Latest / Wellness in Today's World / Ep. 22: "Why We Suffer and How We Heal": Finding Meaning and Connection Through Adversity

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Ep. 22: "Why We Suffer and How We Heal": Finding Meaning and Connection Through Adversity · Wellness in Today's World

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Hello and welcome to "Wellness in Today's World," the podcast that
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we talk about psychology, wellness,
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and everything in between. I'm Debra Kawahara,
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your host, and with each episode,
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we talk about what it means to live well.
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I am so delighted that we have Dr.
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Suzan Song here.
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Harvard- and Stanford-trained psychiatrist,
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humanitarian mental health expert,
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the author of "Why We Suffer and How We Heal."
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I'm just so happy that she has ~ agreed to talk to me today about this book.
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Her framework for healing, what she calls "the three friends of winter,"
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that talks about narrative, ritual,
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and purpose as elements of healing from trauma and adversity.
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Dr. Song, welcome!
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Thanks so much for having me. You're welcome.
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All right, let's get started. So I wanted to start with just your personal journey.
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~ You know, I know from your story and it's in the book.
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~ Talk about how
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your journey influenced you to become a psychiatrist,
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humanitarian, and mental health clinician.
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I grew up in a liquor store outside of Baltimore,
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Maryland. My parents were from Korea and you know,
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we had robberies now and then,
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but one of them went bad and my father was assaulted outside a liquor store.
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And he later passed away, but I think that...
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You know, I was fifteen years old at the time and I think that,
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like everybody else, when you experience major life events,
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it changes your reality. ~ And so for me,
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that's when I came close to experiencing suffering
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and ~ understanding how people navigate through the world,
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like how do you continue to live when everything's uncertain?
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That was kind of my entry points.
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And that, of course, led me to mental health and psychiatry and stories
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and thinking about how people just get through really hard times.
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You know, my family is Korean.
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I was born and raised, I'm Korean-American.
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I think the duality of having different cultural aspects in how people recover
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was always very interesting to me.
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~ And that got me into working across cultures and contexts in different countries.
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You know, one of the things you talk about and I think as you reflect back
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on your life, you talk about stability and instability and how that might have made
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you choose certain things. So I wanted you to talk about that stability,
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how you found that as something that may have influenced your choices in your life.
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Yeah, I had... Because growing up,
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and, of course, the liquor store,
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we often had, you know, robberies and things.
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And so I always said to myself,
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I mean the logic model basically goes like,
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"If we had a stable life,
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we would not have had a liquor store.
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If we didn't have a liquor store,
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my father would still be alive." And so,
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for me, the
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life success is really having a stable life.
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So you work really hard, you go to-
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and we're kind of groomed this way,
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right? We're told at a young age:
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"This is what school you should go to,
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the grades you should get," even who to marry,
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what job you should have, like that stability is supposed to protect
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you from who-knows-what in the future.
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Yeah. And so for me growing up,
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that's what I wanted. I knew that a stable life would be protective
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in some way until you realize
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that's just an illusion. There are temporary moments of stability,
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but life challenges are just gonna happen.
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Yeah. Whether we want it or not,
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unfortunately.
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What I found interesting, though,
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is seeking that stability and yet you chose to go to these other parts
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of the world as a humanitarian mental health expert and put yourself...
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I remember one of the stories you told about how dangerous
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some of the situations you found yourself.
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So it was kind of like, well that's interesting,
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you seeking stability and choices in your career and things like that.
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And yet you also chose kind of danger and instability in some ways.
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Yeah, I think this is the fascin-
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I think people think externally it looks so unstable,
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right? And I did; I worked in war zones,
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post-genocide with former child soldiers.
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I work with survivors of hostage and trafficking ~ around the world.
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So it looks like it's very unstable.
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Right. But actually for me it was a stable returning to us;
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to something that was familiar to me.
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And I think I didn't realize it until
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almost two decades later, after my father passed away,
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I was in Burundi. I found myself in hiding from former child soldiers for my life.
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They were targeting me. And I thought,
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"How in the world did I get here?
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Like, what is going on? I'm an Asian-American woman now in the middle
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of nowhere and hiding for my life from child soldiers." And immediately it was,
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"Oh, it's dad." So I think I had recreated
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a very similar scene of violence,
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but this time I would have the control over the outcome.
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This is a repetition compulsion.
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Right, right. But I didn't understand it at the time.
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And I was upping the ante. I mean,
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at one point I thought about going undercover in the trafficking world.
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And so it was almost like I'm pushing the limits.
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As if I'm trying to die. And so...
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At some point, and I think it was the Burundi incident,
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where I had to step back and say,
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"What is going on? How am I living this life right now?"
