The Overlooked Payoff to Suffering Is Compassion

I remember the day I had my first miscarriage. I was heartbroken. And I remember the day I had my second miscarriage, only a few months later. Both experiences left me utterly shattered. I had to fight to get out of bed. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I barely mustered the energy to go to work. My grief overwhelmed me in a way that made it hard to show up every day.

Many people think of the holidays and anniversaries as hard times for grief, which they are, but the new year brings its own level of suffering. That’s because the new year is filled with expectations, new starts, and the cultural trend to be “better” versions of ourselves. But for those of us facing grief, it’s an especially lonely and hard time to experience that grief. I had my second miscarriage on New Year’s Day, and I raged at the optimism everyone felt this time of year while I was left in the dust of loss.

Amid my own grief following those miscarriages, the question I asked myself the most was the same question every suffering person asks: “What is the point of my suffering?”

The question of human pain and suffering has long been tackled by greater minds than me—philosophers, theologians, researchers. Suffering is so painstakingly awful, but it’s an unavoidable part of the “being human” equation. Because of its universality, we are all left to grapple with the “why” of suffering at some point in our lives.

While I will leave the question of why we suffer to the spiritual sages, I do want to tackle the what of suffering. What is it that we gain on the other side? Or, more importantly, what’s the best thing we can gain on the other side?

Experts and non-experts alike, such as parents, friends, and others, will often respond by saying that suffering builds character or is simply a part of life. Perhaps one of the most common responses to this question is that we become more resilient versions of ourselves.

While that may be true, as someone who has both experienced grief and who works with those who are grieving as an associate professor and researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, I think the better, truer, and most powerful answer to the questions surrounding suffering is that it can make any of us more compassionate versions of ourselves.

But research clearly demonstrates it’s not suffering that produces resilience; it’s how you frame your suffering that produces resilience. This is true in multiple life domains and with various types of stressors, including trauma and financial and economic struggles.

While resilience is an admirable outcome of suffering, one that has been linked in prior research to psychological well-being, it may not be the greatest benefit one can gain from going through suffering. One major limitation of the resilience equation is that this outcome is entirely focused on the self.

It makes sense to focus on the self in a society obsessed with autonomy, self-improvement, and control. Still, this focus on self ultimately limits the true potential of suffering to transform us. In other words, this focus on resilience overlooks what may be the greatest benefit to suffering: gaining compassion toward others.

Think about a time when you lost someone or experienced suffering. The people who are often the best at supporting you in a meaningful way are those who went through something similar. While I received support from many loved ones in my life following my miscarriages, it was those who had experienced miscarriage themselves that had such immense insight and wisdom into how to support me.

They knew what to say, they knew how to sit with me in my pain, and they knew how to offer me hope without overlooking all the pain I was in at the time. Any time we experience grief or loss, those who show up the most have often experienced grief or loss themselves.

Supporting this notion, one prior study by researchers at Northeastern University found that past adversity among individuals is associated with increased empathy and feelings of compassion for those who are in need. That feeling of compassion is often linked to helping individuals in practical ways through actions like charitable giving or helping strangers.

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In another recent research study by scholars at the University of Alabama, individuals who had personally experienced a loss scored higher in the ability to take psychological—not just physical—pain into account, which means they were more empathic and compassionate people.

Of course, there is a risk of taking in others’ suffering and then experiencing burnout, as well as what is referred to as “compassion collapse.” This type of collapse means you hit a wall when it comes to being able to feel empathy or compassion for others who are suffering. For example, many of us face this today as we watch TV news and let in the images of war, violence, and social injustices occur to people we feel compassion for but can’t help.

However, scientists have studied this phenomenon and found that this typically happens to those who have experienced relatively little adversity in their lives. Individuals who have experienced greater adversity or loss in their lives, it turns out, remain compassionate towards others’ suffering. These individuals are also more willing to donate money to those suffering.

The takeaway is that the greatest payoff of suffering is not resilience but compassion. This includes compassion for ourselves as well as for others who are suffering.

The reason compassion is arguably the better payoff to suffering than resilience is two-fold. First, compassion improves both yourself and your life as well as the lives of others. Second, compassion stands to improve your life in vastly more expansive and far-reaching ways than resilience.

Resilience is linked to general psychological well-being and the ability to cope. But higher levels of compassion are linked with higher levels of positive affect, well-being, social support, life satisfaction, health, optimism, and even cognitive well-being. These effects on well-being are so strong that they last even when being measured 15 years after first being assessed. In addition to improving multiple domains in your own life, compassion is also linked to being more likely to help others, donate, and reduce the suffering and pain of others.

We are currently living in what feels like a cold and lonely world. Increased conflict, social isolation, and despair are threatening most of us right now. The situation has become so severe that the U.S. surgeon general recently released a report on loneliness with a clear call to action to improve Americans’ social engagement. This combination of suffering and loneliness forces us to find ways to make our own sufferings pave the way to compassion, where we will find better and happier versions of ourselves all while helping a neighbor or stranger.

So many of us have suffered greatly since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, and we continue to suffer amidst constant war, climate change, and economic hardship. All of that unresolved pain and suffering holds the chance to form us into more compassionate versions of ourselves, which is probably the best and only way out of all this suffering. The point is that our suffering is neither needless nor wasted, but rather, it comes with clear payoffs if we let it.

Suffering propels us to become better versions of ourselves. We often become stronger and more resilient, yes, but we also become more compassionate and better able to help others when suffering knocks on their door. So, if you are suffering as we enter into this new year, fear not. You are not alone, and your pain is not wasted; it's meant to build the bridge to help another who is suffering as well.