Letting Go of Suffering- Week Fifteen: Changing Your Suffering Profile

Suffering patterns often become rigid. Simply thinking about a topic that has brought you pain in the past, might trigger you into suffery behavior. One technique that may be helpful in breaking those patterns is to change your suffering profile.

In Week 2 of this series, each participant identified their personal suffering profile.  They did that by examining the following areas:

• The time of day I usually suffer (e.g. morning, afternoon, evening).
• Where I usually suffer (e.g. home, work, bedroom, basement).
• The people with whom I usually suffer (e.g. husband, friend, employer).
• The day of the week I usually suffer (e.g. Saturday, Monday).
• The messages I usually give myself when I suffer (e.g. Nobody loves me, I can’t do anything right).
• Where in my body I usually feel my suffering (e.g. head, stomach, chest).
• Time of year I usually suffer (e.g. holidays, birthday).
• What I usually suffer about (e.g. my children, my family, work).

If you completed that original assignment, go back and look at your answers. If you did not write down you responses, or if this is the first time you have learned about a suffering profile, then create it now. You can either use the list above, or go back to the original assignment and use the diagram.

Once you have identified, or reviewed, your suffering profile, you are ready to start this week’s assignment.

Each day this week, whenever you are tempted to suffer, go ahead and suffer! But this time, be sure you are suffering in different ways than those you identified in your profile. For example, if your profile is to suffer about work, at home, during the evening, with your husband, an alternative could be to choose to suffer about your yard, with a supportive friend, during the day, on a walk.

If nothing is bothering you, then intentionally find something to suffer about, so that you have multiple experiences of changing your profile.

Take a few minutes each day to journal about your experience.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

See you next Monday for the sixteenth lesson.

To find the lessons in this series that have already been published, click here.

Photo Credit: Pixabay