Many of us grew up or are growing up in unfavorable conditions for psychophysical and emotional development. Conflicts within the family, between parents, intergenerational conflicts, setting rigid rules of conduct, verbal and physical violence, financial crises, silent treatment, are just some of the variations on the theme.
What we experienced as models of behavior in our homes during the formative years, we took and probably still carry with us, in us, deeply imprinted like an invisible brand.
Our reactions in crisis situations, in challenges, when making decisions, are most likely based on those deep impressions.
We adopt them as our personal, but in fact they are collected experiences who knows how many generations ago.
We can freely say that we are trimmed by memories from the past of our ancestors, difficult experiences from the turmoil in which our tribe, people, nation found themselves hundreds of years ago. From such experiences, unconsciously and yet deeply woven into our genetics, the model of suffering as an honorable life was transmitted. The fight for independence, the defense of integrity, the protection of the weak, the poor, the vulnerable, who need help.
Often, suffering, as a characteristic of a noble life, was passed down from generation to generation, along with almost honor.
Only if we suffer are we really alive.
While we suffer, and the more we suffer and the more we fight, we push against fate or some “enemy”, we have fuel for our exploits.
This fascination with suffering as a form of proving oneself and one’s qualities (“Heroes are known through suffering”!) sometimes goes very far, deep, fanatically and above all unconsciously.
Unconscious programs drive us to seek and very often find situations that confirm our need and addiction to suffering.
Unconsciously, we choose partners, jobs, friends, life circumstances that will confirm that suffering and give us additional energy, by creating a state of stress, to fight with something. It can also paralyze us, hold us back. Driven to remain trapped in suffering and powerless, we surrender completely.
What does it mean to seek suffering?
The Serbian language has several sayings that represent this situation very clearly: “Looking for the devil”, for example.
Or when we choose from two choices the one in which suffering is programmed, so to speak: “Happiness is looking at you, the devil is not giving you”.
That devil is not some malicious being, an external force, but some of the blockages in us, programs that we are not aware of and that we follow because we were brought up that way, we grew up with it or it was presented to us in the most beautiful colors as the pinnacle of honor.
Sometimes, suffering is seen as serving a sentence for a crime you did not commit. But you’re still in a dungeon.
Addiction to suffering is often present in people who do not allow themselves to free themselves from negative family patterns. They think that they do not deserve a different life, they are not honorable if they have an easy life, that they betray their roots. Very often, changing the way out of suffering leads to confrontation and distance from one’s own suffering family. Because you are satisfied, happier, calmer inside, while everyone around you is in pain and suffering.
If we ask them why they suffer and, perhaps more importantly, what they can do to get out of the suffering, they either do not know the answer or they reject the solution to get out of the suffering because it cannot be otherwise.
Considering that we are the ones who put the issue of suffering under the microscope, we are often characterized as those who have it “easy” because we do not have “pain”, we are not mature enough to understand it or we are selfish and only look at ourselves.
Staying in suffering without facing it, without seeing the necessity, meaning, and intensity of suffering as well as potential solutions, leads to a vicious circle.
The same feelings create the same thoughts, the same thoughts the same actions, the repetition of the same actions leads to staying in the qualitatively same life. The same life of suffering creates more of the same feelings.
It is unconsciously walking through the “valley of pain” and refusing to take responsibility to be happy and look for at least one small speck of beauty, under several veils, layers, that can brighten up our day for at least a few minutes.
A beautiful day, an hour, even a minute is the way to a beautiful life.
Just imagine: instead of unconsciously “hanging on” to those who bring down our day or stage of life, we go in search of what will relax us, allow us to look at the story from a different perspective and choose a life without unnecessary suffering. The path, which if we persevere, will lead to periods of suffering, although inevitable, experienced differently.
It is important to add that the complete absence of life situations in which we will suffer is not possible. But it is very possible to reduce those moments to those where it is really justified and inevitable.
Suffering is not exclusively bad. Through it we penetrate to our true selves. Like an alchemist, she turns us into gold. Then it is meaningful, because it prompts us to take steps: to start the way out of the darkness by bringing in the light.
Not a single deep analysis of one’s own being came from simple happiness and pleasure. Achilles’ claim that Zeus created people “to suffer, to suffer until the truth” is known since antiquity.
If the suffering lasts a long time and threatens to collapse our life, it is important to devote ourselves to it.
Clear, concrete questions that we ask ourselves can help us to be able to find answers to how hopeless our situation really is and what we can do to change our situation.
Some of the questions you can ask yourself in order to find out if your suffering is really meaningful or if it is part of some inherited family mechanism, are:
What is the cause of my suffering?
How do I feel her?
Where do I feel it?
Do I want to suffer?
Do I have to suffer?
Is it something that is immutable?
Is it realistic (or is it our assumption about an event that may not have actually happened)?
How would my best friend (or someone close) behave in the same situation?
What can I do about it?
The OAZA is here for you.
Let’s hear each other, see and look for solutions together!