Dear noname:

Thank you. I hope you are having a good first day of this year and decade!

“I want my relationship with pain to change this year”- you mean to lessen your pain, correct? In order to not react to pain any which way, we have to endure it, or to tolerate it, and to be able to do so, we have to feel less of it. This is where emotional regulation skills come handy- to lessen strong/ overwhelming feelings, what you called later in your post today: “learning calmness”.

“I hope love might be more boring, or calm”- it will be a challenge to be motivated to pursue a relationship that is not thrilling, finding comfort and contentment outside thrill, but like you wrote, it “probably will mean healthier too”.

“attachment is the cause of suffering”, but it is also human, an integral part of every social animal. It cannot be eliminated, but instead… regulated, lessened when we are too attached.

anita