Episode 83: Stop the Suffering

Sometimes life is hard.

Not metaphorically hard. Not “I had a slightly inconvenient Tuesday” hard. I mean the kind of hard where your kid is sick, you haven't slept, the house is loud, everyone needs something from you, and you feel like you are one more spilled glass of milk away from completely losing it.

I've had plenty of those days.

Recently, my daughter was sick and had been up during the night. By the time morning came, I was exhausted. I had spent the day doing all the things: making homemade sourdough bread, making a healing soup with ginger, garlic, lemon, and orzo, making breakfast, preparing breakfast sandwiches for the week, taking care of the kids, and trying to keep everything moving.

By the time my husband came home, I was completely spent.

He came through the door and did what he normally does. He went outside to check on the chickens, feed them, walk around the yard, check the garden, and get the mail. Then he would come inside, ready to help.

But I didn't experience it that way.

Inside, the kids were miserable. The baby was crying. The boys were arguing. Everything was loud and chaotic, and I was sitting there exhausted and steaming.

And then I realized something.

I wasn't just having a hard day.

I was creating additional suffering around the hard day.

The difference between pain and suffering

There is a difference between what I like to call clean pain and dirty pain.

Clean pain is the actual difficulty of the moment.

My daughter was sick. That's hard.

I had gotten four hours of sleep. That's hard.

My kids were fighting and the house was chaotic. That's hard.

I was overwhelmed and exhausted. That's hard.

None of those things needed to be dressed up with positivity. I didn't need to convince myself that everything was wonderful or sprinkle the situation with glitter and pretend I was grateful for the chaos.

It was a hard day.

That was true.

Dirty pain is everything we pile on top of the original pain.

It's the story we create about what the circumstances mean.

My husband doesn't care about me.

No one notices everything I do.

I have to do everything around here.

Why am I always the one?

Nobody appreciates me.

Everything is going wrong.

Suddenly, I'm not just tired.

I'm resentful.

I'm angry.

I'm abandoned.

I'm unappreciated.

I'm miserable.

The original pain was real, but I had multiplied it by the meaning I was attaching to it.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is often optional.

That doesn't mean we can control every painful thing that happens to us. We can't.

Kids get sick. People disappoint us. We don't get enough sleep. Bills show up. Plans fall apart. Our husbands say things we don't like. Our mothers-in-law say things we definitely don't like.

Life is going to be hard sometimes.

The question is whether we will experience the hard thing as it is, or whether we will create an entire second layer of suffering around it.

The martyr mask

I know this place well.

There was a time when I felt like everything was happening to me.

My husband didn't help enough.

Everything fell on me.

I had to figure everything out.

I had to do everything myself.

I remember having three young children and sending pictures of overflowing dishes and dirty laundry to my sister.

See how hard my life is.

Look at everything I'm dealing with.

Look what they did.

I wanted someone to witness how hard I was working.

And when I look back on that version of myself, I don't judge her. She was doing the best she could with what she had.

But now I can recognize the pattern much more quickly.

Sometimes I put on the martyr mask.

It sounds like:

I'll just do it myself.

No, don't help me now.

I shouldn't have had to ask.

Look at everything I'm doing.

And sometimes the funniest part is that I don't actually want to solve the problem.

I want someone to notice that I'm suffering.

I've caught myself doing this even recently.

My husband was putting the baby to bed, and I was in a terrible mood. Suddenly I decided that I needed to rock the baby because she wouldn't go to sleep unless I did it.

Another night, the kids wanted to watch television, and I decided, “No. No TV. We're all going to be miserable tonight.”

When I can zoom out and see myself doing this, I almost want to say, Oh, honey. Why are we doing this?

The answer is usually pretty simple.

I'm tired. I'm overwhelmed. I want help. I want to feel seen.

Those needs are legitimate.

The martyrdom isn't helping me meet them.

What if we stopped making hard things harder?

This is where clean pain becomes incredibly practical.

Instead of sitting on the couch thinking, My husband doesn't care and nobody appreciates me, I can simply acknowledge the truth:

I'm exhausted.

My daughter is sick.

