The Pain We Can't Avoid and the Suffering We Add
Kimberly Stokka Merendino has spent more than two decades helping individuals and families navigate grief, trauma, relationships, caregiving, and life’s unexpected transitions. Her work explores how we can release unnecessary suffering and become more fully present, connected, and alive.
The pain is real. You don’t need to hurt yourself for hurting. Life will hurt us. I wish there were a more comforting way to say that. People we love will disappoint us. Bodies will change. Relationships will end. Plans will unravel. People will become ill. We will lose things we desperately wanted to keep.
That is pain. But then there is everything we add to it.
The second layer of suffering
The suffering we add often comes from the expectations we place on ourselves and the stories we tell ourselves about what our pain means.
I should be stronger. This shouldn’t be so hard for me. I should be able to carry this without help. I should be over this by now. Other people have it worse. Why can’t I handle this better?
Something painful happens, and then we begin evaluating our response to it. Now we are not only grieving the loss, facing the illness, or living with the uncertainty. We are also criticising ourselves for the way we are experiencing it.
We do not need to be perfect at suffering, too. There is no single right way to grieve. There is no correct timeline for adjusting to a life we did not choose.
One person may need to talk; another may need quiet. Someone may cry easily, while someone else rarely cries at all. We can even experience sadness, relief, anger, gratitude, fear, and joy within the same day. Different does not necessarily mean wrong.
What I used to believe about strength
For much of my life, I admired people who seemed able to take on anything. If I am being honest, I probably believed that people who openly showed their grief were somehow weaker than those who held it together.
I don’t believe that anymore. More than twenty-five years as a therapist has taught me something about grief, but living through uncertainty taught me something different.
When my husband was diagnosed with stage IV lymphoma, I discovered that there are experiences we cannot think our way out of. There wasn’t a sufficiently positive attitude that could take away my fear. No amount of competence could guarantee the outcome I wanted. Being a therapist did not make me somehow better equipped to love someone whose life suddenly felt frighteningly uncertain.
I could either experience what was happening or experience what was happening and judge myself for how I was experiencing it. The second option didn’t make me stronger. It simply made something painful even harder.
Strength may look different from what we think
I think I understand strength differently now. Strength can be getting out of bed. It can also be staying in bed because your body is telling you it has had enough.
Strength can be holding someone else together. It can also be saying, I cannot carry this alone. Strength can look like hope. Sometimes it looks like admitting that today you are scared.
We create unnecessary suffering when we decide there is a version of ourselves we are required to become before we are allowed compassion.
The stronger version. The less emotional version. The version who has already moved on. The version who doesn’t need anyone.
Perhaps compassion begins when we stop demanding that person show up.
Pain doesn’t need a performance review
When someone we love is hurting, most of us would never respond the way we sometimes respond to ourselves.
We would not tell a grieving friend, You really should be doing better by now. We would not tell someone facing a frightening diagnosis, Other people have it worse, so you shouldn’t be upset. We would not tell someone whose life has unexpectedly changed, You need to stop feeling this and get back to normal.
Yet those can become the conversations we have inside our own heads. What if pain didn’t need a performance review?
What if, instead of asking, Am I handling this well enough? we asked: What do I need right now? What am I feeling? What am I asking of myself that I would never ask of someone I love?
Perhaps most importantly: What am I carrying that this moment never asked me to carry?
Life is already hard enough
Our thoughts don’t create all of our suffering. Some things are simply devastating. Sometimes suffering is not unnecessary at all; it is a natural response to something profoundly painful.
Grief hurts because we loved. Illness is frightening because life matters. Rejection hurts because belonging matters. Uncertainty is difficult because we are human and naturally want to know what comes next.
We do not need to minimise any of that. But perhaps we can stop adding the requirement that we experience it perfectly.
Life will bring pain. We don’t always get a vote about that. But maybe we can become gentler with ourselves about what happens next.
Maybe we can stop asking, "Why am I not handling this better?" Begin asking, "How can I care for myself while I am carrying something hard?"
That will not remove the pain. But it might remove some of the suffering we never needed to add in the first place.
Read more from Kimberly Stokka Merendino
Kimberly Stokka Merendino, Therapist Author & Nonprofit Founder
Kimberly Stokka Merendino, PhD, is a psychotherapist, author, speaker, and nonprofit founder with more than two decades of experience helping people navigate grief, trauma, relationships, caregiving, and life’s difficult transitions. Her clinical expertise and personal experience as a caregiver inform her exploration of the difference between unavoidable pain and the unnecessary suffering we add along the way. Through her writing, Kimberly invites readers toward greater presence, connection, wonder, joy, and hope.
