Stop Trying to Feel Better

The Cure for Pain: Part 4

This article is part of a series. It stands on its own, but for more context, check out the other parts here:

Part 1: Shadow Goals: When Self-Improvement Becomes Self-destructive
Part 2: Self-Help Weapons: Why Your Tools Aren’t Working
Part 3: When the Way Becomes the Obstacle

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When we imagine our “best self,“ it doesn’t include our shame, grief, selfishness, loneliness. In fact, much of self-development seeks to find a solution to those feelings. In this way, the true goal for a lot of self-development is not becoming better, it’s finding a cure for our pain.

In part 1 of this series we explored how our goals are often a shadow of our pain. In parts 2 and 3 we looked at how the tools and processes promising a cure often lead to more suffering. Finally, we revealed the great conceit of popular self-help that can trap us in that suffering: the very idea that pain can—or should—be cured.

Pain is not the attack. Pain is not the wound. Pain is not the breakup. Pain is not the death. Pain is not the enemy. When we treat it as such, we suffer. Why? Because pain is inevitable. When we resist the inevitable, we suffer. This is especially true for emotional pain.

A lot of our suffering stems from our inability to process our emotions. This is no fault of our own. Most of us lack any kind of formal emotional education. We are taught how to walk, how to talk, how to read. All are forms of processing information through practice. Rarely are we taught how to feel. As a result, we have all this strong information we don’t know what to do with. So we get overwhelmed by it, avoid it, numb it, ignore it, or actively try to “cure” it. All are forms of resistance. What we resist doesn’t only persist, it dominates.

The longer you’re drowning, the more a breath becomes the only thing that matters.

Here I’ll present an alternative framework for self-development that seeks not to cure our pain, but our resistance to it. For this I’ll introduce a framework I’ve synthesized from the most useful tools and strategies I’ve found for processing pain. It’s a four-step practice, where each step unlocks the next:

1. L = Label your feeling

2. I = Invite it in

3. F = Find its function

4. E = Experiment with solutions

Label the feeling

We’ve talked about what pain is not. Now let’s talk about what pain is. Pain is a messenger. Our ability to decode the message, depends on our state. So the first step is bringing awareness to our physical and emotional state. We can do this by trying to give the messenger a name.

If you’re feeling strong emotions yet struggling to label them, chances are you’re operating from a state of dysregulation. When we’re dysregulated, we not only lose our ability to label our emotions, but also our ability to feel our body, and choose our actions. We become reactionary, and operate out of survival mode. We lash out, shut down, escalate.

You can’t learn to swim when you’re drowning. Similarly, you can’t process your experience when you’re dysregulated. So that’s the first thing to label: “Am I regulated or dysregulated?”

If it’s not clear, which it often won’t be, we err on the side of no. Then the next step is to regulate. Fortunately, there are many ways to regulate oneself. Though these are beyond the scope of this piece, one of my favorites is shaking intensely for at least two minutes. Ever wondered how wild animals aren’t permanently traumatized after narrowly escaping being eaten alive? Shaking.

Regulation is the key to unlocking the state needed for the rest of this process to work: curiosity. Resistance moves against, or away from the messenger. Curiosity looks toward. It looks to understand. We replace “how do I stop/get rid of this feeling” with “what am I actually feeling?” “What is here right now? Is it sadness, grief, disgust?”

Naming our feelings is called affect labeling, a modern term for an ancient technique. It can help us separate who we are from what we feel. There is a world of difference between being alone and feeling alone. Being hopeless and feeling hopeless.

Labeling our feelings can make them seem less pervasive, permanent, and most of all personal. It helps us see them for what they are: not enemies but emissaries. They’re always here to tell us something. Once we’ve given them a name, we must invite them in so that they can deliver their message.

Invite the feeling

In my experience the one practice that truly can reduce suffering is also the most difficult: to invite our boogeymen in.

Anger. Grief. Shame. These aren’t neutral words — they’re the names of things we’ve learned to fear. Menacing forces that torment us from our lightless corners. Of course we hesitate to let them in. Yet this resistance only makes them more and more threatening.

The only way to dispel a boogeyman is by turning the lights on. The same is true with difficult emotions. When we look closely at our feelings, often what we find isn’t a monster but a scared inarticulate child. It’s some innocent part of us that’s been frantically doing everything it can (scraping, stabbing, gutting, breaking) to get our attention.

The most effective way to get a child to calm down isn’t to ignore them, or yell at them. It’s to hold them no matter how loudly they cry. It’s to pay attention even when they don’t make sense or bite or scratch. The same is true for our feelings.

