#116 How to Move from Suffering to Connection with Yourself and Others

The Buddhist philosophy reminds us, "Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional."

In this episode, we delve into the intricate layers of suffering - why it takes hold, how we become ensnared, and the path to liberation.

We'll explore tendencies like trivializing our own pain, contrasting our suffering to others, and retreating into the shadows, all of which can hinder our journey to self-discovery and genuine connection.

While pain is a shared human experience, it also offers an opportunity for profound connection and understanding - if we muster the courage to confront our pain and embrace the lessons it offers.

Resources: 

The 1 Thing Nobody Understands About Suffering 

 The Breast Cancer Recovery Facebook Group

Read the full transcript below:

0:00
This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I am thrilled you're here with me today. Welcome back, if you're a repeat listener, and welcome to the show, if you are a new listener, and either way, I hope you love the show today. And if you do, I will, I'm going to ask you to please take a moment, scroll down to the bottom of your smartphone or wherever you're listening to this podcast, and take just a minute to leave a rating and review for the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. When you do that it helps so much with the having more ratings for the show helps it to be easier for other survivors to find, and then makes that easier for them to get information they may need to help them in their recovery. So it's a I know it takes a moment to do and I appreciate you taking the time out to be able to do that. But it does mean everything to me. And so if you love the show, I would love it if you could do that. And that being said, We're gonna jump right into this. So this show was inspired as so many of the podcast episodes I do are from many conversations I've had, over the past few weeks, especially it seems like there have been more over the past few weeks. But it's pretty common over the years that I've been doing this type of coaching. And I want to talk about it because I think that we survivors, we women, women, especially we do this a lot. But I think that we often do it without realizing exactly what we're doing. And that is we compare our suffering to someone else's circumstances or suffering. And then we judge hours to either not be as bad as we originally thought it was, or we judge ours to be much worse. And then we decide to either stay quiet about what's on our mind and what's on our heart. Or we decide to cling to how much worse our suffering is than anyone elses. Now, I'm going to give you some examples of this. And I want to talk about both sides of this coin. And why it's important for you to develop awareness around this behavior, because I bet you have one or both of these behaviors to some degree. And it's important to change this habit. And we're going to talk about how you can do that. So first, I want to give you a couple of examples, and I'll talk about each one. One of the most common ones I hear is a statement like this similar to this where something is bothering me, right, a woman is talking to me, she says this is bothering me. But I know other people have gone through so much worse, I don't feel comfortable talking about it. Because you know, it's really not a big deal. So I'd like to start by putting the definition of suffering out there. Suffering, according to the dictionary is the state of undergoing pain, distress or hardship, to experience or be subjected to something bad or unpleasant. And I want to point out that there are not progressive definitions of suffering, meaning there's not a beginner and intermediate and advanced definition of suffering. There's not a level one, two or three definition of suffering. There's one definition of suffering, because Pain is pain and suffering is suffering. And when you are hurting, when you are in emotional, spiritual or physical pain, it is all pain. And I caution you not to minimize it. Because when you judge it, you compare it to someone else's life experience. And then you decide it's not worthy of being talked about, or even held in a space where you can really feel it and process it. You minimize your own life experience. And you keep that suffering stuck inside you. And what happens then, what happens when an emotional experience is left stuck inside of you. I can tell you what doesn't happen. No change happens. No personal growth happens. no end to the suffering comes. It will not go away. Okay. Your dismissal is merely a band aid that temporarily hide it hides the suffering, while it festers inside of you. And then one day, I promise you, it will get triggered, it'll get triggered by something you see, or you hear, or something someone else says, or does that reminds you of it. And then it comes back, even more magnified, with all of the pain and the shame and the invalidation that you piled on top of it. And this reminds me, gosh, this reminds me of a movie that I saw when I was a kid. And I way past being a kid. So this has stuck with me for a very long time. So when I was a kid, I loved watching horror movies, I still love watching horror movies. But there was a particular movie, I don't remember the name of it, it maybe it was a twilight zone, or an outer limits episode if you're old enough to remember those. But the point is that in this show, a spider is in someone's sink. And this man washes the spider down the drain with water. And then it crawls back up in the bathroom through the shower drain, and it's even bigger. And then the show goes on and the spider keeps getting washed away. But it keeps coming back through some other place in the house keeps coming back bigger and bigger, until it's even bigger than the entire flipping house. And it's terrifying. And it's huge. And what I was just talking about reminds me of this show, because it's a great representation of what happens to your suffering, or for that matter, any any painful emotion, that you continually push back down into your body, and you minimize it, you compare it and you judge it to be unworthy, it comes back bigger, and bigger and bigger.

