Ep 204 Pain & Suffering

Episode Notes:

Join me today as I discuss the the difference between pain and suffering.  It is important topic and one that must be include differentiating between the two.  When you know the difference between pain and suffering you can begin to take back your power and make the changes you most want in life. 

In This Episode:

• Difference between clean pain and dirty pain
• What you can do to reduce suffering in your life
• 50/50 of emotions in life
• The problem with resisting emotional pain
• Socialization of stifling emotions
• The benefit of feelings 
• Learning from “painful” feelings
• www.michellebourquecoaching.com – Download free guide to not feel so overwhelmed in your career

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Episode Transcript: (Transcribed by OtterAI with minimal edits)

Michelle Bourque 0:01 You are listening to the richer time podcast and I’m your host certified life coach Michelle Arnold Bourque, and today’s episode, I’m discussing pain and suffering.

 

Welcome to the It’s Your TimePodcast, the podcast. We’re busy professionals, like you get the practical solutions and support you need to gain control of your schedule. So you can strive to be the best in your career, but without the stress and overwhelm. If you’re looking to increase your energy and decrease your stress, you are in the right place.

 

Michelle Bourque 0:36 Hello, hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast friends. Oh, do I have a fun topic for you today? Pain and suffering? Sign me up, right? Well, here’s the thing. Pain and suffering are two different things. Pain and fact can be physical. So acute, chronic neuropathic. nociceptive. Ridiculous. That’s the corporate world I live in. And then there is emotional pain, things like sadness and sorrow, grief, maybe loneliness, panic, shame. And I would even say there are such things as loss pain. Like, if I tried to change my life, take the new job or leave a relationship, there is a fear of maybe losing money, or status, or even people in our lives. And then there is also process pain, which is more in line with the things we tell ourselves like, I don’t know how to do it, or it’s going to be hard, or I have no control over my time. That was a big one for me for years. And then there’s outcome pain, when we tell ourselves things like, it won’t work. I’ve never been able to do it now. On the spectrum? Well, to be honest, it’s a spectrum, I’m just really making up for you to visualize and think about, okay, so the loss process, and outcome, pain is closest to what I call suffering. Because those are all things that we are telling ourselves things like, it won’t work, I don’t know how I will lose my friends. It’s the stuff we tell ourselves that are basically lies. And often when we’re saying those things, we really have no idea of what is going to happen, because we haven’t even taken the first step to do it. And I will see this sometimes on console calls. Or maybe it’s you right now, maybe you’ve been listening here for a while. And you have that whisper that says that you want to sign up for a call. But you keep telling yourself something along the lines of it won’t matter, I don’t have the time to do that. I won’t be able to change, lies, lies, lies. I want to offer that you can also play the Equal Opportunity game here, folks, and just allow yourself the same amount of time to think about how it could be different this time. Remember, your brains job is to keep you safe, and comfortable. People don’t like change. I mean, sidenote, have you ever been at the register, where people can just leave a penny? It’s like, nobody wants to change. They all want the dollar bills, right?

Michelle Bourque 3:36 We want the big goals. But we don’t want to have to make the changes in order to get to those goals. It doesn’t work that way. My friends, we have to be willing to make the change. Maybe for you, it’s starting a new job. I see a lot of women telling themselves, they aren’t quite ready. Most likely, this is also a lie. Here’s the thing. A lot of times we especially women think we need to have all these so called boxes checked before we move forward. And we tell ourselves, we don’t have them all ready to go. But I have seen time and time again, that women sometimes don’t think back on all of the things that you have done and consider how any part of any experience could help you qualify. And you know what else? Sometimes you just have to toss your hat and the damn ring, right? And try you never know. One thing I do know from my own experience is when you do toss your hat in, you at least learn more about the position or the opportunity. And then you get to decide from that point. If it’s even something that you really still want. And you learn from the process. You connect with people that you may have never had the chance to in the past. So Don’t believe the stories your brain wants to tell you. Now, I’m going to come back to the end of the spectrum that is suffering. But I first want to take a step and look at some of the emotional pain around feelings such as grief, sadness, sorrow, this is what we sign up for in our human experience. If we’re signing up for this thing called life, we are going to get all of the big emotions, we don’t get happiness without knowing grief. And somewhere along the line, we have been told that we should be Oh, so positive. Sure, I’m all about being positive, but not the toxic positivity that I sometimes see. And I’ve said this before, it can often give us the opposite effect. Now, a lot of us did not grow up being taught that it was okay to feel feelings. Honestly, I would say, it wasn’t until a couple of years into my coaching practice, that I really allowed myself first, to even learn about feelings and emotions, and then actually allow myself to feel all of them. And you know, I haven’t died so far. So I guess I’ll keep going. Trust me, if I can do it, you can do it. Because emotions, honestly are here to tell you something. I for one, also want to feel grief, when for example, my dog dies. I want to be angry when I hear that kids are being abused. And I think you might be called a sociopath. If you think that you always have to be happy, happy, happy around such topics. So it’s okay to have the pain. And we call that pain, the grief, the sadness, the sorrow, that is clean pain, it’s the pain that tends to be unavoidable. The grief of losing a loved one, maybe the sadness of leaving a job, that tightness in your chest when you hear bad news, we can process that we know it’s likely to be expected in certain circumstances. And that’s Oh, okay. Now suffering, also sometimes called dirty pain, is essentially that extra layer of pain that we experience when we try to avoid the initial clean pain. Again, this goes back to how many of us have been socialized think about what we sometimes do for crying kids. Now. Don’t get me wrong. I would not put grandkids on the top of my most favorite notes, but kids cry, and sometimes for good reason I hear so what do we tend to do? We often try to stifle them like,

