I would differentiate between suffering and pain. Pain is just pain, it hurts. Suffering is all the layers of thought and feeling we heap on top of pain, trying to make sense of it or blanket it so it keeps quiet, etc. We add energy to the original and that keeps it going long past its hot-stove-burn-hand-pull-hand-away scenario.

There is no pain now, for what happened 10-20, whatever, years ago? That's suffering. Think of grieving the death of a loved one and how that follows a progression and gets incorporated into us; all loss probably needs to be treated that way. We get into trouble, I think, when as children we don't have enough tools to help us grieve the harder pains of abuse. It's adult on child and their hands and hits and words are harder than a child's so the bruises and scars to our psyche are larger. We do what we can using our symptoms but at some point we need to take off the symptoms and grieve as adults and then be done. That's not easy and takes time and effort, like grieving for a loved-ones death does.

Books aren't true or false; they're only guides and one person's idea of how things are. Take from your book what you do understand or ideas of things you want to try, Esther. I like the concept of treating everything that happens to me as a "lesson", even if it is something like my car breaking down or someone else reacting to what I said/posted in a way I don't like. We now, as adults, can often choose how to see things and how to respond to them, an option not available very often to children with their more constrained lives. Living longer gives options. Think about now and when things happen, whether you feel pain or suffering? Generally you probably feel more pain? Eventually it gets resolved. The only suffering you feel is probably for something ongoing. Looking at whatever is happening now as something to help and teach makes things much more comfortable for me; people learning make mistakes, that's the nature of learning. There is no pain in making mistakes, everyone does. So, learning to deal with our illnesses, we'll make mistakes but that's how we learn what our limitations are and triggers and things we should do and avoid. But none of that should feel like suffering? It's all in how one looks at it, which means suffering can be an illusion, like any other magic trick?