I'm going through an angry phase at the moment, where I find myself shouting at trivial stories on the television. I've also been angry with myself for perceived failures in bringing up the children - a painful and futile self-loathing because I've probably done the best I could in the given circumstances. But I worry that I've failed them, and myself. I feel like such a hypocrite, getting angry with other people on television for complaining about their seemingly minor problems, finding it hard to feel compassion for them, even though what they've suffered was probably unbearably hard for them.
The case I'm talking about was a woman talking about how medicinal cannabis helped her deal with the "unbearable" nausea and metallic taste from her breast cancer treatment. My response was "get over it, sister! It happens to everyone. There are treatments you can take to deal with it. If medicinal marajuana works for you, fine, but stop complaining!!! Be glad that you're alive, that you have a curable cancer, that you didn't have febrile neutropenia with nearly every round of chemo, that you didn't then develop an aggressive brain tumour, possibly because your immune system was so severely compromised by the breast cancer treatment." I understand that chemo makes people feel like crap, but they should be bloody grateful that there's something that can help reduce the risk of their cancer recurring. I wasn't even able to complete all the recommended chemo for my GBMs because my blood counts fell too low. So I have to have faith that I will get through this on the treatments I'm on, and the diet and lifestyle changes I've made - though giving up dairy and meat is proving difficult. I can't see the point of complaining, and I feel very impatient with those who complain about relatively minor things. And then I feel guilty and hypocritical for feeling angry and finding it hard to find compassion for them. Angry. Angry. Angry. I feel like digging up the garden, throwing out boxes of papers, ripping out the gutter guards on the shed and violently cleaning the gutters. If I could run, I'd run for miles until I collapsed from asthma or the exertion. But my legs are still wobbly and uncoordinated, despite my daily walks, and if I try to run I look like an uncoordinated puppet, and I can only go a couple of steps.
Ben tells me it's normal to feel anger after all that I've been through, but while it's reassuring to know I'm not a total freak, I don't like feeling like this. I hate it. I want to be peaceful, calm, and loving towards other people. I don't want to shout at stupid things on the television. I don't want to get impatient and upset with my kids when they play happily at night and I just want peace and quiet. I'm sick of the daily effort involved in staying calm, to stay positive, to be grateful for being alive and physically healthy, to trust that I will survive cancer for many decades to come. It seems incredibly rude to be given such a strong reminder of my own mortality. But maybe I needed it to turn my life around, to focus on my children more than on my career, to stop trying to "save the world" as Ben puts it, and to work on saving myself.
So it was helpful to find these things about cancer anger
http://www.wherewegonow.com/debbies-blog/coping-cancer-anger
http://www.wherewegonow.com/debbies-blog/survivors-nest-five-tips-coping-cancer-anger-home
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2003214/Cancer-survivors-Depression-exhaustion-anger-downside-beating-disease.html
And this article about the relationship between physical and emotional pain
http://sanlab.psych.ucla.edu/papers_files/Eisenberger(2012)CDPS.pdfhor
and to get this practice from Rick Hanson (author of Buddha's Brain) on being at peace with the pain of others. I need to apply it to myself
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Rick Hanson <news@rickhanson.net>
Date: Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 8:14 AM
Subject: Being at peace with the pain of others - Just One Thing
Hello,
One of the most challenging things to do in our relationships is to be both caring about the pain of others . . . and in one's core be at peace with it. This is a tricky path to walk, threading your way over uncertain ground between indifference or dismissal on the one hand and enmeshment and overwhelm on the other. And for me personally, lately I've needed to try to find this path for myself. So I hope you will enjoy this week's practice:being at peace with the pain of others.
Warmly,
Rick
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Just One Thing (JOT) is the free newsletter that suggests a simple practice each week for more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind.
A small thing repeated routinely adds up over time to produce big results.
Just one thing that could change your life.
(© Rick Hanson, 2014)
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This comes from Rick Hanson, Ph.D., neuropsychologist, New York Times best-selling author, Advisory Board member of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and invited lecturer at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard universities. See Rick'sworkshops and lectures. |
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Taught by Rick Hanson, PhD, this yearlong program uses the power of positive neuroplasticity to hardwire more happiness, resilience, self-worth, love and peace into your brain and your life.
