Suffering and hope

When we’re caring for someone going through difficult experiences in their life, there are two main things we need to do: acknowledge suffering and offer hope. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m going to explore these two themes in a series of posts over the next few weeks.  

Let's start with acknowledging suffering.

Suffering may be expressed in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins: No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief/More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder ring […..] O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/ Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. 

Or in the paintings of Francis Bacon – currently on exhibition in Tate Liverpool - portraying his subjects ‘enclosed in the wretched glass capsule of the human individual’.

Or in the expression of collective suffering when (as WB Yeats puts it) ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’:  be it the continuing effects of the Iraq war or the migration forced by political turmoil in Syria and Libya.

Or in the bristling, frustrated anguish of 19 year old Darren, piercings through lip, nose and eyebrows, scarring up both arms, who tells me about parental separation, fostering and sexual abuse, bullying in school; and how booze keeps him from feeling too much but leads to fights with friends, nightclub doorman and police. His only comfort is beating the hell out of his drum kit in the middle of the night.  He doesn’t think he’ll live much longer, and I fear he may be right. 

 

The first thing we need to do is to listen. In the words of the British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, we should be listening ‘without memory or desire’: when we listen with memory, we are intent on making the speaker part of an old agenda; when we listen with desire we are intent on making them part of a new one.

To listen purely, to just listen, is the most valuable thing. But it is also the most difficult thing. I don’t know about you, but I often find it exhausting, debilitating, to give my full attention to the suffering of others.

We often find ways to protect ourselves – to distance ourselves - from the full emotional impact of what our patients are trying to tell us. A bit of me doesn’t want to hear what Darren is telling me – it’s too raw, too real, too painful.   

But we can do better.

Ronald Epstein recommends that we turn toward suffering: actively seek to recognise it, become curious about the person’s experience, and intentionally become more present and engaged. 

What help me to turn toward suffering are daily mindfulness meditation, my weekly 5k parkruns, and being able to discuss knotty problems with my wise wife Sue.

What helps you turn toward suffering?   

 

Next time - the first steps in offering hope.

 

 

 

In praise of uncertainty

All too often, I plan my life away. I make arrangements way ahead, work out what I’m going to be doing weeks or months in advance. It gives me a sense of security, the impression that I’m in control of my life. And when things go wrong - or seem to go wrong – then it’s all about how to fix it. What can I do right now, straightaway, to make it better?

There’s also a strong sense of that when I’m in my GP surgery. People come to see me with problems, often hugely distressing problems. It feels like it’s my job to help to fix them – in just 10 minutes.

And when I’m working as a researcher, there’s continual pressure to come up with quick answers and solutions.

But, let’s just hold on a minute…… Perhaps that’s not always the best way to go.     

Being uncertain, not being sure, not rushing to make my mind up: perhaps that has some advantages.

‘Negative capability’ is the term created by the poet John Keats. In a letter to his brothers in 1817, he writes about how achievement is linked with the capacity of ‘being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’

The Irish poet Aubrey de Vere speaks for ‘the doubt of one who would rather walk in mystery than in false lights, who awaits that he may win, and who prefers the broken fragments of truth to the imposing completeness of a delusion’.

 

This is important not just in poetry (or in research), but in life, particularly when we are facing our own distress, or the distress of others.

Maybe we don’t need to try to work everything out so quickly. Maybe it’s better to wait, to reflect, to allow events to unfold for a while. Maybe it’s better to let the mysterious or doubtful remain just that, rather than rushing to conclusions that may be false, or making decisions that could turn out to be damaging.

As Beth Rushing says, there is ‘hope, and truth, and beauty in the practice of negative capability, in listening patiently, having a certain level of comfort with uncertainty, and in recognizing that what appears to be given, is not necessarily so’. For the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, it’s about listening ‘without memory or desire’.

We do well to cultivate our ability to tolerate the pain and confusion of not knowing - rather than imposing our ready-made certainties on ambiguous situations or challenges.

And by resting in uncertainty, we allow space for something new, something transformative, to emerge.