Dear Cat:

You suffer when you think of your sister suffering. You suffer. She suffers.

Let’s say she didn’t suffer. Will your suffering end?

What the brain does when suffering is to look and look for the problem, so to solve it and feel good. So your brain goes to your sister: here is the problem! it announces: if I can resolve her suffering, I will no longer suffer.

This is a trap because she is not the reason you suffer. And then, it is not within your power to eliminate her suffering, so you keep trying and you keep trying… and so, you don’t attend to the real problem, what causes your suffering.

You can get lost in another’s suffering- I see all those sad faces in your last post. This is why I say it is a trap. It is very difficult to turn the focus on oneself when trapped this way.

I used to believe that I don’t deserve to feel happy, to not suffer, for as long as someone in my life was suffering. Well, someone always fit the bill, someone was suffering. So… when one person was feeling okay one day, another was suffering. So I went on suffering and didn’t even get that one day.

anita