Pain is Unavoidable, but Suffering is Optional

When something painful happens to you (like illness, injury, grief, or setbacks), it's as if life has fired an arrow at you. While the pain of negative experiences is unavoidable, you may, however, endure extra/unnecessary suffering depending on how you react to that initial pain. If you react with anguish or despair or frustration, according to the Buddha, it's as if you have fired a second arrow at yourself.

People presume that venting diminishes our suffering, but Dr. Ethan Kross in his book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, explains why venting actually harms our health:

People feel compelled to talk to others about their negative experiences. The more intense the emotion was, the more they [want] to talk about it.While this sounds normal and harmless, repeatedly sharing our negative inner voice with others produces one of the great ironies of chatter and social life: We voice the thoughts in our minds to the sympathetic listeners we know in search of their support, but doing so excessively ends up pushing away the people we need most. It’s as though the pain of chatter makes people less sensitive to the normal social cues that tell us when enough is enough.Many of us have a limited threshold for how much venting we can listen to, even from the people we love, as well as how often we can tolerate this venting while not feeling listened to ourselves. Relationships thrive on reciprocity. That’s one of the reasons why therapists charge us for their time and friends don’t. When this conversational balance becomes lopsided, social connections fray.

Not only does excessive venting increase our suffering because it pushes people away, but allowing the negative chatter inside our brains to exist and proliferate also damages our health. Later in his book, Dr. Kross states:

[Researchers] have found that a…set of inflammation genes are expressed more strongly among people who experience chronic threat, regardless of whether those feelings emerge from feeling lonely or dealing with the stress of poverty or the diagnosis of disease. This happens because our cells interpret the experience of chronic psychological threat as a viscerally hostile situation akin to being physically attacked.When our internal conversations activate our threat system frequently over time, they send messages to our cells that trigger the expression of inflammation genes, which are meant to protect us in the short term but cause harm in the long term.

This is what the Buddha meant by the second arrow: how we react to pain can inadvertently increase our suffering.

Reacting to pain by venting, collapsing in self-pity (“why me?!”), falling into despair—they’re all forms of firing a second arrow at yourself in response to pain.

So how are you supposed to react? Like an emotionless robot? Well, when I was 22 years old and read Marcus Aurelius' book Meditations, I decided that in order to master my internal self, I should suppress my emotions—that emotions are for the weak.

This worked…for a little while. It worked because, before reading that book, I was an angry person: impulsive, reactive, vociferous. By shutting down that side of myself entirely, I swung to the other side of the pendulum: I refused to have an emotional reaction to anything.

But the problem with that, is that emotions are signals from the body. They provide useful information about how we're responding to our environment.

For example, anger is useful because it's the emotion produced when our boundaries are crossed. When we express anger, it lets others know that we don't want to be treated that way. But by refusing to be angry, I unintentionally numbed myself to people crossing my boundaries, and I increasingly couldn’t understand what I really wanted out of life and who I was: a state of dull lifelessness subsumed me.

Swinging between extremes (ie: having anger issues, versus, numbing my emotions), in both cases I was shooting myself with the second arrow of suffering.

Consistently playing a sport for years builds muscle memory that cannot be forgotten. I've played pickleball for 15 years. Sometimes I'll take a few months off, but upon returning, I haven't forgotten any of the fundamentals.

The same goes for the mind.

The untrained mind is reactive. But specific practices, like meditation, lay the foundation for mental skills. And just like with pickleball, even when I take breaks from my meditation practice, those mental skills are not forgotten. Maybe a little rusty, but never forgotten.

Learning the skill of recognizing pain, and avoiding firing a second arrow at myself, has saved me a tremendous amount of suffering. And because I’ve practiced it a lot, this skill will likely stay with me for life.

Let's analyze the benefits of this skill by reviewing three scenarios from my life—(1) heartbreak, (2) getting physically injured, (3) social conflict—and examine how I used to suffer from them, and how learning about the two arrows helped me emotionally regulate myself such that I didn't suffer from them again.

Heartbreak

(1) Accidentally firing a second arrow at myself

Last year I fell in love for the first time, but I wasn't ready to accept it. I self-sabotaged because the idea of love and intimacy scared me. When I lost her and got my heart broken—ie: got hit with the first arrow from life—it hurt, but what hurt even more was the suffering I endured from the second arrow I fired at myself.

