Our Sages said, if a person sees affliction coming, he should run to the Beis Medrash and the affliction will run away. Even though it is harder to learn with affliction, just like a person who is so sick he cannot take his medicine must make the effort to overcome the difficulty so his sickness won’t get worse, if a person does not strengthen himself and learn despite the hardship, he will never recover. And no one else can help him out of it, as our Sages said, ‘If I don’t do for myself, who will do for me?’ So a person should exert extra effort to learn in times of hardship, and through his learning the hardship will cease, he should trust Hashem to get him through it, and eventually the afflictions will go away.