Reading Ken Wilber's No Boundary and doing some of the exercises outlined there helped considerably.

Thanks, I'll try reading through that book. A comparison of Eastern and Western perspectives would be interesting in any case.

It's involved stuff like shifting my emotional utility function away from states of the world and towards my own behavior.

I also found Michael Vassar's comment enlightening:

"Pain is not suffering. Pain is just an attention signal. Suffering is when one neural system tells you to pay attention, and another says it doesn't want the state of the world to be like this."

"Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding" by Kahlil Gibran was life-changing for me. I interpreted it as whenever I am saddened by something, it's a signal that I need to face a truth about it. It helped in many aspects of my life; for example, in helping me to realize (at a level of emotional acceptance) that I can't force people to be or feel the way I want them to. But it it didn't seem to help in other cases, such as this one, where even after I accepted the truth of the situation ('yes, I understand this happens and it's part reality'), the pain didn't go away.

I think Michael's comment may be the other half of it. I know that child abuse causes me pain, so I will prevent it as I can, but find a detachment to be liberated from being distressed about what is beyond my control. There is also a comfort in affirming that I would change it if I could, as would others -- my emotional utility function has shifted from the actual state of reality towards approving of and finding a protected place for these values I have that I find are important to me.

It is the Serenity Prayer, I guess, from a fresh direction -- as this meditation is also the kind of thing that has been revisited so many times it loses its meaning.

I'll think about fitting this second piece into my thoughts and see if it helps in a practical way with my problem.