Life is a traumatic event and everything we do is a coping mechanism. Some coping mechanisms are just more socially acceptable than others.
Some of our greatest triumphs are the result of attempting to escape our suffering. And because that suffering doesn’t go anywhere, we have an endless source of motivation, spurring us on to greater and greater heights. Does it make sense to run from pain when you’ll never escape it? No, not really, but logic doesn’t hold most people back, so don’t let it stop you either.
Society looks down on people who feel like they have a void inside, as if this is due to a lack of personal development. But the natural response to a void is to create or find something to fill it. This, in essence, is productivity. They say necessity is the mother of invention, but maybe it’s deep personal pain. Maybe they’re the same thing.
Before I continue, I would like to say there is a level of pain where you can’t get out of bed, and a slightly lower level of pain, where you get out of bed but spend all day trying to prove your worth. Psychiatrists exist for the first. Paychecks exist because of the second. This article is about aiming for the second, not the first.
Suffering and insecurity are responsible for many of the positive elements in our lives, or even physical things we enjoy. Would obnoxious sports cars exist if poorly-endowed men didn’t? Would Marilyn Monroe’s movie career have happened if her father had loved her? (Daddy issues are responsible for many things on the internet but I’m not going to get into that here.) I for one become funnier when I am tired or unhappy because stress lowers my concern for my dignity.
I believe our innate brokenness is responsible for most of our social relationships. If people were as emotionally self-sufficient as self-love twitter tells us we should be, they wouldn’t connect with others very much. But to triumph over loneliness while remaining alone is not really an admirable goal. If we did not experience pain in being alone, we would have no motivation to tolerate the pain inherent in existing with other people. A problematic level of suffering makes us accept abuse and toxicity just because it’s better than being alone, but a nice, reasonable level of pain pushes us to do scary things like leave the house and speak to other people. I certainly wouldn’t do it if the alternative wasn’t so much worse.
Pain not only gives you friends, it makes you work harder. The only reason I’m writing this blog post at all is because I asked a friend to publicly shame me if I did not publish a post every Thursday. I’m not motivated enough by the desire to improve myself, get somewhere in life, or be successful. I don’t have a clear vision of my future or a lot of self-discipline. But what I do have is an endless reservoir of shame, and it’s time I got something out of it besides insomnia. I doubt I would even have a blog if I genuinely loved myself.
If you are anxious or an overthinker, you are the perfect candidate for this method. My current strategy to avoid having thoughts is to crochet constantly. This has the added benefit of impressing friends and family, a great band-aid on the lack of social acceptance I experienced as a child. The only drawback is severe eyestrain and a return to the migraine medication I haven’t needed since I stopped teaching high school. But everything has a plus side, and painkillers are definitely, definitely not an exception.
How exactly you make your pain work for you depends greatly on your individual methods of suffering. Consider getting therapy to unearth the root causes of your issues so that you can exploit them more adeptly. As a general rule, though, failure of any kind is a push forward because you have less to lose. What you fear has already happened. There’s no way but up. If you continue to fail, at least that’s not as scary as change! Phoebe Buffay covered this topic better than I ever could in this commencement speech.
A few people have asked me what the point is of some of these “self-help” articles I write. After I wrote “Life Hacks For The Emotionally Stunted,” someone remarked, “I don’t feel like I’m supposed to follow this advice.” My purpose is not, actually, to tell anyone how to live correctly. It’s just to make you look at things from a different perspective. Maybe life is not as bad as you think. Maybe it’s actually much worse. You decide.
Half-Blood Kuwaiti 