My column on Monday in The Free Press talked about the culture of therapy today—and, more to the point, whether therapy can make you happier (or just less unhappy). One of my arguments was that mental pain—the reason most people seek out therapy in the first place—was not an inherently bad thing. On the contrary, negative emotions serve to alert us to threats of various types, and negative experiences are important for growth and learning in life.
To this point, many people make the mistake of trying to eliminate their mental pain—to somehow turn it off. That’s both impossible and undesirable. What is desirable is finding ways to cope with pain. In this newsletter, I want to introduce you to a Tibetan concept for managing pain that has helped me a lot.
Over the past 12 years, I’ve had the privilege of working frequently with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He often talks to me about pain and suffering, but he doesn’t use the terms interchangeably. On the contrary, he teaches that they exist together in the following way:
Suffering = pain x resistance
Pain can be physical or mental, and happens to you because of an outside stimulus—you slam your hand in the car door by accident, say, or (just hypothetically) read a thoughtless criticism from a reader about your latest Free Press column. By contrast, suffering is the struggle that ensues when you experience pain. The formula above says that suffering is your pain multiplied by your resistance to that pain. There are thus two ways to suffer less: Either you can try—fruitlessly, as long as you are in this mortal coil—to eliminate pain, or you can lower your resistance to pain when it inevitably comes.
Lowering your resistance to pain is a mysterious idea. To Buddhists, resistance means indulging in fear, anger, or self-pity when people feel pain. When defined this way, we know that resistance heightens our suffering. That’s one reason why people who wallow in self-pity after a breakup tend to move on more slowly from their old relationship.
So, resistance means something like “railing against our pain.” Nonresistance, on the other hand, means accepting some pain without fear, anger, or self-pity. The pain just is.
His Holiness teaches that, in many instances, the right approach is to work more on the resistance side than the pain side, so that your suffering falls and your well-being stays high, despite a painful emotion or experience.
That, in fact, is how you know you’re doing it right: when your pain is high, but your suffering is not.
Does this sound inaccessibly Eastern to you? It shouldn’t, because you can find examples of this all around. In my family, for example, two of my three adult kids are U.S. Marines. One is currently active duty (my daughter, who is a second lieutenant). She’s four feet, eleven inches, and the notoriously brutal Marine training has inflicted mental and physical pain on her beyond anything she ever experienced. But her suffering is actually very low, because she has learned not to resist that pain. It simply happens to her, and she has no self-pity that this is so.
Of course, nonresistance is easier when you volunteer for pain, as my daughter did. The real skill in life is nonresistance when you don’t invite it, physically or emotionally. One way I’ve gotten better at this is through my morning prayer, in which I ask for whatever the day will bring—including the parts I don’t like. Without submitting to the divine will, I’d be more prone to rail against the painful parts of my day. Instead, my prayer helps me to accept these parts with an impassive interest.
What’s your method of nonresistance? Throw it in the comments.
Enjoy your weekend,
Arthur
P.S. Speaking of His Holiness, he recently shared the following endorsement of my new book The Meaning of Your Life: “My friend Arthur C. Brooks clearly articulates how to live a meaningful, compassionate, and purposeful life.” You can preorder the book now to get several free bonuses, including VIP access to my virtual book launch event.
The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks will be back next week with a column on Monday. His newsletter returns next Friday.
That formula rings especially true in the case of anxiety. One must let go of the fear of the unknown and deal with things *if* they happen. Might be easier said than done, but a good goal.
Wow, a book endorsement from the Dalai Lama!