We can invite our pain through genuine curiosity in form of questions. You ask: Can I be with this feeling without trying to change it?

If the answer is no, regulate. If the answer is yes, try leaning in. Ask, what does this anger, grief, sadness feel like? Hot, sharp, constrictive? Where am I feeling it? In my throat, heart, or stomach? What color is it? What temperature?

Once we get to know it a little better, we begin to see what I stated earlier. Pain is not the wound, the breakup, the enemy. Emotional pain poses no real threat no matter how much it hurts. Then we can deepen our invitation through the real question, the question our guest has been waiting for us to ask: what do you need me to do?

What follows will not work if your invitation is disingenuous. No guest feels welcome if the host does not want them there. The same is true for our feelings.

The practice is the genuine invitation and reception of our experiences. It’s welcoming these weary guests without judgment. With compassion. It’s to take their heavy bags and wet jackets from them when they arrive. It’s to acknowledge them for the great lengths they’ve gone to get our attention. It’s when they feel like they can be heard that they can finally reveal their burning message.

Find its function

Have you ever been sitting on the beach, or cozy in your living room, or another lovely space only to suddenly feel a powerful—yet inexplicable—feeling of anger, sadness, frustration or some other situationally inappropriate emotion? It can be destabilizing. You may even wonder if there’s something wrong with you. How can you have no idea why you feel what you feel!?

When it comes to understanding our emotions, most tend toward an etiological approach: figuring out the *cause* of our feelings. In doing so, we often default to blaming others or shaming ourselves for why we feel what we feel. I feel this way because of this or that, or because of so and so. It makes sense until you consider two things.

The first we just explored: having no idea why we feel what we feel. Secondly, why do we feel strongly about things in the past that *we can’t change*? What’s the use of feeling grief for a decade old failed relationship?! That’s a very expensive emotion for a system designed to conserve as much energy as possible.

This is why I much prefer a teleological approach to understanding our emotions. Here we don’t ask what caused the feeling. Instead, we try to define the function of the feeling. What are we feeling this fear, sadness, or grief *for*? What does it need us to do now?

Everything that happens in a healthy body is by design. It’s the result of millions of years of biological problem solving. This includes our feelings. Though they may not always be logical, they *are* always biological. Our feelings are our body’s way of motivating us to act in service of our survival.

The function of our fear is to avoid a threat to our body in order to survive. The function of our anger is to dominate a threat to our boundaries in order to survive. The function of our grief is to survive the threat of isolation by getting the support we need.

Sadness for example often makes us cry. The evolutionary function of crying is to disable aggressive displays, recruit caretaking, and promote bonding. You may cry when your system deems it necessary for you to get help to increase your chances of survival. The problem is when our inner and outer worlds don’t seem to line up.

I recently found myself walking through a misty forest on top of a cliff overlooking the Pacific. All of a sudden I felt tremendous anger. In the past, I would have felt a lot of confusion to the point of shame. What am I angry about!? This place is stunning! I have the day off! What else could I want?!

Now I try to find the function of my anger. How was it trying to protect me, help me survive? What was this feeling for? I cycled through a couple of possibilities.

It’s not always clear what our feeling wants us to do. That’s why curiosity is so important. So I guessed until I found something that felt right. The feeling can be subtle, but it’s there. A shift. A click. A relief. A surge. In this case what I landed on was: make space.

Our body responds in real-time to whatever our mind is focused on—past, present, or imagined. Though my body was in nature, my mind was in the past. I had spent the last four days surrounded by over a hundred people on a very intense personal retreat. During the retreat, my team bombarded me with messages about some emergency even though I told them I was offline (of course going online was my mistake, not theirs).

One of the primary functions of anger is to dominate those who threaten our boundaries. My anger was trying to protect me. It thought I needed space. Now! The question was…how? How could I meet that need? I was – after all – already standing on a cliff with nothing but sky and ocean as far as the eye could see.

Experiment with solutions

Labeling helps us get clearer on what we’re feeling. Finding the function helps us get clearer on what our system needs. This leaves the final step: figuring out how to meet that need. This, however, is also often unclear.

What do you _need_? It’s a simple question that can feel impossible to answer. Many of us have spent our lives suppressing, repressing, ignoring, or outsourcing our needs. True self-development begins when we do the opposite: take ownership of our needs. It’s a commitment to running experiments to figure out ways to literally help ourselves.

If we need space, we can experiment with time blocking. If we need acknowledgment, we can experiment with journaling. If we need rest, we can experiment with ways to sleep more. If we need reassurance, we can experiment with what we tell ourselves when we’re scared.

