Unnecessary Bracing: What is Preparatory Suffering?

As a well regarded psychotherapist and trauma specialist, I have worked directly with patients in treatment programs for complex and developmental trauma recovery since 2003. I have been tracking our patterns and adaptive strategies in my direct practice for well over 2 decades. I also excel at forecasting all sorts of potential outcomes in my work with organizations. These neural pathways were established in my brain a long time ago and worn into reflex from a lifetime of observing, anticipating, and preparing. While this skill allows me to totally kick ass as your shrink or clinical supervisor, it can make me a little wacky in my personal life if I am not mindful of its influence.  

Those of us in the Big T Trauma Club imagine, rehearse, and emotionally inhabit a plethora of future outcomes as if doing so will protect us. We believe—often without realizing it—that if we imagine hard enough, vividly enough, painfully enough about what all could go wrong, then we won’t be caught off guard when the terrible things come to pass. We’ll be prepared. We’ll be safer. We’ll outsmart fate, much like Oedipus. Sadly, things didn’t work out so great for him and let’s not forget that Chicken Little ended up in a fox’s den. 

This is the squanderous and painfully ineffective practice of preparatory suffering.

Preparatory suffering is the habit driven by the belief that if I imagine every possible thing that could go wrong—if I rehearse the loss, the rejection, the disappointment, the catastrophe in vivid detail—then I won’t be blindsided when it happens. I’ll be ready. I’ll be less hurt. It sounds logical. It even sounds adaptive. Trauma taught many of us that danger comes without warning, that safety is fragile, that homeostasis can be revoked without notice. Of course our nervous systems want a head start.

What actually happens is this: we live through the worst‑case scenario emotionally, physiologically, and relationally—before anything has even happened. We play out these worst case scenarios vividly in our minds and in our pleading bids to warn others. At this advanced level of imagining, our bodies don’t know the difference between a feared future and a present threat. So our nervous systems mobilize, they deploy physiological responses in our bodies as if the danger is here now. Our muscles tighten. Our sleep erodes. Our pleasure dissipates. We brace.

But here's the fallacy in this approach: If I suffer now, then I will reduce my suffering later. The fallacy at the heart of preparatory suffering lies in the idea that anticipation equals protection. And there’s a cruel irony here: by suffering in advance, we often miss the actual present moment—the moments that are neutral, or even good. We’re so busy rehearsing loss that we can’t fully inhabit connection. We’re so focused on what could fall apart that we can’t feel what’s holding strong.

Tricking your body into bracing for pain in advance of something that may not even happen does not prevent pain.  What functionally ends up happening is the extension of the lifespan of our pain. It stretches suffering across time, turning one speculative moment of hurt into a prolonged state of vigilance and distress. Instead of pain being a useful cue that we respond to if and when it arrives, it becomes something we carry constantly, in an attempt to quash fear. 

And then—often—the feared outcome doesn’t even occur. So we’ve paid the full emotional price without receiving the catastrophic “event” we were preparing for. And we humans are arrogant. We like to be right, even when it is to our disadvantage. So instead of relaxing into relief, we double down on our suffering, with less internal resources and more exhaustion, to prove ourselves right by redirecting our attention to the next thing on its way to trash our day. 

Preparatory suffering doesn’t prevent pain.
It extends it.

What makes this pattern especially tricky is that it feels useful. Many of us learned—explicitly or implicitly—that optimism was dangerous and relaxation was irresponsible. Trauma didn’t teach us how to prepare—it taught us how to brace. Bracing feels active. It feels useful, like we are doing something. It gives us the illusion that we are safer if we are not a “sitting duck.” It feels evidently superior to hope, which can feel naïve or dangerous. Bracing says, At least I won’t be caught off guard. 

But preparedness and suffering are not the same thing.

We can plan without catastrophizing.
We can orient to risk without living inside it.
We can be thoughtful without being self‑punishing.

True preparation is practical. It happens in connection with our beloveds. Preparatory suffering happens in the lonely reactions of our fried nervous systems. One builds capacity. The other drains it. Even if the worst does happen, suffering in advance does not make us more capable of handling it. In fact, it usually leaves us more depleted. We arrive at the moment already tired, already frayed, already grieving something that hadn’t yet occurred. Screaming “I told you so!”

Letting go of preparatory suffering doesn’t mean becoming reckless or unprepared. It doesn’t mean pretending bad things won’t happen. It means recognizing that we are allowed to respond to pain when it is real, rather than living inside it before it exists.

It means trusting that if something difficult happens in the future, we will meet it with the skills, support, and resilience we have then—not the fear we have now.

So when I notice myself spiraling into the future, I try to pause and ask: Am I preparing—or am I rehearsing pain? That question alone doesn’t stop the habit. But it creates a little space. And in that space, there’s often another option: grounding into what’s actually happening right now. Naming uncertainty without rehearsing devastation. Humbling ourselves into the wonder of the unknown. 

We don’t need to imagine every possible ending to earn the right to be surprised by a better one. And we don’t need to carry pain preemptively to show that we’re responsible. Being a human is already hard enough. Sometimes the most radical act for us members of the Big T Trauma Club is not preparation—but presence.