Here’s something you may have already discovered for yourself: much of the suffering related to an unpleasant event often has to do with our thoughts and feelings about the event. And much of that thinking and feeling has to do with the past or, more often, the future: My dad won’t let me hang out with my friends today becomes My dad never lets me hang out with my friends. And I’m bored now expands into I’m going to be bored forever. And I can’t solve this physics problem turns into I’m stupid, and I won’t be able to solve any of the problems, ever. The essence of most of this upsetting thinking and feeling is resistance; resistance is basically wanting things to be different.
My friend and colleague Gina Biegel, who’s done scientific research documenting the benefits of teaching mindfulness to teens, shares the following mathematical equation from Shinzen Young:
If these words are confusing, you can think of suffering as being upset, pain as unpleasantness, and resistance as wanting things to be different. In other words, when something unpleasant happens, how upset you feel is the product of the unpleasantness multiplied by how much you want things to be different.
Often, though not always, the level of pain (or unpleasantness) is fixed and cannot be changed, and the only part of the equation we can adjust is our resistance (how much we want things to be different).
Let’s make this more real with an example. Say that, for you, not making the soccer team or not getting a role in a play is a 7 on a pain scale from 1 to 10 (with 1 being very little pain and 10 being extreme pain). Resisting the outcome with thoughts like The selection process was unfair might be a 7 on a similar scale of resistance. So in this scenario, your level of suffering is 49. That’s how upset you are. An example of a different way of thinking that might have a lower resistance score is I am really disappointed, and I’m going to work hard and try again. Perhaps, this type of thinking would have a resistance score of 3. This thinking doesn’t change the pain of not making the team or getting a role in the play, but it does decrease the intensity of your suffering from 49 to 21. And an added bonus is that this type of thinking gives you a way to move forward—a wise next step, a specific action to take.
If that example seems a little abstract, consider the next dialogue, which I had with Maria and her classmates during a mindfulness course for high school students. This dialogue combines the Unpleasant Events activity (from chapter 32) with the concept of Suffering = Pain x Resistance. It involves an unpleasant event that most of us resist: doing homework (remember my bookkeeping).
Me: So Maria, what was your unpleasant experience?
Maria: Doing my math homework.
Me: And on a scale of one to ten, how unpleasant was it?
Maria: An eleven.
Group: Yeah, at least eleven.
Me: Okay, it may be an eleven. I’ll take your word for it. And I’m going to invite you to consider if it really is an eleven. For me, an eleven would be my child getting in a serious accident, my house burning down, or someone I love dying.
Maria: Okay, probably not an eleven. Maybe a seven.
Me: Okay, seven. Now, what were your thoughts about your homework and your ability to do it?
Maria: My thoughts were “I hate this stupid homework. And I can’t do it.”
Group: Yeah!
Maria: “…And I can’t do it. I’m stupid. I give up.”
Me: And what were your feelings?
Maria: Mad, stupid, hopeless.
Me: And what was happening in your body?
Maria: I had a headache, and I felt stressed.
Me: And how does stress feel in your body?
Maria: Like tightness.
Me: And taken all together—your thoughts, your feelings, your headache, and tightness—on a scale of one to ten, how much resistance did you have?
Maria: Eight.
Me: So what was your suffering score?
Maria: Seven times eight, that’s…fifty-six?
Me: Yup. Now, assuming that you can’t change your homework and make it magically disappear or make it do itself, how might you decrease your suffering?
Maria: By decreasing my resistance?
Me: And how might you do that?
Maria: By not calling it “stupid” and by looking back at my notes?
Me: That sounds like a great start! When you say that, how does it feel in your body?
Maria: Less tight, better, relaxed.
Me: So how about if all of you who’ve had homework as an unpleasant event experiment with decreasing your resistance this week, and report back?
Many teens find the Suffering = Pain x Resistance equation to be really helpful when dealing with upsetting situations. As you read this book, you may be working with a profoundly painful situation, such as your parents getting divorced, your family dealing with financial hardship, or the loss of a friend or someone else close to you. In these cases, to honor your experience, you may increase the pain scale. For me, having my brother go to jail would be an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. If you’re dealing with an extremely painful situation, take a moment in stillness and tenderly acknowledge that pain… Go easy… Be gentle…
If your pain score is higher than 10, I encourage you to seek support from a friend, school counselor, therapist, religious leader, or doctor.
It is also important to be clear on two points:
Remember that wanting things to be different than they actually are usually increases suffering or upset. And usually, acknowledging things as they are, no matter how terrible, helps us make good (wise) choices about what to do next, such as go over your math notes, talk to the soccer coach or theater director to get feedback, or seek out support for yourself or a family member.