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When I was reading the book I was writing like "repetition compulsion,
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reenactment" in terms of just repetitively putting yourself in these situations
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and "can I change the outcome?" But it seemed like eventually you got
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to the point of, "I realize what's
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pulling me to these situations,
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why I feel such affinity to be in those situations and helping these people,"
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because you probably saw yourself in them in some ways.
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Yes, and I think we all do this.
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We all live our life in these patterns.
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Right? Where we say, you know,
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"How am I in another relationship that's not healthy or toxic in some way?
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Like how am I here yet again? I told myself I would never be in this."
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So we keep replaying the same patterns,
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not really understanding the driving force behind them.
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Going to the first part of your title,
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"Why We Suffer," and it's such a age-old question,
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right, to understand why we suffer.
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I mean, I think religions try to explain why we suffer.
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So I wanted you to talk about kind of your own thinking and learning about
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why we suffer and and are there any common elements across
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humanity in terms of suffering?
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Yeah, I think suffering is, as I see it,
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is essentially when our reality does not match our wishes.
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So there is something going on in our lives right now and we wish it were different.
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And we oftentimes don't know how to make that change.
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And that, to me, is what I see as suffering.
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Now, there's the real suffering of human rights violations,
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trafficking, right? Those are events that cause suffering.
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And then there are more ordinary daily life stressors that we all
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go through where sometimes the stories and the explanations,
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it's our narratives about that event that actually create the suffering.
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And what I found, you know,
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to your question around is there some humanity,
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kind of human element to it that crosses cultures,
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I think suffering is largely culturally dependent.
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So the culture in which one is embedded in tells you
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what suffering is and what is not suffering and how you should deal with
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it and what's not appropriate.
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So in this country, in the US,
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we often individualize suffering quite a bit.
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So if there's something that we're going through,
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we're told, "Talk to a therapist.
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Do one-on-one introspection." But in many parts of the world,
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there are no therapists. Right,
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right. And they don't have the same focus on the individual.
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So their suffering is very much in relation with others.
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So it's shared. Yeah. So, the burden is not just on one person as it is here.
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Yeah. What it makes me think about,
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I mean, I know you talk about intergenerational stress.
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I know I've studied intergenerational trauma and that the healing process part
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of that is not just like here in the US where we say "individual healing,"
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we actually talk about collective healing...
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Yeah. ~ ...and how important that is.
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A striking thing that I've really learned in,
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you know, like refugee camps and other settings I've worked in is that...
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you know, we're so focused on self-optimization and self-regulation
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and all of that's really important.
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But as humans we have evolved to co-regulate with other people.
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Yes. And I think we've forgotten that a lot here.
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In other countries, you just see it.
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There's more connectedness and leaning on each other and we're not embarrassed
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to do so. It's just part of the cultural fabric.
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Uh-huh.
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And I think if we absorb some of that and adopted some of that,
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we'd be a lot less lonely.
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Our former Surgeon General talked about how,
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in the US, loneliness is an epidemic.
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And I think, you know, we talk about connection,
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and the research shows it. Connection is something that gives us longevity.
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Mm-hmm. And so we even know it in terms of our research and science,
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how important it is. And yet I think given our individualistic...
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you know,
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that's a generalization but in the US we kinda lean more to ~ individualistic,
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but I often think can we integrate the individual with the collective
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in terms of healing?
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It's hard because I think sometimes...
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You know, I don't want to romanticize collectivist cultures,
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right? Because a lot of times,
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because of the lack of resources,
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they have to depend on each other just to survive.
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Yeah. But there is something, and it's just a different framework.
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It's not better or worse. It's just one's identity is not about me and myself.
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One's identity is the role. So if I go,
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let's say Sierra Leone, Liberia,
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wherever, and I ask, "How are you doing?"
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It's not that "Oh, I'm sad," or "I had a bad day." It's,
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"I'm not good because I can't provide for
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my daughter today." You know, but it's something in relation to their roles.
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Mm-hmm. It's just a different framework.
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Right. It's not about my achievement.
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Right. It's more what in relation to others that I'm able to do or not able to do.
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Yeah. And then how does that impact me?
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Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. You know,
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as you talked about it needing to be culturally contextualized,
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~ talk to me about, you know, you write
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one of the things that you believe with healing is narratives and
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the stories we tell ourselves.
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How is that so important to the healing piece of the suffering that
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you write about?
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Yeah, I mean so much of our suffering and our distress is based on
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the stories that we're telling about that.
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So let's say there's a breakup that happens.
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Oftentimes, the common stories that I hear are,
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"There's something wrong with me." That's at the baseline,
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people think, "There's something wrong with me.
