The Transformations of Suffering

Suffering as Transformative

One question is adequate in summarising the central struggle I have been gifted to deal with in life: how should you deal with hopelessness? For my life is essentially defined by chronic life-ruining mental illness - which will remain vague both for the sake of privacy, but more specifically because no psychologist (which to emphasise, includes energy single psychologist within the Durham mental health service) has any idea whatsoever about what's going on. I have full awareness that there is no potential for my life to ever be enjoyable or satisfying, that there is no “good life” approaching. Except it is more than that; since any success or blossoming will merely be a reaffirmation that no change in this world can be of any significance. And that I am completely isolated and helpless in such a state of affairs. Not only does rarity mean I don’t know anyone who I can relate to, but it’s such a bleak prognosis that no one is capable of believing it. Not in the sense that they doubt, but it is literally outside what people will even consider accepting as reality. Which I can say from experience is one hell of a question to grapple with.

So, how do you deal with hopelessness? Well, stupidly and self-destructively at first. My fundamental instinct could be summarised as something along the lines of “denial of reality in desperation, characterised by self-inflicted suffering to exacerbate suffering, so as to promote the remedy”. The problem with denial (note that “acceptance” is vastly distinct from “resignation”) is there is a lot you can sacrifice under the hope of change. Especially when it’s based on the assumption that “if I cannot resolve this issue, then there is no point staying around”. And for a variety of reasons, the underlying logic is that the worse something is, the more effort professionals will spend in attempting to treat you - especially if said chronic illness isn’t necessarily impairing your general functioning. The problem is the remedy will not be promoted, because there is no remedy. Yet even if there was a remedy, it will be substantially less effective in response to all the self-destructive habits you’ve accrued. If you think life-ruining mental illness is bad, how much worse it seems when you add on bitterness, resentfulness, and depression on top!

The only solution was to accept hopelessness, to discontinue my constant all-out rebelliousness against reality. Once you confess your lowly and decrepit state, then you may be granted salvation. This is the position of Job; imposed under utter tragedy, and yet accepting his state. It’s little wonder why I became a Christian, when I already had its key tenants through my own suffering. I accepted my own hopelessness, so that I was free to pursue only what was of benefit. You must quit your rebelliousness since you cannot lash out at life, you are only capable of lashing out at yourself. You shouldn’t be resentful, not because what has happened may be horrifically unjust, but because you’re too small to make complaints against existence itself. Because once you accept your condition, you are free to ignore it. This is not out of attempts to hide from or disguise the truth, but to avoid obsessing over it. My hopelessness became an idol, it was at the centre of my life. I’m sure the problems that fixating on “my life is irrevocably pointless” should be pretty obvious. Change came from reversing this fixation on the internal and uncontrollable self, to what could be meaningfully done externally.

I’ve essentially regulated my mental illness through properly organising my life, putting into order all the things I knew I should have been taking seriously. And in this way suffering has transformed my life in an immensely blessed manner. After accepting hopelessness, one question dominated: what would it be better if I did instead? The first thing was making sure I got sufficient work done, given how central university work was to my wellbeing. That is; something to work on and towards. Well, given my horrific ability to concentrate, a suitable daily routine became vital. I needed to organise my day around getting to the library, itself requiring some form of organisation of when to wake up, and when and what to cook. And I need to be tremendously aware of how I dedicated my time. When tired I had a tendency to depressed mood, or a boredom which prompted itself to substance use. In having to pay an excessive amount of attention to the impact of lifestyle decisions, there were a great deal of changes which had to be made. Which accumulated into a total transformation of myself into someone with a strong degree of competency. At the very theoretical minimum, restoring a sense of agency and control which illness had stripped away. But it allowed me to remove all the excessive difficulties I had imposed onto myself, which I wished to falsely lump everything into this "illness", so that I didn't need to blame myself for any of thesuffering that occured.

Note that chronic illness makes suffering normal and more accentuated. Which means the suffering which comes from acting in the world is less threatening, because it is neither novel nor unbearable. If life is suffering, adding some more isn’t significant. The amount of opportunities this opens up for you is immense. The ability you then have to engage with manifesting your potential is something that suffering allows you to access, it inherently is the beginning of a sort of redemption.

