Weirdness embraced, which I wrote about last time, requires the courage to be yourself. But there is something even deeper that sometimes blocks this freedom, something we do not usually think of as an obstacle: attachment to one's own suffering. Not the suffering itself, but the bond we have built with it, the identity we have grown around it, the familiarity we have come to associate with old pain.
It seems counterintuitive. Why would someone cling to suffering? And yet it is one of the most frequent and most subtle ways we sabotage our own evolution.
What does attachment to suffering mean? It is not masochism and it is not a conscious choice. It is a more subtle mechanism, operating from the shadows.
Familiar suffering is predictable. The human brain, trained for survival, prefers what it knows over what is unknown, even if what it knows is painful. New pain is dangerous because you do not know how to manage it. Old pain is manageable precisely because you have already lived it. And so, unconsciously, familiarity of suffering is chosen over the uncertainty of healing.
Another aspect is that suffering has become part of identity. I explored this partly when speaking about past wounds, but it deserves deeper examination: if we have carried a certain pain long enough, we end up no longer knowing who we would be without it. Letting go of it seems like a loss of self, not a gain. And so we resist, unconsciously, the healing that would mean being someone different from who we have known how to be.
The third aspect is that suffering can offer secondary benefits we do not easily recognise. Attention from others. An excuse for what does not work. A coherent narrative that explains the current situation. The sense of being entitled to unhappiness. None of these is intentionally gained, but all can make suffering harder to release.
How does this attachment manifest in concrete life, especially in relationships?
The repeated choice of partners who reproduce the painful dynamic. Not because there are no other options, but because the familiar dynamic, even if painful, is at least known. A person raised with emotional rejection will tend to be attracted to emotionally distant partners, not because they desire rejection, but because distance is familiar and they know, at an unconscious level, how to function within it.
The sabotage of good relationships. When something is going well, anxiety appears, not joy. The brain does not know how to process the good without waiting for disaster. And so, sometimes unconsciously, it produces situations that reinstall the familiar suffering, because that is what it knows how to manage.
The difficulty in accepting unconditional love. If you grew up with conditional love, love received without conditions seems suspicious, false, or temporary. You do not truly believe it. And so you reject or diminish it, returning to the conviction that you do not deserve it or that it will not last.
How do you exit attachment to old suffering? Not through an instantaneous decision and not through force. Through a few practices that require time and consistency.
The first is to recognise the mechanism. To observe, without judgement, when you run towards the familiar even though the familiar harms you. Recognition is the first step, not to condemn yourself, but to be able to make a different choice next time.
The second is to tolerate the discomfort of good things. When something is going well in your relationship or your life, allow yourself to stay with it without sabotaging it or waiting for it to disappear. The initial discomfort with good things is normal and decreases through gradual exposure.
The third is to build an identity that does not depend on suffering. Who are you beyond what you have suffered? What values, capacities, and joys exist in you independently of pain? The more you build this alternative identity, the less space suffering has in defining you.
I believe the greatest act of love towards yourself is sometimes precisely this: to give old suffering permission to leave, even if you do not know exactly who you will be without it. To choose the uncertainty of healing over the certainty of pain.
Is there an old suffering in your life that you return to periodically, whether through thoughts or through choices? And if you looked at it honestly, do you believe you keep it because it helps you, or because you are afraid of who you would be without it?
