Present with Suffering

Book excerpt: What is the place of discontent and unhappiness in human experience and how best can we be with it? There is something about everything that makes it not quite satisfactory. Even things we really love are spoilt by not being quite enough or by going on too long. People entering psychotherapy want to feel better - more authoritative, less anxious or depressed, more whole - and although it can help, an enormous amount of difficult and painful emotions continue to arise. Even after years and years of therapy many of us feel that there is no 'happy ever after'. Present with Suffering shows that by becoming present, accepting and kind, we may enfold what hurts us in a more spacious and meaningful way. Chapters consider the discomfort associated with loss, bereavement, emptiness and impermanence.