Second Arrows

I read something that I found helpful recently, and I’m passing it along because I hear a lot of people doing this—including myself. It’s the idea of the “second arrow” or compounding pain with the secondary feelings that follow the first pain.

The Buddha taught that when we experience something painful — a physical illness, or the news that someone we love has died, or witnessing suffering all around us — it’s as if the world has shot an arrow into us … But often, what we then do is shoot a second arrow into ourselves. That second arrow is any thought we use to spin up a “story” around our pain, as a way of resisting simply being with the experience of pain. This can manifest in many different ways.

It’s in the family of the Pain Olympics except that it’s turned inward instead of outward. You can berate yourself for not dealing with things better or lash out in anger at the people around you because you’re upset with the situation. Second arrows can be worry or guilt. They’re the secondary crappy feelings that we trot out as if the first crappy feelings aren’t enough. But, of course, if we take a step back, we can see that they’re not the same thing. They’re two different sets of feelings; the initial bad thing (the pandemic) and then our reaction to it (all the other feelings).

I liked the article because it outlined how to put it into practice. How it feels on the page is very different from how it feels when you try to do it. Because it’s HARD. It’s hard not to let my mind go to the worst place and justify it with the fact that anxiety = preparation.

Passing it along in case it’s helpful to you, too.