We have turned our pain into a permanent identity

You are sitting in the back of the church, or perhaps at a mahogany desk in a high-rise, and you are drowning, but you keep paddling because you were told that to be a strong person of the soil (a dutiful Caribbean daughter or a resilient son of the diaspora) you must bear the cross until your back breaks.

We have been conditioned to believe that suffering is a spiritual merit badge, a necessary down payment for a crown we might never wear. We carry the migration pressure, the family expectations, and the heavy weight of what people will say like a wet wool coat in a tropical heatwave.

Most of us are swimming in circles, exhausted, waiting for a salvation we don’t truly believe is coming. We are like the rats in that 1950’s study, swimming for 15 minutes before giving up and sinking because we think 15 minutes is our limit. I am here to tell you, as someone who listens to the council of Dr. Amos Wilson, that your limit is a lie. When those same rats were rescued, dried off, and put back in the water, they didn’t just swim for another hour, they swam for 60 hours. They got a new belief. They believed that if they persisted, they could be saved.

The problem in our community is the identity foreclosure we have accepted. We say, “I am just a person who struggles with my nerves,” or “This is just how our family is.” We have turned our pain into a permanent identity, but pain is data. Suffering, however, is the story we tell ourselves about that pain. You might be in pain because the migration was hard, or the divorce was loud, but you are suffering because you believe you are “Impossible to please,” or “Not good enough” for the life you actually want.

As a writer, I start with the end in mind; I want you to stop being a sheep to blind faith or toxic tradition and start using your beliefs as tools. Your brain is designed to keep you safe by doing exactly what you have always done. It wants you to stay in that familiar, miserable water because at least you have not drowned yet.

To break this, you must apply Inquiry Based Stress Reduction. When you feel that familiar disquietude, or the urge to vent about how your mother is too judgmental, or your boss is a devil, stop. Venting only encodes the negative belief further. Instead, ask yourself the four liberating questions: Is it true? Is it absolutely true? Who do you become when you believe it, and who would you be without it?

Then, do the turnaround. If you believe “My community is holding me back,” try on the opposite: “I am holding my community back” or “I am holding myself back.” It sounds like hocus-pocus until you realize that your brain currently processes 11 million bits of information per second, but your conscious mind only catches 50 bits. You are literally choosing to see the 50 bits that make you a victim.

Every story needs stakes, and the stakes here are your very life. If you don’t change the map you are using, you will never find the treasure, no matter how hard you walk. You don’t need generic advice to just talk more. You need to understand that your beliefs are not objective truths; they are hammers and saws. If the hammer you’re using, the one that says, “I must suffer to be holy,” is smashing your fingers, put it down and pick up a liberating belief, “It doesn’t get easier; I just get stronger.”

After reading this, you are the one who understands that your labels are just markers on a map, not a cage of your own creation. You become a strategic curator of your own perception, moving from a victim of how things are to a master of how I see them.

Love yourself enough to give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Stop swimming until you drown; start swimming because you know you are built for 60 hours and beyond.