Emotional Suffering

You feel sad. Then you decide you shouldn’t feel sad. You have a good life, so you tell yourself you have no right to feel this way.

Now you have the sadness and the shame about being sad. You are in pain about your pain.

That is the emotional suffering I want to help you understand. I’m not teaching you to eliminate all emotional pain. I’m teaching you to stop adding suffering to the pain of being human.

There is a huge difference. Trying to get rid of every negative feeling can be the very thing that creates more suffering.

Why avoiding pain doesn’t solve it

Our brains are wired to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. That helped us survive. But in our modern emotional lives, constantly avoiding discomfort keeps us from growing and living fully.

Pain, discomfort, and negative emotion will be half of your life. When you argue with that, you suffer.

You tell yourself the pain is wrong, that you should be happy, or that something has gone terribly wrong because you feel bad. You resist the experience instead of allowing it.

Accepting the negative half of life doesn’t mean you love being in pain. It means you understand that pain belongs in a human life, and you can learn to process it.

When you stop fighting the fact that it exists, you can release the resistance that makes it harder to move forward.

The Model isn’t a tool for being happy all the time

When people learn that thoughts create feelings, they sometimes ask why we don’t simply change every painful thought.

The question assumes that the goal is to get out of pain. But that isn’t the purpose of the Model.

I’m not teaching you to constantly manipulate your thoughts so you can feel happy every moment. I’m teaching you to be aware of what you think, understand how it creates your experience, and recognize pain as part of growing and being alive.

There are things in the world you don’t want to feel happy about. You want to feel grief, horror, or sadness about some experiences. Being human includes that.

You can feel the pain without also insisting you shouldn’t have it. That is where you stop adding the suffering.

You don’t have to achieve your worth

A student told me he had wanted to achieve goals so he could feel worthy. After learning this work, he understood he could feel worthy without the accomplishments. Then he wondered whether he should still pursue the goals.

The goal could still be valid. What needed to change was the order.

He had expected to achieve the goal and then feel worthy. Instead, he could recognize his worth and pursue the goal from that place. The process would help him evolve, but the result wouldn’t manufacture his worth.

You have always been 100 percent worthy. Money, beauty, thinness, and other people’s opinions don’t increase or decrease that.

A brand-new coach isn’t worth less as a person because nobody knows their name yet. Making millions won’t make them more worthy than they are now.

Believing you need to earn your worth is one of the ways you create unnecessary suffering.

External success can’t settle an internal argument

A friend told me he had believed making a lot of money would prove something to the kids who bullied him. Success would show them he wasn’t what they had said he was.

But buying cars and houses didn’t compensate for feeling unworthy. When you spend to prove your worth, you can keep needing another display of success—and reduce your net worth in the process.

The external achievement doesn’t change your belief about yourself for you.

Other people are no better at creating your happiness. If you need someone to behave differently before you can feel better, you are depending on something you can’t control.

The world, your family, or your community may not comply with your idea of how they should be. Comparing what is with the version you think should exist creates suffering.

You can become aware of that comparison and the thoughts driving it.

There isn’t a future where you stop being human

Another way we suffer is believing life will finally be better somewhere else, or after the next achievement.

I asked my son when he thought he would arrive in golf. He said when he became a professional. A year earlier, his answer had been when he played Division One.

He had reached that goal, and his brain was already considering the next one.

That’s what our brains do. Reaching a goal doesn’t turn you into someone who no longer experiences discomfort or desires something else.

You’re still human when you get there. Understanding that lets you pursue a goal for the growth and creation, rather than demanding it deliver permanent happiness.

Look for the pain you are adding

Ask yourself whether you are in pain about your pain.

Are you upset that life includes negative emotion? Are you ashamed because you have opportunities and things you wanted, yet still feel bad? Are you telling yourself you should be happier than you are?

Those thoughts can make you feel alone and abnormal. You may suffer silently because you think your feelings aren’t justified.

Start with awareness instead. Look at what your brain is doing. Notice the original feeling and the thoughts you add about having it.

You can recognize your worth, understand how thoughts create feelings, and practice processing emotion. You don’t have to make the presence of pain mean something is wrong with you.

Make room for the whole experience

When you understand that life is 50-50, you can stop arguing with the negative half. You can still feel pain. You can still be uncomfortable. You simply don’t have to be angry that you are having a human experience.

This releases energy that suffering consumes. Instead of trying to force the world to comply, you can manage your mind and decide how to show up.

My work is about helping people stop unnecessary emotional suffering. We aren’t going to eradicate pain. We can learn to experience it without fear and without adding another layer of rejection.

You are already worthy. You are allowed to be human. Start there, and let yourself feel what is here without making it a problem that you feel it.