Dr. Arthur Brooks discusses suffering and pain in a brief YouTube monologue. He explains a Buddhist-framed formula: suffering ≈ resistance × pain, emphasizing that resistance amplifies suffering. He advocates acceptance-based approaches—mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)—and suggests focusing on valued life areas despite ongoing pain.
Suffering will go up with pain, of course, but even more, it'll go up with resistance. The more you resist the suffering, the higher the suffering is actually going to become. What should you do instead of leaning out? And the answer is, of course, acceptance. If you're anxious about something and say, yeah, I mean, I've got fear about something like this and I don't like it, but it's probably not catastrophic. And even if it is pretty catastrophic, there's something I can do about this. This is related to the Buddhist concept of suffering being resistance multiplied by pain. Resistance times pain. Now think about that a little bit. Suffering will go with pain, of course, but even more, it'll go up with resistance. The more you resist the suffering, the higher the suffering is actually going to become. That's the idea behind mindfulness based cognitive therapy. Acceptance. Acceptance. The second is called acceptance and commitment Therapy. ACT is a focus on living a valued life despite pain. In other words, accepting, I've got a lot of pain, but I'm going to also focus on the parts of my life that are not pain. That's hard to do sometimes, but you can get better at it. So those are two mindfulness based kind of techniques that can help you along the way.
