I've been suffering lately. And feeling rather frustrated and demoralized by it.
It comes largely from pain from various injuries: a shoulder injury, RSI, bad knees. Some were the result of poor judgement. Others just bad luck. I also have tinnitus from a firecracker that went off by my head when I was 17 (we can heap that one into the "bad judgement" pile).
I'm in my mid-30s, but feel like I blew my body out by the time I hit my late 20s. I catastrophize the affect these ailments have on my life. At times I find it hard to focus at work (I'm a developer). Other times I obsess over the pain and find it hard to enjoy a moment with family or friends. I know the suffering isn't caused directly by the pain/ringing, but rather my emotional response to it. But I can't seem to shake/change those emotional responses.
I also think part of what makes suffering challenging is the isolation of it. We only feel and understand our own suffering. So often we have no idea the ways in which other people are suffering.
I'm wondering: who else is out there suffering? How's it going? What do you do to manage it?
