 Daniel G. Weidner, MS, LMHP
“It is our fear at experiencing ourselves directly that causes suffering” Mark Epstein, M.D. This quote is from Dr. Epstein’s book: Thoughts Without A Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective. This book is a lucid and fascinating examination of the complimentary relationship between Buddhist Psychology and modern Psychotherapy. This book helps us to comprehend how understanding an emotional experience in the present moment, as it is happening, is different than the realizations that we can experience through the psychotherapeutic process of digging into our past. Both are valuable experiences on their own, but together they can help us to more completely get to know this person with whom we spend every day of our life - and through this process lead a more fulfilling and happier life. In the preface to the tenth anniversary edition of this book, Dr. Epstein (a practicing Psychiatrist) states: “Mindfulness confers upon us the capacity to relate to emotional life in an open, balanced, accepting, and tolerant way, while freeing us to act with compassion, rather than on impulse, in response”. “It is our fear at experiencing ourselves directly that causes suffering”. Suffering, known in Buddhist Psychology as Dukkha, can be understood (on a basic level) as having two parts: First, there is the discomfort, unease, or pain that we experience in association with an unpleasant or undesired event. This can be anything from stubbing your toe as you get out of bed, to the loss of a loved one – and everything in between. Colloquially we sometimes say “shit happens”. The second part of suffering is generally understood to be what we inflict upon ourselves as a result of the experienced unpleasant or undesired event. This can be viewed as our ongoing reaction (thoughts and feelings) following the event. A simple example is when someone says something unkind or critical to us. The event itself may last only moments or minutes. But the ongoing reactions to the event can go on for the rest of the day, and maybe for multiple days. We have thoughts like: “How could he/she talk to me like that?”; “That was so mean!”; “The next time that I see them I will give them a piece of my mind!”. You get the drift. We become the source of our own suffering – Dukkha. There is an internal, and perhaps more nefarious form of Dukkha that we can experience when we directly come face-to-face with ourselves. At a basic level this can be experienced as a form of Cognitive Dissonance. In the field of Psychology, Cognitive Dissonance can be described as the perception of contradictory information and the mental and/or emotional toll of that contradiction. It is typically experienced as the psychological stress that results in the clash between our beliefs and new perceived information. This clash causes some “discomfort” or “stress”, and we tend to seek some way to resolve the contradiction to reduce our discomfort. We may find ourselves trying to reduce this internal inconsistency (which is the source of our discomfort) by adding new parts to the cognition that is causing our psychological dissonance. Justification or rationalization of our beliefs or behavior is often the way that we go about finding some relief for our feelings of dissonance. We can also attempt to avoid circumstances and information that is likely to be the source of, and result in an increase of the dissonance. We often gravitate toward information (and experience) that is consistent with our current beliefs as a way to get some relief. This is known as confirmation bias. I posit here that it can sometimes be more challenging to deal with internal sources of dissonance than with external sources. This would be when self-held beliefs come into contact with information that is contradictory to said beliefs. It can often be just the fear of, or potential for, realizing this contradiction that can cause the dissonance. We will work to avoid and/or rationalize this conflict as a way to gain relief from the feelings of dissonance. Distraction is one of the primary strategies that we employ to either remove the feelings of dissonance or to prevent those feelings from arising at all. (PART II of this essay will be published in our May issue.)
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