Human ego-centered existence (the "I-me" identity hard-wired in your cranium) is accentuated by varying levels of suffering and this is primarily because the ego-self brain can imagine an experience other than what he is experiencing in the moment and seek to manipulate his reality to alter his current experience into something he imagines is better than the moment occurring.
It does appear that humans are the only species in all of nature with the capacity to exit the immediacies of the moment by imagining some other moment better than the moment actually experienced and from this imaginary perspective, the ego-centered brain has built and destroyed entire civilizations.
Because humans have used their capacity to imagine change, a massive "medical" establishment has evolved to make that imaginary escape from physical pain a real possibility. Now we can expect to resist pain through medical assistance and many palliatives and cures work to relieve symptoms of physical pain and even cure the diseases and disorders that generate that pain.
Unfortunately, psycho-emotional pain exists on a different spectrum often brought on by the brain's capacity to imagine a moment different than the one actually experienced, and alleviating pain generated by the imagination, and its discordant beliefs and maladaptive thought processes, is not as easy as alleviating physical pain (although, pharmaceutical psychiatry attempts to blaze that trail, but are leaving many casualties in its wake).
Often, the mind must fully engage psycho-emotional pain as a means of alleviating that pain. This requires shutting off the imagination of how things could be better and experiencing the pain of how things actually are, which allows the mind to acknowledge the distorted beliefs and thoughts that fuel the emotional distress and to replace distorted perceptions with more realistic appraisals of self, others and reality.
Your psycho-emotional distress has never been an actual product of your chaotic reality, but merely a symptom of your distorted interpretation of that reality, which actually promotes chaos. Change the interpretation and reality takes on a whole new meaning, which may include a reduction or even a complete cessation of suffering.
If suffering = pain + resisting that pain, then the level of suffering can be reduced simply by reducing resistance to what is and accepting the pain as necessary, thereby, working through that pain rather than masking the symptoms through chemical and behavioral addictions and other forms of denying and avoiding the visceral truth of your pain.
Nevertheless, you live in a society that worships "positive thinking" as the chief means of psycho-emotional health and this merely serves to deny reality and support delusional interpretations of a reality that often is painful and needs to be dealt with realistically
Psycho-emotional pain has a purpose. Discover what that purpose is and let it guide you out from the pain...
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