Bravery And Suffering

Life is not always easy. In fact, it’s almost never easy, or at least that’s how it feels. The thing is, we hide most of our suffering from other people. Only we know the exact location of our wounds and how vulnerable they make us. Only we can heal them by picking up every single one of our broken pieces and becoming stronger. Bravery and suffering go hand in hand.

Although it is one of the most difficult things we have to do, living through an experience that breaks us apart is  an opportunity. It gives us the chance to go back, consider how we understand the world, and eventually rebuild ourselves. The question is, how do we do that?

The weight of suffering

No one is safe from suffering. It is the strange guest who interrupts our lives from time to time, without warning or invitation. And even though we usually try to run from it or hide it in the darkest basement and pretend it’s not there, we can not stop it from affecting us. It exercises its power even from the dark basement where we have banished it. And we may not notice the influence it has on us because the darkness makes it difficult to predict or identify its movements.

Some people hide their negative feelings with fake smiles. Other people fill their days with activities so that they do not have free time to think too much. Others still lie to themselves to try to put a patch on their discomfort. We have all done something like this, whether it is something that happens rarely, or whether it has become a habit.

The problem is that no matter what kind of barrier we build, the disorder will come to the surface sooner or later. The consequences can be physical pain or emotional pain.

Suffering is a part of life, whether we like it or not. The danger arises when the disorder becomes so heavy and long-lasting and takes so many forms that it becomes a lifestyle. It clouds over everything around us, so that everything turns dark gray, almost black.

In fact , most disorders we feel (not all) develop from a painful experience. It’s when we can not stop living through the loss of something or someone we love. We do not accept the loss. Instead, we resist and try our best to do things differently. When we do this, we make ourselves suffer without realizing it. This disorder is pain, but at the same time it is a refuge from the rain that begins in the middle of grief and makes us soak to the bone with grief.

The death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, the betrayal of a friend or being fired are some examples of  loss that cause pain and suffering. It feels as if someone has stabbed us directly in the heart with a knife. These are wounds that will never stop bleeding if we do not take care of them. They can turn into broken pieces that are difficult to reassemble.

A rewarding dawn

While it is true that some people develop disorders or real problems that stem from their disorder, this is not what usually happens. Some are even  able to come out of their traumatic experience even stronger than before. These are experiences that give them pain, but also help them to grow. Somehow they can benefit from the experience.

A study by Wortman and Silver confirms that there are people who resist the blow of life with unexpected strength. The reason is their resilience. With resilience, they are able to maintain balance and avoid being overly affected by trauma and pain in their daily lives.

This makes us think that we are stronger than we think. That even when our strength fails, there is a small ray of light. This light shows us the way so we can pick up our broken pieces and put ourselves back together. This is the beginning of our resilience. This is the exact moment when our sorrows and the weight of our suffering give way to the healing power of our strength. It allows us to resist and reshape ourselves.

Instead of ignoring how we feel, we should accept it as a life lesson and get through it with our eyes open. It can take some time to get used to, just like trying to see in the dark. Even when life knocks us down and almost breaks us, the ability to feel strong helps us overcome what we are going through. With it, we can put our identity back together, by picking up our broken pieces one by one.

It’s resilience, one of the most beautiful abilities and something they should teach us all at school. Learn to heal our wounds, treat them with love, and learn the best lesson we can from them. But how do we do that?

Picking up the pieces to rebuild ourselves

As we have seen, to  flourish after a storm is possible but not easy. It is a complex and dynamic process which, according to psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnikc, involves not only personal development, but also the process of structuring a person’s life story. There are some factors we can develop to maximize our resilience and help us pick up our broken parts, for example:

• Self-confidence and our ability to handle confrontation.
• To accept our feelings.
• To have a meaningful purpose in life.
• Believing that we can learn from negative experiences as well as positive ones.
• Having a support network.

In addition, Calhoun and Tedeschi, two of the authors who have done the most research on post-traumatic growth, have pointed out that suffering and pain change us, not only on an individual level, but also in our relationships and in our philosophy of life.

Confronting painful experiences is scary, but running away from them only prolongs our suffering. Avoiding the problems causes them to mutate in a dangerous way. True courage means that one continues in spite of fear,  that one moves forward while the body trembles and falls apart on the inside.

In life we ​​need time to process our experiences and to be alone with our suffering. In these lonely moments we can understand it. We learn that the most important thing is to keep going, whether we take big or small steps. The strongest person is not the one who never falls, but the one who can get up and continue, stronger because of the fall.