every instance, nor is it true for most ordinary human beings. Not everyone is prepared, or motivated, or courageous enough to confront suffering, their own or others'.

Suffering, of course, comes in many guises: physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual. It can present as pain, hunger, loss, fear, depression, shame, guilt, and grief. Confusion, abandonment, isolation. Dread. Hopelessness. It can end in death. I could go on.

If you're one of the lucky ones who is able to reach out to help the suffering, I hope you will. Volunteer. Donate. Speak up. March. Pray.

If you are a person who prefers to ignore, or deny, or shrug it off when you encounter suffering, now might be a good time to ask yourself, "Why?" 

"Everything can be taken from a man 

but one thing:

...to choose one's attitude

in any given circumstance,

to choose one's own way."

~Viktor Frankl~

This might be a good time to think about how you process the suffering you experience, or witness, or hear about in the news and on social media...because, if the president elect has his way, we are doomed to confront cruelty and suffering that is beyond our wildest imagination. The stuff of nightmares. The forced deportation of innocent men, women, and children to face hunger and thirst, disease, torture, and death once they are outside our borders. The agony and death of women who are denied access to lifesaving medical care. The continuing surge in environmental disasters as a result uncontrolled climate change. The hospitalization and death of children from fully preventable childhood infections like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles. The rise in lethal gun violence. War. Prepare yourself because, when it happens, there may be nothing any of us can do to stop it, and no way for us to aid the victims.

What will we do then?

Will we simply harden our hearts against it? Bury our heads in the sand? Pretend that what is happening is acceptable, or necessary, or just? 

"The real weapons of mass destruction

are the hardened hearts of humanity."

~Leonard Cohen~

It is an extraordinary challenge and a privilege, for those of us who care, to tend to people who are suffering. But what about those who don't care? People who choose to ignore, or deny, or dismiss the problem? People, indeed, who cause others to suffer out of a sense of entitlement, arrogance, or greed? What about them?

Do you agree with Thich Nhat Hanh?:

"When another person makes you suffer,

it is because he suffers deeply himself,

and his suffering is spilling over.

He does not need punishment;

he needs help."

~Thich Nhat Hanh~

How do you deal with suffering? How can you help?

jan