6:41
Now, I mentioned that sometimes you will judge your suffering to be worse than someone else's. And this happens, I see this commonly in different types of diagnoses. And I will hear someone say, a mine was the worst, or I had the worst kind you could have. And when I try to talk to these women about changing their mindset around the way you think about this diagnosis, they can often be very stuck. No, mine is the worst. And I can't stop worrying. And I can't stop being in fear, I have to be in fear. And hopefully by the end of this podcast, we can understand the difference between acknowledging the reality of something. And of course, being diligent and cautious and taking care of it, versus allowing your mind to be completely stuck in the fear, which is what creates the suffering. So I love this quote by Matthew Jones from the article called The one thing nobody understands about suffering, and how to overcome it. In that article, he says that when you are in the midst of suffering, no matter the degree, it should disturb your typical process. It should awaken you to the truth, that in the ultimate sense, you cannot be satisfied in your current state of mind and daily existence. Your suffering should move you to reorient your approach to the game of life, it should push you to something larger and greater than yourself. Something that transcends yourself something that gives you all and silence and peace and of quote. And it's that space, being in that space of really sitting with your suffering, regardless of if you're minimizing it, or if you're making it really big. But being in that space, meaning looking at your thoughts about the circumstances you're experiencing pain around, that allows you to see how you're responding. In an it gives you the ability to decide to learn more about yourself, and to respond differently in order to reduce future suffering. So let me give you an example. You feel miserable. You're in pain might be physical pain, emotional pain, you're tired, you're stressed out about work or finances, or you feeling very disconnected, misunderstood and lonely. And you can tell yourself, it's fine. It's fine, I'm fine. I'm alive, I shouldn't complain, which is minimizing your suffering. Or you can sit down on a couch on a chair in your bed. And you can cry your eyes out. And you can allow yourself to feel the frustration, feel and experience the loneliness and anger and actually let that emotional release happen. Now, being very careful, because this does not mean getting stuck in this mucky pool of self pity. Not at all. That doesn't help anyone. It means experience what you're feeling so you can examine it. Look at it, learn from it and grow. But what you don't want to do is tell yourself that what you're feeling isn't enough that it does doesn't deserve attention or time or empathy or energy. And you don't want to tell yourself that it's so big that there's no way to get past it. Because you are worthy. Your pain is worthy of addressing and working through. And you do have the power to work through suffering and move beyond it. Now, another example that I want to share is every time that I open my one of my revivify coaching programs, and you know, we're doing the enrollment process, and I'll get questions, I'll get emails, I'll get phone calls. And I will hear things like, Well, I only had DCIS, do you still think I'll fit in? I only had stage when I didn't need chemo? Do you think I'll fit in? Or do you have women in your group who are still in treatment, or who have metastatic disease, because I don't feel comfortable talking about my problems around women who are in so much more pain than me. Now, this is a comparison that is at its worst, because one you're minimizing your own suffering, to you're elevating someone else's suffering, so you're sending that message, like what you're going through is horrible, right? There's no way to get past that, Oh, my God, that sucks. I don't even want to talk about normal life. And you're missing the opportunity to connect, you're missing the big picture, that as human beings, we all share one thing. Well probably share more than one thing. But one thing we share for sure is pain. We understand pain, because we all experience it. But when we're exposed to someone who's moved past their pain, or has even moved past, the pain we're currently experiencing, and onto other types of suffering that seem more manageable, it actually gives us hope. So it's really your perception and your judgment of yourself. That one keeps you from being present with your suffering, and seeing how you're thinking about and choosing to change that, and to allowing you to connect to someone else. And what that does is it creates more suffering. And yes, it's created by you not the pain, the pain is not created, right the life circumstances and created by you. But the suffering is. And think about this, do you know any two people who have had the same type of breast cancer, meaning stage grade treatment, the whole thing, and one of these women has had an incredible outlook, and