Pain Is Unavoidable. Suffering Is Optional.

Difficult and painful situations, problems and questions are part of human life. However, we human beings excel at turning pain into suffering by getting attached to how things “should be” or “should not be”. Our minds are constantly scanning our inner and outer world for “likes” and “dislikes” and “rights” and “wrongs”.

From one experience of pain, our mind creates a story leading to suffering.

Example:

Pain: proposing an idea at a work meeting and being told by a coworker in front of everyone that the idea is completely dumb and that it does not bring anything valuable to the table. The pain that arises could be a transient feeling of anger or shame.

Suffering: turning this experience into a story of worthlessness (being stupid, never being able to contribute anything valuable), or into a story of judgment (how the coworker is a terrible person who is always mean to everyone and who should get fired).

An experience of pain is supposed to be relatively short-lived (unless we're talking about more tragic losses of course) because it matches the lifetime of a difficult feeling - the wave of arising, peaking and subsiding of the emotion. When we resist the experience of pain by rejecting it or by getting attached to it, we turn it into suffering which lasts much longer and feels more painful. Such stories can literally last a lifetime if we don't notice them and work at interrupting them.

The kind of stories we tell ourselves and the way we react against things not going the way we want to are incredibly well described by the Enneagram. There actually are nine very well characterized patterns of attachment, rejection and defense.

Each of us uses one of these nine ways to turn pain into suffering.

The Enneagram is a fantastic tool that helps us diagnose and understand the unique unconscious pattern we do over and over - often without even realizing it - for the purpose of avoiding pain but that prevents us from living freshly, freely and authentically. There is nothing that creates more suffering than living inside the script of stories that have little in common with reality.

An accurate Enneagram diagnostic jumpstarts our journey to freedom because it acts as a of beam of bright light revealing aspects of our personality that would remain hidden or otherwise take decades to unearth through running into the same roadblocks again and again. Once equipped with a better understanding of the stories we are *not*, we can use the medicine of presence to free ourselves little by little from the unconscious patterns leading to our unnecessary difficulties, resistance and ultimately suffering.

It's a journey towards freedom.

The Enneagram has guided my inner work for over twelve years, it has allowed me to develop healthy relationships thanks to understanding myself and others better, and it’s become the most incredible tool I use in my coaching practice to support my clients.

I just started the journey towards becoming certified as an Enneagram Teacher. I'm feeling deeply grateful to be learning under the guidance of the wise mentors of The Narrative Enneagram with a tribe of people as passionate as I am about human development.

Be in touch if you'd like to discover how using the Enneagram can transform your life!