The arrow we shoot at ourselves

If I am shot by an arrow, I will feel pain. That is pain but not suffering. Suffering occurs when I shoot myself with a second arrow that contains anger about the first arrow, fear about what it means to have been shot by an arrow, etc. Suffering is what we inflict on ourselves. Pain is what life inflicts. Life shoots the first arrow. We shoot the second.

This arrow analogy comes from Buddhist thought. The Buddhists contend, and I agree, that most of our unhappiness comes from that second arrow. Here’s an example. If my dog dies, I will feel pain. That is the pain of sadness. In my mind, I can say to myself some true statements like “I’m sad she’s gone. I’m going to miss her. She was a sweet dog.” These are healthy responses to this sad event. A healthy response will create a clean wound that heals well. If however I start saying to myself “I will never be happy again” or “Life is so unfair” or “The vet should have been able to do more”, I am shooting arrow after arrow into myself and pouring poison into my wound of grief. It gets infected and the pain increases. It takes much longer to heal because I have to clean out the poison first. My healthy sadness has been poisoned with anxiety, depression, anger, etc. That is suffering. The good news is that since suffering comes from the second arrow, we have some control. After all, we are the ones who shot it!

The ancient Greeks figured out that the root of suffering was in our interpretations of life. They said, “the truth shall set you free”. Before that the Buddha realized that suffering is caused by “ignorance” (of the truth) or “wrong perceptions.” The second arrow we shoot ourselves with always contains wrong perceptions.

When people come to me for help, we look for the arrows they are shooting at themselves and we remove them. But there’s a catch: the brain fights us in removing those arrows. Why? Because when the brain gives us painful emotions, it is ALWAYS for good reasons. We have to understand those good reasons and honor them before the brain will let us shift the pain.

In this blog, I will give examples of how to break out of the painful emotions of the brain. We first have to identify the arrows we are shooting at ourselves, then honor the reasons the brain put them there, and finally pull out the arrows by getting rid of the “wrong perceptions”. My hope is that as I walk through these examples, you will find some answers to your own pain.