The Truth About Suffering: It's Not Your Fault

Have you ever stopped to examine why you blame yourself? I hear this every day: many people blaming themselves for this or that. Why, when we already live in a world with such great pain and daily suffering, do we choose to suffer further? Buddha's first noble truth is, “There is suffering.” Buddhists pray for all beings to be free from suffering, but more importantly, they pray for all beings to be free from the causes of suffering.

I have a question for you: can you identify what causes you to suffer? Do you even know when you are suffering? How do you know? Let's take an example. You really want to get that promotion, a new car, or go on holiday. The desire creates a bond of attachment. So, we become attached to getting the outcome. And if that doesn’t happen, we are left dissatisfied or maybe disappointed. It's here where it gets interesting. Depending on the individual's ability to process disappointment, the outcome is determined. Do we numb out? Cue the Netflix binge of Bridgerton, and if we choose to numb out, is that conscious numbing or unconscious? We could pretend it didn’t matter and gaslight ourselves into not feeling the pain or not allowing the discomfort. Or do we stay present and process the human emotion of disappointment? As trauma-informed therapists, we help people process unprocessed pain and past hurts every day. So if you don’t deal with it now, the likelihood is you will deal with it at some point later in your life.

I believe that in order to evolve as individuals, we attract certain situations that give us the opportunity to cultivate growth, and it’s our relationship with ourselves that determines how and when we grow. As we develop, we can consciously become aware and make more informed choices for ourselves that will lead to better outcomes. For example, if I know drinking too much alcohol will make me suffer the next day, I can choose to drink less the night before. Forming new habits that create new neural pathways in our brain requires commitment and conscious choice. These choice points lead us to atomic habits.

Attachment will always cause suffering, and therefore we must break the patterns of attachment in order to ease our suffering. So, I ask again, why do we as a collective continue to make choices that will harm us? If we intelligently know the causes of our suffering, then surely the intelligent thing would be to move towards less suffering. If only being human were that simple. What I need you to know is, it isn’t your fault, none of it is your fault, it never was your fault.

Enter the complexity of what it is to be human in the modern world. Our internal worlds have been shaped by the external world we grew up in, and depending on your culture, social class, and environment, these combined shape the adult you will become. In my culture, many see the need for therapy as a weakness. In American middle-class culture, it is seen as the norm to have a therapist. External factors have been shaping us from the day we were born. It is important to know that you are part of a conditioned self, a societal expectation, an ancestral generation of trauma. We all walk around in these fields of energy every single day. The key is to become aware of what you are carrying in order to lighten the load. Who doesn’t want to lighten their load? Why would we choose a path of suffering? It just doesn’t make sense anymore, particularly now when so much help is available. Once you become aware of how to create positive changes in your life, it then becomes more of a responsibility if not a moral duty to show up for yourself.

Yet pride, stubbornness, stigma, self-denial, and ignorance all inhibit a person from reaching out for help. To me, that is the definition of insanity: not getting help when you need it.

We will never live happier lives if we don’t identify what makes us unhappy. By doing this, we can begin to form a plan of change, a roadmap to assist us in forming new habits and making better decisions aligned with our values and what ignites us.

The point I am trying to make is it's time to start taking better care of ourselves. It's time to start listening deeply to ourselves. We crave security and connection, yet we separate and blame.

When will we end the inner war? We cannot stop the war if we do not see the war we create within. And here is where the problem lies. It's in the dismissal of what you truly feel and need. We are taught to dismiss our feelings and needs as children, and we continue on this trajectory until we have a rock-bottom moment which awakens the soul to want a more authentic, natural way of being in the world. It is only then that you can understand what it is that you don’t want, and that is the first step to true freedom: knowing what you don’t want.

So, I encourage you, as the reader, to practice self-inquiry: start by gently asking yourself what causes me to suffer? Sit and wait for the answer to emerge, listen to your soul nudging you with stories, memories, and feelings. This is the work we must do to experience wisdom and inner peace. Anyone on the path of healing knows that a huge amount of self-compassion is essential for your soul to journey home. If you are ready to embrace change, and you wish to choose to have a guide by your side, reach out, ask for help, choose a different outcome today and take the first steps to a more loving and fulfilling life.