Because your mind is conditioned by past life events, when it encounters an experience it perceives as painful or unpleasant, there is immediate and direct suffering that is far greater than the actual discomfort of the situation. The increased discomfort happens in your mind, not in the actual experience. There is a multiplying effect in the mind between discomfort of the moment and resistance to the moment, and it greatly increases suffering. Feelings of listlessness, despair, frustration, and collapse are often indications of the amount of resistance, rather than the actual pain of the moment.

Dancing with Life, Chapter 9, Pg 86, 91

For your reflection: Over the next few days, carefully investigate when suffering arises in your mind. Then describe the actual pain—physical or emotional—to yourself. Examine how your mind is reacting to the pain with storytelling, imagining the future, or thinking that the pain will never end. Pay particular attention to situations in which you are experiencing significant discomfort and/or unhappiness. Can you distinguish between the amount of your discomfort, whether physical or emotional, and the resistance that your mind is having to the experience? One technique for identifying resistance is to feel in your body how much you are pushing away or bracing against what’s happening.