Tuesday we talked about the paradigm
that symptoms are the cause of suffering; also, how the opposite
might be more accurate, that the suffering may be the root and the
symptoms are exterior representations of that suffering. This is
something that I have tried to put some thought into. It seems we
have a bit of a chicken/egg complex on our hands. It makes sense in
some situations that symptoms are the cause of a person's suffering.
For example, say a person has a neurological disorder (perhaps a
degenerative brain disease). In the instance that the neurological
dysfunction was not the result of abuse or physical trauma, what if
it's cause was genetic in orientation? In other words, “suffering”
was not the “cause” of the symptoms, but rather genetics or
“chance” was. The symptoms and/or behaviors that this person has
to deal with would certainly seem to “cause” a great deal of
dis-ease and suffering.
On the other hand, we can look at more
metaphysical issues for the other stance. Take anxiety for example.
I don't think there would be any doubt that a person's anxiety would
cause (in any varying degree) suffering. But it is also possible
that a stressful, high-tension, hyper-emotional life situation, a
situation which is “suffer-able”, is what is what is causing the
person's anxiety. In other words, if the situation were removed, the
anxiety would be removed as well. In this case both the previous
hypotheses are true. The suffering (as a verb) of the situation has
evoked a condition diagnosable as “anxiety”, however, that
condition not only espouses a state of suffering but also creates a
cyclic cause in which anxiety is espouses suffering but also provokes
the conditions and symptoms which are suffer-able.
I don't remember when exactly, but
sometime this week we touched on what I guess I would dub as
“Karmatic Therapist's Guilt.” That is, a therapist's guilt for
not suffering as their clients are. I don't think this “condition”
is explicit to therapist's, or even exclusive to health and mental
health care providers. We see this in another form as well that we
call “survivor's guilt.” In this form we have a case of what I
guess you could call “post-secondary-traumatic stress disorder.”
In the case of survivor's guilt the person feels overwhelming guilt
for having survived or not being the victim of a particular incident.
Due to the nature of our work, I think that therapists are highly
susceptible to their own brand of survivor's guilt. All of the
people we will work with are dealing with something, even if court
appointed to therapy. We are effectively establishing relationships
with our clients we have avenues of vividly seeing (understanding?)
what they are experiencing. Certainly, it seems, then, that there is
a high probability that in our authentic and genuine concern for the
individual that we have efficiently projected a sense of guilt on
ourselves for not being able to share that experience and to truly
“understand” what they are going through. It may be over
cautious to assume this condition as inevitable, but it is certainly
just as naive to ignore the possibility.
The other thing I've been thinking
about is something I feel that we, or at least I, have spent a lot of
time with. That is, the idea that every instance of suffering is
remarkable unique, yet there is something eerily the same about each
of them. There was something about [the instructor's] word choice in one of our
discussions that clicked with me. I don't remember what the exact
words he used were, but I found the title of “Thematic Persistence
of Anguish” to be a kind mythical representation of this topic.
Without delving to deep into the words, words, words, that we use to
discuss this topic; I find this title (if considering the definitions
of the words) to be remarkably fitting.
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