Welcome to the Commune podcast. This is Jeff Krasno.

So if you've spent any time scrolling through social media, you've likely come across this aphorism.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. This is a popular adage in modern spirituality.

The notion that bad things are going to happen to you and you can't control that inevitability,

but you do have agency over your response. You don't have to suffer.

This idea that suffering is the phantom of our own projection is certainly alluring and can often

be a valid claim. And we are not our thoughts. We are not our emotions. We are not the stories

that we tell ourselves about ourselves. Now, while these statements are true, in my experience,

there is a temporal chasm between intellectually knowing this and actually feeling the absence of grief.

And the benefits of knowing these truths may be reliable, but they are not conferred instantaneously through an Instagram post and a green juice.

A freedom from our suffering is most times just hard rod.

And the memeification of this kind of spiritual work can really belie the effort that is required.

An aphorism will not heal you.

Liberation from our trauma most often requires gut-wrenching work

as unfair as that may be. That work might include psychotherapy, meditation, breath work,

emotional freedom technique, plant medicine, cognitive behavioral therapy.

I mean, there are myriad modalities to address trauma, including, as I have discovered,

creativity.

So a few years ago, I had my own rock bottom experience.

Now, admittedly, it was milk toast in comparison to the suffering that many

people endure and have endured. But still, it really shook the ground conditions of my life.

I didn't sleep for months, and the downstream impacts of this stress were many. I gained weight, my mind was foggy, my mood was mercurial,

...