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I did something wrong. I'm not good enough or X enough." Or it's,
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"My life is over.
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I just can't... I'll never find someone again." Or it's something around
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just this feeling that life is only going to get better if I can get back
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to the baseline. If I can go back to what it was.
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And that's unfortunate because we're constantly growing and evolving.
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Right. And so we need these difficult events to decide it's our inflection point.
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Like what are we gonna do with that difficult...?
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It's not that we make lemonade out of lemons.
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Right. Right. But it's our opportunity to make meaning because that is
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how we grow and build mastery from what's happened to us.
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I had a mentor of mine talk about how,
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you know, when you have these difficult events in your life or trauma,
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you can't go back to the person that you were before that,
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but you have to learn how do I integrate that into the person that
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I am and becoming. And I really,
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I think that's really true, that that narrative has to include what has happened.
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Yes, and too often I think because we have these fragmented memories
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and fragmented parts of our lives,
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we just want to push it aside and not think about it.
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But we need to pull our past,
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you're right, integrate it into our present because it's always there.
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Right. Whether or not we want to see it.
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So either we be consciously aware of it and intentional,
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or we just let it blindly, you know,
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direct our lives.
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So the second component that you talk about,
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which is ritual. And you know,
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I think people don't realize the rituals that get kind
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of expected or normalized in our lives,
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but I want you to talk about how ritual,
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you know, how you define it and then how do people get that,
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I guess, in terms of the rituals that they do?
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So rituals are basically something of meaning that brings you back to yourself.
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And it's something that gives you a sense of either...
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they function in a lot of important ways.
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So one is they can lower and help you with emotion regulation.
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So if you think about like Steph Curry,
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does a tunnel shot before every game,
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right? Or Serena Williams, I think,
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bounces the ball a certain number of times before she starts.
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Like those are just emotion regulation.
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But rituals can also help us mourn the loss of someone or of
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a life that we wanted. Yeah. So when we think about any culture,
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whenever someone loses a loved one,
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there is a ritual of what to do.
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And that ritual is there to help you when you can't think.
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Right? When we're so overwhelmed or so upended that we need something
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to tell us what to do.
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And that's the point of rituals.
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So they're really important binding.
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And I think our society right now,
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we're in this ritual deficit. Yeah.
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You know, and everyone's just trying with routines.
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Routines are managing your time,
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but a ritual is gonna help you manage your life.
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It's gonna bring you back to your values,
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your beliefs. They kind of incorporate your narratives.
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So giving that ~ meaning and purpose.
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Like I know in the Japanese American culture,
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New Year's Day is like a renewal that you get to clean the slate and
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you get to look at the year ahead of us.
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Like you get to throw the year behind you and start anew.
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Yeah. And really thinking about renewal,
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you know,
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rejuvenation. Mm-hmm. And those rituals become part of,
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yeah, it kind of grounds you. Yes.
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And they can be small. I think people think of rituals as like these big things,
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but you know, like even me between clients,
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I take a ten-minute break and my ritual now is to go,
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if I can, just get up and go walk around.
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And I don't think about anything.
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You know, I just imagine draining the thoughts out of my brain so I'm like fresh
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for the next person. They're small intentional acts that we do.
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Uh-huh. But they are, they're grounding.
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They bring us back to like, okay,
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I'm gonna refresh right now.
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And bring me back to who I am and who I want to be.
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What it also makes me think is at a time where it may be tumultuous internally,
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that those things you don't have to think about because they're laid out.
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And it's like, okay, this is,
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I know this. Yes. So it gives you some permanency.
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It gives you kind of reminders of things that you can predict.
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Yes. Which probably really helps in like,
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okay, this thing, I know.
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Yes, so I'm actually a mass violence responder,
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mass violence incident responder.
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And one of the communities I was working with was after the Lunar
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New Year massacre ~ a few years back in Monterey Park,
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California. And you're right, when you have these events,
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they're unexpected and they're...
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they have this way of upending not just your world,
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but your thoughts of a safe world.
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And so when you can have a ritual especially that binds you to a community
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and you know that you're embedded with other people and you engage
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in a ritual together, it's predictable and it restores safety.
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And that's really important when you've been upended.
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Yeah. It's something that regulates you in some ways.
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So the third element of your framework,
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which I think is so... what I like about it
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is it's clear and it's also practical,
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is purpose, meaning, and connection as the third element.
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So I wanted you to talk about that more because I think we hear about purpose,
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but it's like,
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how does one do that?
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Yeah. So where narratives help you with insight,
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rituals then embody that insight into action and movement.
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And then purpose gives you direction for one's life.