Transformationof Suffering

I cannot count the amount of times I have asked myself “Why the bloody hell did you decide to talk about the Matthew Roberts situation?”. The amount of stress I was placed under as a result almost certainly has not been worth the actual worth of speaking about it - which must have been rather minimal. If I remember correctly, there was around four days of constant agonising anxiety, and then about two weeks of constant low-level anxiety. Contrary to what I imagine most people expect, I am actually quite high in agreeableness. I absolutely hate the idea of people having problems with me, or creating tensions and arguments. And yet the backlash I received for my (pretty conciliatory) comments was immense: being immediately removed from Trans Association, having multiple people attempt to have me removed from Aidan’s LGBT Society, kicked out of the Intercollegiate LGBT group chat. Which to quickly bitch about, the latter was pretty ironic: for not only was I one of the more prominent figures in actively establishing intercollege relations between LGBT socs, but there is no grounds for my removal since I was never removed from my elected role as Vice President.

Whilst realistically there was little actual punishment: God forbid I am removed from my positions in institutions which hardly anyone actually cares about. But the act of severe backlash indicated two things: that there was a deep reaction against what I had said in a significance I had never experienced, and that there was no way to properly comprehend what this meant in actuality. The thing with being condemned by societies claiming to represent a community, and you know a noticeable amount of anonymous people in that community made complaints; it creates a paranoia that everyone in that community thinks you’re a bad person - made infinitely worse when this includes a lot of people you care about. Which is exacerbated emotionally by the spike of anxiety and activity when the complaints came in, and the lingering silence that came afterwards. I fixated on the situation because I craved a resolution which was never to come, which merely emphasised the utter uncertainty of what people actually thought about me. Rationally I know if people aren’t going to respect me then it’s better they cut themselves off, emotionally that’s difficult because of my personality.

Yet two other stressors occurred directly alongside this. The first is actually handling the speech itself, which settled and emerged as a difficulty about a week after listening. As someone already prone to continuously lacking a sense of identity, having another sledgehammer swing at what few stable foundations I had was certainly not pleasant. Not that grappling with personally challenging questions is bad, but it was certainly a bitter irony that I was struggling with it in the midst of being framed as ‘supporting transphobia’. But also as any Christian would do, I was trying my best to “forgive those who sin against us”. Which only served to highlight how awful I am at forgiveness. When you feel betrayed, it is exceptionally easy to justify bitterness and condemnations. And if you have any imagination, you can have the fun of viewing all the terrible things such sinful emotionality could have tempted you to do in different circumstances. Whilst Christianity is beautiful in opening forgiveness to all, this doesn’t negate the necessity of truly comprehending how dreadful of a person you actually are isn’t emotionally devastating. 

I describe this in such detail to emphasise one point: even though I agonised, it never felt like I was suffering. It’s not that I didn't feel intense anxiety and stress, they weren’t diminished in any capacity, but it never occurred to understand such as ‘suffering’. I am convinced there are sub-emotions which exist and define our relationship to emotions in a way which one can understand is happening, but is phenomenologically invisible. That’s because it was never a question of a cost-benefit analysis, I never weighed up if I should speak or not. But that there was misinformation and hidden dangers in what was being spoken, so that I had an imperative to attempt to correct these, knowing I was avoiding my duty if I didn’t. When suffering comes for some transcendent purpose or value, the pain gets transformed into something lesser. It is merely a discomforting experience, yet this isn’t dramatic enough to feel like “suffering”. I think Epictetus was getting at something akin to this when he said “To the rational animal only is the irrational intolerable; but that which is rational is tolerable. Blows are not naturally intolerable. "How is that?" See how the Lacedaemonians endure whipping when they have learned that whipping is consistent with reason”. By adopting transcendent purpose, pain gets transformed into something bearable. When you look towards your duties, you look less towards the afflictions you suffer. Pain is inevitable, so become great instead.