For over a year, I couldn't stop ruminating and beating myself up mentally for my mistakes.

At the start of this year, I got diagnosed (late in life) with OCD, and I was determined to do everything I could to overcome this disorder. As a result, I created two of my favorite (and most useful) blog posts: Having OCD is like living in North Korea (Here’s how I escaped) and Rumination is a habit (and you can break it!). Through the process of writing the former, I acquired the ability to metacognitively monitor my thoughts and emotionally regulate myself. And from the latter, I learned how to identify ruminative thoughts and developed a method to extinguish them.

(2) Learning how to not fire a second arrow at myself

I got my heart broken again a few weeks ago. The pain of the first arrow was devastating, but I didn't suffer from a second arrow by beating myself up for my mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, the question is: can I learn from them?

I decided to take as much responsibility as possible for why my relationship ended, by doing everything I could to ensure I don’t make the same mistakes: I researched and read books on relationship dynamics, studied attachment theory (and had tough conversations with my parents to better understand how I got here, and to strengthen my relationship with them), signed up for therapy sessions to get a professional’s opinion, and made comprehensive check-lists for what I need to do in my next relationship to be successful.

I refused to dillydally by ruminating, and therefore avoided firing a second arrow at myself. I simply got to work.

Getting Physically Injured

(1) Accidentally firing a second arrow at myself

Back in college I defined myself primarily by my athleticism. So when I incurred a nasty injury to my leg at 19 years old, it shook me to the core of my identity. Who am I if not an athlete? I felt useless.

The first arrow was the injury, which was unavoidable. But I fired a second arrow at myself by expressing my frustration and contempt at the injustice of life for over a year.

I recently had an opportunity to show that I learned from that mistake, because five months ago I sprained my hamstring weight lifting.

(2) Learning how to not fire a second arrow at myself

As soon as it happened, I knew I had fucked up because I felt a pop in my leg. My reaction? I laughed.

I thought, "Oops! Well, time to sign up for physical therapy again." I didn't lament, I didn't get frustrated, I didn't fire a second arrow at myself—I just got to work.

After three months of PT, my leg fully healed and I'm back to running. If (when) I get injured again, I’ll have the emotional maturity to accept what's happened, and can take the necessary steps to heal myself.

Social Conflict

(1) Accidentally firing a second arrow at myself

When I was younger and more predisposed to anger, historically when friends canceled plans with me, it used to throw me into a tailspin: "Do these people even like me?! How could they just so frivolously cast me aside??"

Sometimes people cancel plans, and that sucks—the pain of the first arrow—but having an outsized emotional reaction and venting is firing the second arrow at myself.

(2) Learning how to not fire a second arrow at myself

These days, I'm still annoyed when I get canceled on, but when it happens I just shrug my shoulders. The only time it’s an actual problem is when I'm dealing with serial flakers. Recently when I was communicating with a new friend who was being flakey, I texted her:

Not a huge deal, but I would appreciate it if you could check your schedule before committing to plans, it makes things easier for me :)

Main Takeaway

Notice when life shoots you with the first arrow of unavoidable pain. Do you rage against the injustice by firing a second arrow at yourself? Or do you accept it with equanimity?

1. The concept of this post is based on a parable told by the Buddha.
2. It wasn’t originally a book, it was a collection of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius’ personal journals published posthumously, which unveiled to the public what the calm and composed mind of an emperor looks like. While Aurelius did not conceive of stoicism, the book is responsible for the philosophy’s resurgence in the 21st century.
3. How I practice meditation: I sit down in a quiet room and close my eyes. As I breathe in, I recite in my mind, “I am not the body.” And with exhalation I think, “I am not even the mind.” When thoughts pop into my head, I note them and let them drift on by, then I return to my breathing and keep reciting my mantra.
4. What can I say, I was an angsty teen. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
5. I had taken several weeks off from weight lifting while on vacation. When I returned, I attempted to do my normal heavy set of RDLs (Romanian Deadlifts). Bad idea. I’ve since learned to ease back into weight lifting after a break by starting with lighter weights.