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And I think purpose is misunderstood.
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Many people think purpose is like passion or it's achievement or it's goals.
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But purpose is not something to be found.
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It's basically something that's larger than yourself,
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of meaning.
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We often think we have to find our purpose,
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but most of the time people are already living out their purpose.
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So all we need to do is just connect and ask ourselves where in our worlds
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are we feeling resonance? Where are we feeling coherence?
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Where are we kind of vibing with where our values,
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our actions and our words, they're all aligned.
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That's giving some sort of insight into one's purpose.
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Do you think... as you were talking it made me think about kind of
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the values that you hold and that aligning your values with what
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you think, what you do, how you live.
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Yeah, I mean values are essential and you know values can change over time,
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right? Uh-huh. But there tend to be a few core sets that stay with us.
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And I think when we can embody that and purpose is really just saying
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we want to embody our values into practice.
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And now this is the direction of where we want-
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of who we want to become, that can help us through so many hard...
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I mean, I work with a hostage survivor and
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he was in total deprivation for a number of years.
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And one thing he said was one thing that was very helpful to him was when
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he thought about all of the hostages currently.
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And he said, "If I ever get out,
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it's gonna be my purpose in life to make sure they're not feeling left behind."
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And that purpose carried him throughout all that deprivation.
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So there's a lot of power in purpose.
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Yeah, yeah. That's just,
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what a powerful story of that.
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You know, so the three elements we just talked about,
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I mean one of the memorable concepts that I love that how you put it
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is "the three friends of winter." And I actually wanted you to talk about
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how did you come up with those three friends of winter and then
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how they work together?
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Yeah,
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so it was actually pretty easy.
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So ~ I was...
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Okay.
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When I was a child after my father passed away I spent a lot of time
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in our living room. Okay. And my living room always had these Asian art scrolls.
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Yes, right?
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That's yeah.
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And so there's a very common Asian art motif called "The Three Friends
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of Winter." And it's pine, plum blossom,
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and bamboo.
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And those are the three hardiest plants of the winter.
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They persevere, they can withstand the harshest of weather.
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And so I grew up with that surrounding me.
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And I kind of always thought about that motif.
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And so when it was time to write this book and to think about...
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I mean, really, the book is asking the question:
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If instability is part of our lives,
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how do we find aliveness within it?
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How do we keep on
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connecting and find a sense of belonging and contribute to the world even when
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our life is not what we want it to be?
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And so it was kind of easy to map these—narrative,
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ritual, and purpose—onto the Three Friends of Winter.
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And I like that it's "friends" because it's a reminder that our sense
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of aliveness and living and ~ recovery is embedded in relationships.
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It's not just a solo act.
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Yeah. I mean, the words that came to my mind was "adversity"
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but also the resilience and hardiness of people.
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You know? Yeah.
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Yeah. And
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And I think people often think that resilience is bouncing back.
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But I always wonder like bouncing back to what,
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right? So I see resilience... I mean there are a lot of people who have grit
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and they barrel through and they keep on going,
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but to me that's just endurance.
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Right. And maybe they're enduring something they shouldn't be enduring.
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Right. We see that. So resilience,
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yes. We see that a lot, actually.
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We see that a lot actually, yeah.
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So I think of resilience as being able to embrace the instability at hand
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and not lose ourselves. So we still find ways to love and live even
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as we're going through really hard times.
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I'm gonna turn to your humanitarian work,
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because that is one of the things I think people may look at you and not even think,
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"Oh, she's just a psychiatrist,
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she's always lived here," but you've been all over the world working with children
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soldiers, working with hostages,
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working in refugee camps.
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So I wanted to have you talk about,
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you know, these communities that face these profound adversities.
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What have you seen in terms of their resilience and hope that then,
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like you talked about, give them a reason to continue going?
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Yeah. I mean, some of this...
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You know, why I started off in this work,
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it was really, I was thankful I had this parallel career.
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So I started off my training in psychiatry in the US.
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But I had a parallel career doing policy and public health research
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~ in humanitarian settings. And so I would go back and forth between
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the two and they really informed each other.
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And I think the biggest takeaway for me
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was truly that healing does not happen individually.
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Like you just see so many communities,
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and... I'm used to narrative being the main modality,
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like autonomy and insight. That is how we heal.
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That's how we in the US treat healing.
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But in other- for example, I work with a former child soldier who's a girl soldier.
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And she, you know,
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had been a sex slave for a number of years.
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And so I was working with her during a study and I asked,
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I was kind of listening for how she got through,
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because she actually was living and contributing very well,
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like she had a good life. And she said it was one thing that really helped her,
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which was the village elder came and did a body purification ritual for her.