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Can you stay open to the pain of others?
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The Practice
Being at peace with the pain of others.
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Why?
Humans are an empathic, compassionate, and loving species, so it is natural to feel sad, worried, or fiery about the troubles and pain of other people. (And about those of cats and dogs and other animals, but I'll focus on human beings here.)
Long ago, the Buddha spoke of the "first dart" of unavoidablephysical pain. Given our hardwired nature as social beings, when those we care about are threatened or suffer, there is another kind of first dart: unavoidable emotional pain.
For example, if you heard about people who go to bed hungry - as a billion of us do each night - of course your heart would be moved. I'm usually a pretty calm guy, but when I visited Haiti, I was in a cold rage at the appalling conditions in which most people there lived. On a lesser scale but still real, a friend's son has just started college and is calling home to tell his mom how lonely and miserable he feels; of course she's worried and upset.
But then - as the Buddha continued with his metaphor - there are the second darts we throw ourselves: rehashing past events, writing angry mental emails in the middle of the night, anxious rumination, thinking you're responsible when you're not, feeling flooded or overwhelmed or drained, getting sucked into conflicts between others, etc. etc. Most of our stresses and upsets come from these second darts: needless suffering that we cause ourselves - the opposite of being at peace.
Our second darts also get in the way of making things better. You've probably had the experience of talking with someone about something painful to you, but this person was so rattled by your pain that he or she couldn't just listen, and had to give you advice, or say you were making a big deal out of nothing, or jump out of the conversation, or even blame you for your own pain!
In other words, when others are not at peace with our pain, they have a hard time being open, compassionate, supportive, and helpful with it. And the reverse is true whenwe are not at peace ourselves with the pain of others.
So how do you do it? How do you find that sweet spot in which you are open, caring, and brave enough to let others land in your heart . . . while also staying balanced, centered, and at peace in your core?
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How?
Keep a warm heart
Let the pain of the other person wash through you. Don't resist it. Opening your heart, finding compassion - the sincere wish that a being not suffer - will lift and fuel you to bear the other's pain. We long to feel received by others; turn it around: your openness to another person, your willingness to be moved, is one of the greatest gifts you can offer.
To sustain this openness, it helps to have a sense of your own body. Tune into breathing, and steady the sense of being here with the other person's issues and distress overthere.
Have heart for yourself as well. It's often hard to bear the pain of others, especially if you feel helpless to do anything about it. It's OK if your response is not perfect. When you know your heart is sincere, you don't have to prove yourself to others. Know that you are truly a good person; you are, really, warts and all, and knowing this fact will help you stay authentically open to others.
Do what you can
Nkosi Johnson was born in South Africa with HIV in 1989 and he died 12 years later - after becoming a national advocate for people with HIV/AIDS. I think often of something he said, paraphrased slightly here: "Do what you can, with what you've been given, in the place where you are, with the time that you have."
Do what you can - and know that you have done it, which brings a peace. And then, face the facts of your limitations - another source of peace. One of the hardest things for me - and most parents - is to feel keenly the struggles and pain of my kids . . . and know that there is nothing I can do about it. That's a first dart, for sure. But when I think that I have more influence than I actually do, and start giving my dad-ish advice and getting all invested in the result, second darts start landing on me - and on others.
See the big picture
Whatever the pain of another person happens to be - perhaps due to illness, family quarrel, poverty, aging, depression, stressful job, worry about a child, disappointment in love, or the devastation of war - it is made up of many parts (emotions, sensations, thoughts, etc.) that are the result of a vast web of causes.
When you recognize this truth, it is strangely calming. You still care about the other person and you do what you can, but you see that this pain and its causes are a tiny part of a larger and mostly impersonal whole.
This recognition of the whole - the whole of one person's life, of the past emerging into the present, of the natural world, of physical reality altogether - tends to settle down the neural networks in the top middle of the brain that ruminate and agitate. It also tends to activate and strengthen neural networks on the sides of the brain that support spacious mindfulness, staying in the present, taking life less personally - and a growing sense of peace.
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