Emotional Suffering Is Optional
We’ve all been there. That heavy, immovable feeling of being stuck.
It might be…
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Stuck in old resentments or the trauma of the past.
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Stuck in a crippling fear of what the future holds.
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Stuck in a pattern of accepting less than you deserve in a relationship.
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Stuck just short of a goal, with all the desire but zero energy to carry it out.
The relief we seek often feels like it’s just one outside fix away – a new job, a different partner, or winning that legal battle. But here’s the clinical, good-humored truth: we spend a ton of energy trying to fix the outside world so we can feel better inside, and we get thwarted almost every time.
Even when we get the external win, the satisfaction is temporary. Why?
The problems are inside us, and there are two of them. The process of Transformational Life Coaching addresses both of these problems, which we will get into later.
Problem #1: You’re Stuck in The Past
The first problem with “stuckness” is our resistance to accept that a past event has already happened.
We get caught in a miserable thought loop, what psychologists call rumination:
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“I am never going to put myself in that situation again!”
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“If I see that person, I’m going to give her a piece of my mind.”
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“I wish I had never met that person.”
On the surface, these feel protective. But when that tape plays on repeat, and the emotional suffering continues unabated, you’re trapped. You are making decisions for your future based on a trauma that is already over.
The Trap: 100% Cost and 0% Benefit
Wishing and hoping the past could be different is a no-win scenario. It’s draining your emotional battery right now and giving you absolutely nothing in return. Every good therapist knows: we cannot change the past. Our suffering comes from our stubborn resistance to accept this reality.
Problem #2: The Unconscious Feelings Are Driving The Bus
The second problem is that we are largely unaware of the emotional charge – the unconscious turmoil – that’s driving the bus in our lives. We tell ourselves we’re acting logically, but we’re actually making emotionally charged decisions that often work to our detriment, day after day. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist, notes that about 70% of our behaviors are habitual, not intentional. We start our day in a pattern, not a plan.
The Mountain of Anxiety Metaphor
Imagine you are standing on a mountain of emotional “sedimentary rock.”
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Layer |
The Feeling |
Why It’s Not the Core Problem |
|
Top Layer |
ANXIETY (Jitters, doom scrolling, procrastination) |
It’s the most visible symptom. Yes, it stops you from doing important things, but it’s just the surface layer. |
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Middle Layer |
FEAR or ANGER (Crippling fear, consuming rage) |
These feel heavy, but they are still reactions to a past experience or a potential future situation. The fear of the future is often just the fear of the emotional experience of that future event. |
|
Bottom Layer |
SHAME or HUMILIATION (Rejection, despair, the belief that “I am basically bad”) |
This is the unintentional layer you’ve left behind. The person is unaware of this profound self-rejection, so the psyche creates relentless anxiety to avoid feeling the harsher, underlying emotions. |
The Good News: Emotional Suffering is Optional
I am going to use a word you don’t hear much in the medical field: cure. This emotional stuckness is quite curable. That is not to say that emotions and pain are optional. We have to experience those. But the prolonged suffering that can come from these difficult experiences? It’s optional.
In modern coaching and therapeutic models, we believe that emotional suffering is optional. Pain and hurt are part of the human experience, but getting stuck in the suffering is a choice – an unconscious, habitual choice, but a choice nonetheless.
Think of an animal in the wild. After a grave danger passes, a deer will often shake conclusively for a few minutes and then simply move on. They release the emotional charge, and the body returns to its naturally contented state. Humans can do this too. We just need to stop identifying with the emotion and start releasing the charge.
The Real Fix: Making the Unconscious Conscious
The best way to liberate yourself is to commit to a process of ‘making the unconscious conscious.’ This is difficult to do alone because, by definition, you’re not conscious of the problem! This is where specialized help comes in.
In my practice, Transformational Life Coaching is like an archeological dig:
- Start at the Story: We begin with your conscious experience.
- Dig a Layer: We quickly go underneath to the first emotional layer (Anxiety/Anger/Fear), identify the charge, face it, and move on.
- Dig Deeper: Another layer (Shame/Grief/Despair) will surface. We acknowledge it, show it the door, and those naturally contented, peaceful emotions come to the surface.
This transformation for a negative event can be permanent. The event still happened, but it is no longer a problem for you. That is what real healing looks like.
Don’t Let Stuck Identities Wreck Your Life
The deepest layer of stuckness is in your stuck identities.
These identities come from a process that is akin to what psychologists know happen in trauma. The science is clear: Trauma is not something that happened to you. An event is not the trauma. The trauma is the way you interpreted and came to define yourself as a result of that awful thing happening.
These are subconscious, ridiculous titles we pick up to survive:
- “The Inferior Person”
- “The Unlovable Person”
- “The Hopeless Person”
- “The Lone Ranger”
These identities are an ancient survival mechanism. For example, “the unlovable person” identity often allows a child to believe their rejecting caregiver is still a ‘good person,’ which makes the world feel safer. They serve a purpose, but they cause havoc in adult life.
The Ultimate Takeaway:
They are not who you are! They are not real.
These attached identities have no basis in reality. They are pure figments of imagination.
How do you deal with them? It is profoundly simple: Hear them out.
You can use the power of ‘paradoxical intention,’ also known as ‘feel it to heal it.’ This is the core of effective trauma therapies like Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and it’s what we do in Transformational Coaching.
We go toward the thing you were avoiding.
If you are ready to stop circling the same old pain, release the emotional charge, and start living your best possible life, a life where your trauma is just a story and not your identity, then you are ready for a corrective experience.
You have read about the source of your stuckness—the resistance to accept the past and the emotional unconscious that dictates your decisions. You have also seen the promise: emotional suffering is optional. This is not a self-help platitude; it is a clinical and transformative truth. The work of releasing these stuck identities and old emotional charges is the greatest act of liberation you will ever undertake.
The person you want to be – the healthy, confident, and effective individual living with purpose and intention – is not waiting for some external victory or a new partner. That person is already here, simply buried beneath the layers of old emotional sediment.
By committing to the process of Making the Unconscious Conscious and having the courage to Hear Them Out (those old, stuck identities), you are taking a permanent, transformative step. The practice of Transformational Life Coaching goes to the root of both of these important sources of healing to help you find lasting peace and personal fulfillment. If this is the kind of transformation you are seeking, click on ‘Book a Discovery’ meeting for a complimentary introduction to this process to see if it is a fit for you.
You can deliberately choose to stop circling the same old pain. Your trauma is not your identity, and the story of your past does not have to be the script for your future. The profound, lasting freedom you seek is an internal shift, not an external one. When you release the emotional charge of what has already happened, you become a person free to live your life with a deep, unshakable contentment, fully present, and truly at peace.