the other has suffered terribly, maybe becomes very reclusive and depressed and withdrawn. Now the physical pain is similar, I won't say exactly the same, because the experience of that diagnosis is different for everyone, regardless of the treatment, identical treatments feel different. But the treatment is the same, but the suffering is different. Now what makes that difference is the way you choose to think about the pain, and the way you choose to think about the rest of your life, and how this is impacting it. You see, we're not trained in how to manage our mind when it comes to pain and scary and difficult situations. We're pitied, which is why I believe we take on these warrior shields, as survivors, because we don't want to feel like a victim. And we walk around a lot of times you know bald and looking really sick because the treatment just makes us so dang sick. And we don't want to look like a sick person. So we put on this warrior facade, or we're celebrated for having achieved some great feat of survival. And then we feel bad for complaining, we feel bad because we're suffering. So we stuffed the suffering. Again, this does not end well. It doesn't end in feeling validated in knowing you have the power to change the way you think or feel. And it doesn't end in you being truly able to be connected to others. So in my Facebook group, the breast cancer recovery group, there are hundreds of survivors in all different stages of treatment and recovery. And every day I see these women come together to support to inform and to inspire each other. There's no comparison of whose diagnosis is worse than someone else's. And some people are in a terrible place a lot of pain, very new, lots of suffering. But I hear them and I see them supporting each other to work through that pain, and those who've already been through it, encouraging them and finding a way to help each other get more joy in their lives. Now, I personally have two women in my life that I respect tremendously, both of whom are metastatic survivors, and both of whom have done what I see as amazing things in their life. They've made the changes they needed to bring balance, you know, between their work and their life. So the kind of balance that everybody would like to have, or they've made big changes and they're living their dream there too. Taking advantage of adventures, and they're serving others, because that's what they find fulfilling. They have such compassion, and such empathy that I always learn from them. And rather than avoiding these women, I would embrace them anywhere, because they know the truth that I work so hard with other women to get them to embrace. And that is that life is short, and you never know what's coming. And that's not a cliche, that's the truth. So don't let your head your fears and your conditioned way of thinking keep you in pain and suffering. Instead, use that suffering as a motivation to find the support and tools you need to move past the suffering and create fulfillment in your life. And the first step to doing that is becoming aware of where you compare and minimize your own suffering. Or where you get stuck in your own suffering, telling yourself you can't move past it. You have to acknowledge and embrace what you're going through and look at the way that you think about your suffering. And ask yourself, are you minimizing? Are you invalidating?

16:13
are you locking yourself into it? Write it down, write all these thoughts. I say that in so many shows, because I know you don't pick up the pen and write it down. So write it down, actually write it, get it out of your head. And don't just think about it, because that just adds more thoughts that are swirling around in your already very busy mind. Get it out on paper, look at it, read it back to yourself and decide the way you're thinking about your pain. In your experience. Is it moving you deeper into suffering? Or is it helping you grow out of it isn't helping you find solutions isn't helping you create new ways of thinking that are moving you towards feeling more joyful, and more fulfilled in your life. Helen Keller once said, The world is full of suffering and it is also full of overcoming it. So I want to leave you with this thought. Where are you suffering in your life? And what is the next small step the next smallest thing you can do to take a step towards overcoming it? If you need help with that, please come and join the breast cancer recovery group. It's a free Facebook group. You'll find a link to it in the show notes for this episode at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 116 Come over there join the group and we can get the conversation going. You'll find a ton of inspiration and support there. Alright, until I talk to you again next week. Get out that pen and paper start the journaling but also be good to yourself and expect others to be good to you as well.

17:58
Use courage to the test laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your hardest, wanting more your futures you know hazards you been waiting on.

18:28
This