 

Michelle Bourque 7:53 oh, wait here here wants some candy. Stop crying? Or oh, wait, you can have the toy just stop crying. Crying is o que? I guess. Except in baseball, right? Isn’t that the same? There’s no crying in baseball. Even that’s a lie. You guys, have you seen some of these dudes when they lose the World Series or the Super Bowl for that matter? It’s okay to cry. I digress. Back to the dirty pain, the suffering kind of pain, this tends to last longer than clean pain, because it comes from us thinking things should be different. That person should not have died, that partner should not be acting that way. Your parents should understand you more. Your siblings shouldn’t just expect you to live life like they do. Or telling yourself, you shouldn’t have to take those calls after work hours, or telling yourself something like, I hate my job. I have to stay here. Listen, you never have to stay anywhere. That could be a job or a relationship. There is something that is benefiting you by staying in this moment. And when you tell yourself, you don’t want to be there. It’s a bit like torture, maybe find why you are there. For example, right now, this job pays the mortgage. And I want us to have a roof over our heads. Really watch that. Again, give yourself equal airtime to what the opposite is that you’re currently telling yourself. There are lots of options to be thinking. Because the fact is telling yourself that you don’t want to be somewhere can be super draining. It’s the thinking that fights with what is and Byron Katie talks about this idea. She says when you argue with reality, you will lose but only 100% of the time. And the other place that I see suffering is when we try to avoid the pain. So when we’re are trying to fight with what is number one. And number two, when we’re trying to escape and avoid the clean pain with external immediate distractions, things like the extra wine, the extra food, the extra porn, the extra social media, the extra shopping, all of it, any of the actions that double the clean pain, and add a little kick of dopamine. And makes us think that in that moment, we feel better, until we don’t. If you don’t process that clean pain, it will keep coming back. Remember, I mentioned it’s there to tell you something. So instead of reaching for the escape, which leads to an extra layer of suffering, when for example, maybe you beat yourself up the next morning for having that extra glass of wine, I want you to take a breath. And just get curious. In that moment. It can be as easy as asking yourself, What is this feeling? I’m trying to avoid? Just name it. It gives you some authority over it and simply do a body scan head to toe. What am I feeling? Remember, feelings are a release of chemicals. So you might feel our racing heart, or sweaty palms, a tight chest, maybe your headache. And usually, that will only last about 90 seconds. So name it name, what you are feeling physically, and just ask, What is this feeling here to tell me? Or what is this feeling here to teach me? I know, it can sound a little bit woowoo. But I’m telling you, the more I research and do this work on myself, I see the changes that can be made. And of course, then I know that I need to come here and share it with you. Now, one caveat here, let me be clear. I am talking day to day experiences for this podcast, which is geared towards obviously work life integration, and how you spend your time being able to excel in your career without the stress and overwhelm. This is not a podcast on trauma. That is a very different arena and one that would benefit from a trauma coach or therapy. Michelle Bourque 12:29 I’m talking about like the 1000 paper cuts, we die by each day suffering from the way that we speak to ourselves. I want us to work on feeling the feelings, getting through them learning and moving to the next level of your life. That’s exactly what happens you know, when you are willing to feel the feelings, the fear, the doubt, the uncertainty, and just keep going. Well that my friend is called courage and net is what you need to create and live the life you most want. Now, if you are feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to start, I want you to head to Michellebourquecoaching.com Remember, Bourque is B OURQU E and then just click on get started. To begin, you can download the free guide, I will add you to the email list so you will also receive weekly tips and tools. The guide is three simple steps to excel in your career without the stress and overwhelm and then just get to work on it. I’ve developed it to be simple and easy to use. And of course, if you have any questions just reach out to me directly. I will personally reply contact at Michellebourquecoaching.com Okay friends, that’s what I have for you today. Let’s circle back next week but for now make it a great day take care Michelle Bourque 14:11 Did you know you can take this work to a deeper level with me one on one. Go to Michellebourquecoaching.com and click on get started to begin