In Mental Reality, especially in the chapter “Bitter and Sweet,” I approached the nature of suffering and its relation to pleasure from a neuroscientific and philosophical perspective. This text is not a continuation of that path, nor is it meant to redefine the same problem. What matters here is not suffering itself, but the way it is met in everyday life — what we do when it appears, how a temporary reaction becomes a reliable route, and how that route, through repetition, turns into a stable pattern.
To see this process, one has to pause on a word that forms the foundation of the text. In English, reducing refers to lowering the intensity of something. When we say we reduce suffering, we are speaking of a decrease in pressure. But with the addition of a single re within the same linguistic field, the meaning turns over. Reproducing no longer speaks of lessening, but of being made again. The same linguistic movement, the same reversal of meaning, takes place in lived experience. We bring suffering down along one path while simultaneously reactivating it along another. Something subsides, yet that very thing continues elsewhere.
In this text I use two terms: subsiding and re-pressurizing. Subsiding is the moment in which the pressure lessens and the situation appears more bearable. Re-pressurizing is the continuation of that same pressure on another level. These are not two separate stages. In many cases, at the very moment one occurs, the other has already begun. What is felt is the subsiding; what remains imperceptible is the re-pressurizing.
The examples are not for judging behaviors. Nothing is to be condemned or recommended. They only show how suffering changes its path.
Someone smokes to reduce pressure. In the moment, tension drops and the body feels regulated. At the same time, the body enters the path of dependency, thresholds shift, and the need for repetition is formed. A suffering has subsided, and at the same time it has been reactivated in the body, in the cost, in the smell that remains in the space, and in the anxieties that follow.
Someone swallows their anger so that relational tension does not rise. On the surface, calm is preserved. If this pattern is repeated, bitterness, coldness, and sudden eruptions appear through other routes. The opposite follows the same logic. Aggression lowers the pressure in the moment and distributes other sufferings across bodies and relationships. Two opposing reactions, a single mechanism.
Infidelity, used to fill an inner void, removes suffering from one point and places it in another. Trust disappears, the relationship collapses, and this distrust continues into later relations. Suffering does not stop; only its field changes.
The same pattern is repeated in the family. Violence used to discharge pressure is stored in the child’s body and mind and returns in later years as a “natural” reaction. What has worked remains.
On a broader scale, insecurity can be reduced by producing the insecurity of another. Violence can be used as an instrument of calming. Here too the logic is the same: the reduction of pressure at one point and its return at another, from one body to other bodies, from inside borders to outside them.
To follow this process to the end, the example of alcohol can be held. A person is anxious: muscular tension, restlessness, mental rumination. With alcohol the body loosens, the mind slows, and the situation becomes temporarily bearable. This is subsiding. The next day lethargy, low energy, and dullness appear. With repeated use, the body enters the path of dependency and what was a temporary solution becomes a pattern. Anxiety in its initial form has subsided, yet it has returned in the form of need, agitation, and new pressures. This return does not remain at the individual level. Conflict, harmful decisions, or the danger directed toward others are the continuation of the same path. This is not exaggeration for effect; these are the everyday events of the world.
In many situations suffering is neither so intense that it stops everything nor so mild that it can be ignored. It is in this middle zone that subsiding works. The immediate reduction of pressure is enough for the process to appear successful.
But the reduction of pressure is not resolution. It is closer to the temporary silencing of a symptom. If this silencing is repeated, it becomes a route. Each time suffering subsides through the same reaction, the distance between suffering and reaction becomes shorter. The reaction is activated sooner and the question is postponed — to the point where it may not form at all.
Subsiding often has a reasonable face. It can resemble self-control, staying calm, or managing. For this reason it remains unseen. Calm is experienced as a sign of resolution, not as a sign of postponement.
What was at first a temporary response, through repetition becomes a pattern — a pattern that operates without a name and without the need for decision. A significant part of these patterns is formed in the early years of life, through observing and experiencing what reduces pressure.
In this sense, subsiding and re-pressurizing are not two separate movements. They are a single process occurring simultaneously. What is visible is the decrease of pressure; what remains hidden is the continuation of its movement along other paths.
As long as this pattern is not seen, each time suffering appears the same route is repeated — not out of ill will and not out of absolute unawareness, but because this route is the most accessible one.
The question of this text is how an act that subsides suffering simultaneously activates the path of its re-pressurizing, and how this process, through repetition, passes beyond the individual level and continues in relationships, in other bodies, and in shared fields, without the moment of the reversal of meaning ever being seen.