Having an experimental mindset here is key because we’ll try many things that won’t work. We have to remain open and curious and embrace what doesn’t work as feedback, not failure. Naps don’t work. How about going to sleep earlier? Words of praise don’t work. How about words of acknowledgment? Experimentation is a practice in giving ourselves grace when we need it most.

Notice that none of the examples rely on other people? Experimentation is about true self development: developing compassionate ownership through trial and error. It’s a process that cultivates our capacity, ability, and sensitivity. Most of all though, it’s a process of building trust in ourselves. Trusting that we will truly be there for ourselves, no matter what, liberates us not from pain, but from a lot of suffering. It removes the final distance between us and our pain.

Our pain is not separate from us. It is a core part of us. A part that is scared and often unable to explain in any other language than pain. Through experiments, we learn how to respond not in words, but in action.

Every once in a while, we run an experiment that works. We do something that allows the feeling to move on, or soften. In my cliff example, I was angry because everything felt like a chore. My work, my relationships, my studies. I felt like I was sinking in obligation quicksand. The more I did the deeper I was pulled under. So, like with quicksand, I stopped struggling. I stopped altogether. No more work communications, no more plans, nothing.

Then I allowed myself to experience the anger fully without judgement. I let it burn me up whenever it needed to over those days until it went out. Anger had spent so long trying to get my attention that naturally an hour outside was not enough to process months of buildup.

Meanwhile I focused on things that were fun, playful, and restful. After a couple of days something shifted inside. The constriction left my body and curiosity returned. Soon, I couldn’t wait to get back to work and meet up with people. My life started to feel full of opportunities.

Learning how to meet our own needs may seem like a selfish endeavor to some, but I’ve found it to be an exceptionally generous skill to develop. When we don’t know how to meet our own needs, we risk making others responsible for what and how we feel. This often leads to miscommunication, conflict, and resentment.

Though you can love others without loving yourself, your capacity for intimacy, vulnerability, and connection is limited by how you relate to yourself. It’s learning how to treat yourself with patience, compassion, and care over and over again. This is especially true when you don’t feel like you deserve a shred of it. It’s the practice of relating to yourself with love. This can be a very challenging practice. Yet, this is how we forge qualities in ourselves we can then skillfully extend to others.

L.I.F.E. Practice

So how exactly should one practice the L.I.F.E. framework? Though you can practice this framework internally like a meditation, I find it more powerful to externalize it through writing. It helps me slow down and be more mindful with each step, not to mention freeze racing thoughts. Also seeing the language, provides very clarifying contrast. Does that language represent my experience or not? If not, what could?

Having a written record of your practice also solves another conundrum we’ve surfaced earlier in this series: how to measure personal development. We’ll explore that in the next piece in this series. For now, let’s focus on how to practice L.I.F.E.

1. Label the feeling

1. Tune into your body. Can you feel your body? Are you breathing normally? Can you choose your next action clearly?

2. If yes → label the feeling(s) or sensations by writing them down → go to the next step.

3. If no → regulate → then ask question again.

2. Invite the feeling

1. Invite whatever you’re feeling by observing and describing without trying to change it.

2. Ask: Where is it in your body? What is its shape, texture, temperature, weight?

3. Write: Whatever comes up. Observe the feeling. Lean into it.

4. If you become dysregulated → Go back to step one, or try again later. DO NOT torture yourself.

5. If you feel the resistance (not the feeling) lift → move on.

3. Find its function

1. Ask: What is the function of this feeling? What does it need you to do?

2. Write: Possible answers until something resonates. It doesn’t have to be spot on. Guess until you write down something that feels true. Does it want you to retreat, fight, escape?

4. Experiment with solutions

1. Ask: What (wholesome) action could you take to fulfill the needs of your feeling? Maybe it’s to take a walk. Ask for time. Set a boundary. Acknowledge your own experience. Again, doesn’t have to be spot on.

2. Write: List out the actions as simple single sentences.

3. Act: Pick one, the smallest, and do it.

4. Go back to the beginning. Repeat until you feel bored or satisfied. Boredom is often a sign that a feeling has been processed.

I submit the L.I.F.E. framework as an alternative to the cure for pain. I’ve found it to be very useful to illuminate the path not forward, but inward. It’s not designed to change *what* you feel, but *how* you feel.

Its goal is not to help you feel better, but to get better at feeling.

It exchanges resistance to reality for an invitation. It’s a practice of welcoming all of it. It sheds the need to become a better self. Instead, it focuses on becoming better at being with ourselves.

The path of least resistance turns out to lead directly through suffering. The measure of true growth isn’t distance from one self to another, but the capacity to be with all of ourselves.

In the next part, we’ll explore a sister framework for measuring our progress along that path.