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And so it was just a ritual. Uh-huh.
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And it atoned for her sins. It allowed her to then be part of the community.
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And
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she said that was the main thing.
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"I now have a sense of belonging.
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And I can now restore my identity as like a civilian,
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not a former child soldier." And that sense of belonging and reshaping
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of her identity really allowed her to engage in the world in a very different way.
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And there was no talking about it with someone.
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There was no- it was just the ritual of it.
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So I think
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there are lots of ways that we can-
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I mean, I think if you want to learn about something,
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you learn from the most extreme.
25:37
And so these are like some of the most extreme settings.
25:40
And I think there's a lot of lessons that we can all take away from.
25:42
So for our audience, you know if someone's carrying a wound,
25:47
whether it's minor or major, what's like one step that they
25:53
can take in terms of the healing of that wound?
25:57
So the first thing is to remember that like life is hard.
26:00
Right? So this is just, like, this is part of life.
26:05
There are going to be major life challenges.
26:07
So, life is hard. And also it's harder when we do it alone.
26:11
So to seek out somebody, right?
26:14
Friend, family member, anybody,
26:17
micro-conversations with people,
26:19
but just don't isolate. Because shame breeds in isolation.
26:23
So we don't isolate.
26:24
Reach out to other people. And sometimes we don't have to go inwards.
26:30
We can go outwards. So we think about,
26:33
who do we want to matter to? Right?
26:36
Who do we matter to right now?
26:37
Mm-hmm. And who do we want to matter to?
26:40
Because that helps us just get outside of ourselves for a little bit
26:46
and just give us a break from that suffering.
26:48
You know, I know when you write,
26:52
it takes a lot out of you and there's a process to it.
26:56
So now that your book has been published,
26:58
"Why We Suffer and How We Heal," what would be your hope
27:03
of readers in kind of reading your book and what
27:09
you want it to actually impact?
27:12
The impact that you wanted?
27:15
People feel like they're not alone and that oftentimes when we're going through
27:20
a hard time, we look outwards for answers.
27:23
And I hope the book reminds people that they have a lot of tools already
27:28
to tap into. So they don't always have to look outwards.
27:33
Sometimes we can first just find confidence in ourselves that you already have some
27:38
tools easily accessible right now.
27:42
And to let them know that they're really not alone in that process.
27:45
I really like that because it's like kind of what you're saying is you have
27:49
it in you. Yeah. It's not that you're deficient.
27:52
It's like just you need to go back to remember your strengths.
27:56
Yes. And you have them. Yes. You have them there.
28:00
That's right.
28:01
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, last question:
28:04
If you could leave a message about suffering,
28:08
because like you said, life is,
28:11
being Buddhist,
28:12
life is suffering. ~ We just know that that is part of the life experience.
28:18
And healing. And what would
28:23
you say people could do to then lead to a meaningful life?
28:28
Meaningful.
28:29
Well it's understanding that stability is an illusion.
28:35
That...
28:36
The question isn't, you know, will I experience something really hard?
28:39
It's will we have the tools to not lose ourselves when they do happen?
28:44
And the way that we find grounding is to identify our stories,
28:50
our backstories.
28:51
To find a sense of rituals and practice when there are times we just can't think
28:56
through what to do. And to practice those but ahead of time.
28:59
And to think about, who do we want to matter to?
29:04
And who do we want to become? And to let that guide a lot
29:10
of our decisions and guide our energies and our resources now.
29:14
Because at the end, we all have one go around this planet.
29:18
Yeah. So...
29:20
To be intentional about what we want to do with it.
29:23
~ Oh, just beautiful. You know,
29:26
and Dr. Song, I can't thank you enough for being willing to be here,
29:30
just sharing your wisdom, sharing your life experience,
29:34
and sharing all of your knowledge that you put together for us.
29:41
Well thank
29:41
you so much. And if there are any therapists out there who are interested
29:44
in working in humanitarian settings,
29:46
~ I actually have a nonprofit called Global Collective Institute
29:51
and we have trainings for psychologists and psychiatrists who want
29:55
to work in humanitarian settings.
29:56
So come and join. It's important work.
29:59
There
29:59
you go. ~ You know, what I found so powerful
30:04
in this conversation is I think you're not saying it's only up to that person
30:10
to heal. Yeah. That there is a collective and to be able to utilize
30:16
the collective in terms of caring for one another.
30:19
Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah.
30:22
So...
30:23
you know, thank you again for being here.
30:25
And to our listeners, thank you for joining "Wellness in Today's World." As always,
30:31
remember: Wellness is a journey,
30:33
not a destination. Until next time,
30:35
please take good care of yourself and each other.