Forbearance
Inner Strength Training
Forbearance is a virtue that I’ve been working on lately that I suspect is under appreciated by most people — at least on a conscious level. I didn’t really know a lot of people who practiced this virtue, and it wasn’t really modeled so much for me as a kid. I never actually heard the term until well into adulthood.
Essentially, forbearance is the ability to tolerate stressful events without getting overwhelmed.
Having forbearance means being able to hang in there for difficult moments with those you care about, long enough that you can arrive at a mutually beneficial conclusion, without acquiescing or checking out emotionally.
Having forbearance can also mean being able to tolerate mean spirited or manipulative people enough that you don’t end up responding in some way that you will later regret. But for the purposes of our discussion, I’ll be focusing more on the former. Dealing with nasty people is outside the scope of this conversation.
I’m using the term in a slightly broader sense in which it’s typically used, but as described, I think it’s basically synonymous with inner strength. And this is something I worked on a lot in my 4 years of therapy.
When I first entered therapy, I felt unbearably bashful about… basically everything I wanted to work on. I wasn’t going to stop going to therapy, so I had to learn to get comfortable with my feelings.
As I pushed through my bashfulness, an interesting thing happened. It wasn’t really like it ever stopped being stressful, but the quality of the feelings changed. When at first it felt overwhelming, it began to feel progressively more enjoyable. It was less like the stress of diffusing a bomb, and more like the stress of playing a fast paced card game (e.x. Speed).
Good Stress vs Bad Stress
I had this strange idea in my head growing up that a healthy mind was a detached zen-like mind that experienced no stress or fear. I eventually learned that this is not possible, and more than that, it’s not even something we should want. (Stress is not only good for humans, but for plants too).
Recently, my brilliant girlfriend told me about a term in psychology called “eustress”. It’s a word that describes the kind of stress that motivates a person to take positive action in their life, towards their goals. This is in contradistinction to “distress” which is the kind of paralyzing or overwhelming stress that takes a toll on your physical and psychological well being.
The same event can start out as distress and become eustress through a change in perspective. For example, I felt anxious and stressed out about potentially ruining my chances to be with this awesome woman.
At first, the fear of being rejected by her put me in conflict with myself. I hesitated to share the insecurities I was feeling with her, in the moment. I wanted the kind of relationship where I could express myself freely, and be vulnerable without fear of her emotional withdrawal, but I wasn’t testing the waters.
Being the empathic woman that she is, she quickly picked up on this and expressed curiosity. Before long, I connected more deeply with my own desires and motivations and realized that I don’t have control over what she finds attractive in a man, but I do have control over the value I bring to the relationship, and the qualities I want people to find attractive in me: integrity, forbearance, perseverance, etc. I realized that the ability to honestly express my insecurities could be done in a way which shows the kind of strength you only get through vulnerability.
Instead of anxiously managing my insecurities, I brought them up with her to let her know where I was at. I came to feel nervous excitement (granted, she made it easy by being so compassionate). And it strengthened the connection we experienced, not only because I was more in tune with my own feelings, but also because she could relate and expressed insecurities of her own — we met on that level. We met in reality and thereby saw each other more clearly for the deep, beautifully imperfect people that we are.
It impresses the hell out of me when people are able to push through their anxieties and remain honest to themselves in order to achieve connection. It’s a beautiful paradox that there is such strength in vulnerability.
“We grow in relationship to good people”
My therapist had this phrase she would sometimes use — she would say that we “grow through relationship.” I had trouble understanding what she meant, but over time I’m seeing the wisdom in her words more and more.
Philosopher Stefan Molyneux once said “a relationship will make you more of what you already are.” Two happy people will create two really happy people. Two depressed people will make two really depressed people. With two good people, the sum is greater than their parts.
With my girlfriend and the evolution of our relationship, our connection gave me strength, and that strength again increased our connection. I am motivated to push through discomfort to reach the deeper connection on the other side, and that in turn increases my motivation to be even more true to myself.
Inner strength also describes the strength of the connection you have with yourself. If my anxieties are enough for me to check out emotionally with those close to me, then I don’t feel particularly strong. In that respect, confidence in myself is an aspect of inner strength.
Real Strength Is Going Deeper
In my early twenties, I lifted weights every day for something like 8 months. I took it really seriously, alternating the muscle groups I worked on each day, taking lots of protein, and complementing it with jogging and jump roping. I did it to pass the time and feel good about myself while I was chronically unemployed. (I had been pretty lanky up until that point).
This was the first time I’d heard the term “forbearance,” which, in the context of weight lifting meant the slow, deep reps in comparison to the quick, shallow reps that may develop nice looking muscle tone, but don’t build real strength. (That’s more for cardio). I chose to develop strength over tone.
That’s just my amateur understanding and could be wrong, but as an idea, I found this distinction fascinating and it really stuck with me. I think it works as a great analogy for describing inner strength, as well.
To give you an idea of what I mean, there is this funny trope in dramas where a character will be in denial about the depth of some pain they experience, and little by little, their emotional walls come down, they have a good cry and it’s over. No more processing is necessary. They just needed to let out all the pain like they were vomiting up bad sushi.
I find this funny because this was not my own experience of healing at all. God, I wish it was, but I had to revisit things over and over again from multiple angles in order to relax my defenses, not get all foggy, and be able to emotionally connect with my own past experiences. It’s tough fuckin’ work!
I don’t want to give you the impression that I’ve got huge excesses of inner strength, but I’ve been making a consistent and dedicated effort to working on myself most days for 6 years, and I can see things that people who are a little newer to therapy and self knowledge can’t. For example, I’ll be talking to someone who is describing a recent breakthrough they had in therapy, making important connections and experiencing long denied feelings, and they will talk about it in terms of being a thing they used to be dealing with, rather than just the beginning of a longer journey. This is like thinking you are stronger after one workout.
The approaches you have to living life are muscles that need a lot of exercise to become habit. And you become stronger faster if you keep going deeper and deeper. If you aren’t pushing the limits of your inner strength, you won’t get stronger.
Naturally, we lean more on our strengths in difficult moments, and that’s not always the best thing, especially if those strengths are maladaptive. Being great at making snap decisions and managing anxiety is not necessarily what you want in moments when you’re working with the darker parts of your nature, for example.
For the longest time, I had this habit of immediately looking for solutions as soon as overwhelming feelings would arise. In therapy, I would suddenly start feeling some powerful negative emotion and ask my therapist what to do, as if the feeling were a problem to be solved. She would simply respond with “you could just sit with the feeling [for longer than a half a second before trying to fix it],” which was the last thing I wanted to hear.
The prospect of continuing to experience intense disappointment for an unknown period of time was… distressing, but working new muscles groups is not easy. For me, it was necessary, even if I wasn’t totally aware of why at the time. That’s why I think inner strength requires connection with yourself and what is important. It requires vulnerability and persistence. It requires forbearance.
