Mature adults will note that the meat of wisdom comes not in forgetting the past but it making meaning of it.  (It’s what Frankl wrote so famously wrote about in Man’s Search for Meaning).  Meaning making necessarily requires us to sit with our pain.  Ignoring doesn’t work for long and narcotizing develops neurosis, as Jung suggests (cited here, pulling from there).  The work then of mature adults is to face it and reframe it.  What story are you telling yourself? Where does the pain you’re feeling fit in to that story? What do you do with the memories you can’t forget? This is the process of becoming, of maturing.

Then why are there so many neurotics? Because life is hard and pain hurts.

Neurosis is "a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations.” In 1980 the psychology professionals removed neurosis from the DSM (the official book of psychological disorders).  I didn’t get to vote, but it makes sense, right?  Most of us have moments and grades of ‘functional mental disorders’. Neurosis is not "psychosis, which refers to a loss of touch with reality.”  The psychologists made official what my wife has said for years, “normal is only a setting on the dryer.”

How then, do we keep our neurosis in check?  I’d suggest that we learn to suffer better.

I sat with a colleague this week who shared that her father recently passed away.  Very self-aware, she noted that she felt she wasn’t processing his passing well.  ‘I cried when I thought about my dog.  The dog died six years ago.”  She continued, losing her objectivity, "I wonder if perhaps I didn’t fully mourn my dog’s passing well.  I bet my Dad’s death is related to my tears about my dog.”  Clearly, she was not equating the passing of her father with that of her dog.  Rather, she noted that death is hard and pain hurts and she can’t run from it.  She may not yet be able to fully weep over the loss of her father, but her soul won’t let her walk away forever.  She’s healthy enough to begin the process and deal with her neurosis (highly-functional) before it becomes psychosis (debilitating).

Where are we avoiding necessary suffering?

I see a counselor.  Others see spiritual directors. Some go visit Granny. Suffering is easier when processed with another, especially when she has processed her own grief well. The broken are often the best healers.

Suffer well.  Suffer necessarily.  Suffer with help.