The kids are overstimulated.

I haven't slept.

This is hard.

And then I can ask myself:

What do I need right now?

Maybe I need to close my eyes.

Maybe I need to rest.

Maybe I need to put on a show for the kids.

Maybe dinner can be cereal.

Maybe the dishes can wait.

Maybe I need to ask my husband to take over.

Maybe I simply need to admit that today isn't going to look the way I wanted it to.

None of those things make me a bad mother.

They make me a human being having a hard day.

Sometimes the most emotionally mature thing you can say is:

This sucks, and we're okay.

We're okay.

We don't have to turn one terrible Tuesday into a referendum on our marriage.

We don't have to make our husband's behavior mean something about our worth.

We don't have to make our children's behavior mean we're failing as mothers.

We don't have to make a messy house mean we're failing at life.

We can acknowledge the pain without turning it into a story about who we are.

What are you making it mean?

This is one of the questions I keep coming back to.

When something happens, ask yourself:

What is the actual pain here?

Then ask:

What story am I adding to it?

Maybe your husband comes home and doesn't immediately notice everything you've done.

The clean pain might be that you're tired and you wanted some help.

The dirty pain is deciding that his behavior means he doesn't care about you.

Maybe your kids are fighting all afternoon.

The clean pain is that the noise is exhausting.

The dirty pain is deciding that nobody respects you and that you have to do everything yourself.

Maybe you had an awful day at work.

The clean pain is that work was difficult.

The dirty pain is deciding that you're not good enough, that you're failing, or that your entire life is off track.

The distinction matters because the first thing gives us something we can actually work with.

The second creates a story that can consume us.

You don't have to earn rest

Another question worth asking is this:

Are you making yourself suffer because you believe rest, help, or ease has to be earned?

What if you already knew that your worth was infinite?

What if you knew, deep down, that you were valuable whether the house was clean or messy, whether dinner was homemade or cereal, whether your children behaved beautifully or spent the evening fighting?

How would you show up differently?

I have a feeling you'd ask for help sooner.

You'd put on the show.

You'd go to bed.

You'd let someone else handle the dishes.

You'd say, “Honey, I really need you right now. I'm having a tough moment.”

Because when you know your worth, you don't need to prove it through productivity.

When we tie our worth to what we accomplish, we start believing that we have to stay on top of everything.

The laundry has to be done.

The dishes have to be done.

The house has to look clean.

The kids have to be fed.

Everyone has to be happy.

And somehow, we have to hold all of it together perfectly.

But life is going to interrupt that fantasy over and over again.

Kids will get sick.

Plans will change.

People will disappoint you.

Unexpected expenses will arrive.

You will get tired.

Your husband will have bad days.

You will have bad days.

The goal isn't to eliminate all of that.

The goal is to learn how to experience the hard without creating an entire second layer of suffering around it.

Let the hard thing be hard

I love the image of labor as a metaphor for this.

When you're experiencing a contraction, resisting the pain and tightening against it can make the experience harder. Leaning into the sensation allows you to move through it.

There is something similar that happens emotionally.

When we think, This shouldn't be happening.

I shouldn't be this tired.

My kids shouldn't be acting like this.

My husband should be doing more.

I shouldn't have to deal with this.

we are resisting reality.

The reality is already here.

The hard thing is happening.

Our resistance doesn't make it disappear.

It simply gives us another problem to carry.

Instead, we can say:

This hurts.

This is hard.

I'm overwhelmed.

I'm disappointed.

I'm tired.

And then we can let that be true without panicking.

Without making it mean something terrible about us.

Without deciding that everything is falling apart.

Without turning one hard moment into a story about our entire life.

This is clean pain.

It is simply allowing ourselves to experience what is actually happening.

And sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do is stop fighting the fact that life is hard.

We can say, Yes. This is a hard day.

And then ask:

What do I need right now?

That question comes from love.

It comes from knowing that you deserve rest, support, help, and ease.

You don't have to earn those things by suffering first.

You are allowed to make the hard day a little easier.

And you are allowed to remember that a hard day is just a hard day.

It doesn't have to become a hard life.