Things we do that prolong our mental and emotional suffering

When we navigate through life, we come across situations that cause suffering in us. Be it physical, mental or emotional, suffering is inevitable, but the way we deal with it is in our control. “Emotional suffering is an inevitable part of being human. But just because it’s inevitable doesn’t mean it needs to be prolonged. Our suffering is what we make of it. If we choose to let the suffering define us or allow suffering to come and go,” wrote Therapist Divya Robin as she explained how emotional and mental suffering could be addressed, without making it prolonged and stretched over a longer period of time.

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Divya shared a few ways by which we prolong our mental and emotional suffering – this further affects us:

Waiting for others to change: We often hope that the other person will change, and the situation will finally become favourable for us. This creates the sense of waiting in us and the feeling of not being in control. We should instead learn to be accountable for our own actions and l=move on.

Staying miserable: Often we are stuck in miserable relationships that are toxic and harmful for us in many ways. Instead of choosing to have the difficult conversation and leaving the unhealthy space, we try to stay back and wait for things to change. This makes us suffer more than we need.

Waiting for someone else to understand: We often feel that we deserve an apology from the other person for the hurt that they have caused. Sometimes we also wait for the other person to understand our pain. This further makes us suffer for a longer time.

Denying our emotions: We push our own emotions far below in the priority list and try to keep others as the priority. This makes us feel unwanted and we are not able to address our own needs.

Tolerating patterns of abuse: When we know that we are in a toxic environment and we refuse to take a stand for ourselves, we prolong the pain we are facing.

Refusing to speak our mind: Sometimes, in order to please everyone around us, we speak of things that they want to hear instead of the things that we believe in.

Avoiding reality: We start to see things in black and white and try to avoid the reality of the situation just because we are scared that we will not be able to handle it.