Self-Inflicted Suffering (The Power Of Our Thoughts)

We can suffer in so many different ways in life. Sometimes we lose people we love; other times, we face health crises; and sometimes, we get fired from a job we love. But we can also alleviate our struggles by understanding how our expectations feed our sufferings. Self-awareness and kindness towards ourselves go a long way in improving our lives.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

The truth of it is,

Sometimes we go through really hard times.

Life has this way of throwing things at us and it can truly be overwhelming and take our breath away,

But not in a good way,

In a bad way.

Sometimes it can be so awful that we actually just don't want to live anymore.

In my work as a clinical psychologist,

I've had to convince many people not to take their life,

And thankfully,

So far,

No one has.

But there can be a lot of times where people really struggle and just wish they weren't here anymore.

But there's a very important question that we need to ask ourselves if we are truly going through a horrific time right now.

And that question is,

How much am I contributing to my own suffering?

May I ask a favor of you?

If possible,

Would you mind listening to this entire talk before you perhaps turn it off?

Because you may actually find things that could be incredibly helpful in your journey right now.

I know we go through hard times,

And what I'm going to say to help alleviate some of the suffering may seem controversial,

May seem upsetting,

But if we really keep our minds open and say,

Perhaps there is a way for me to make my suffering less,

Then I will be very grateful that my words were able to help a little bit.

Because I know we do suffer sometimes,

And you may be listening to this right now for that very reason.

Our thoughts,

Our expectations shape our emotional responses to life events.

I don't know if you've heard about the movie A Man Called Otto with Tom Hanks,

But if you haven't seen it,

I strongly recommend it.

But as a brief summary,

It's about a man who loses his wife,

And because of her death,

He really feels he has nothing to live for.

And during the movie,

He actually three times tries to kill himself.

Thankfully,

Each attempt is averted,

And what happens in the movie is that he finds that he has other things to live for.

There is so much purpose and life left in him to live for when he's able to see around him the people that love him and actually need him,

And he starts helping them and stops focusing in on just his own loss.

As we navigate through life,

We have expectations.

We have things that we expect to go a certain way.

Not because there's any guarantee they're going to go a certain way.

If we've lived long enough,

We all know our expectations of how our life is going to unfold can be very sketchy.

We may expect to go to college,

But then get pregnant and have to raise a family.

We may expect to live happily ever after when we go down the aisle and marry our spouse.

Then ten years later,

We're in divorce court.

We may expect to find our perfect job that we can do our entire life and retire,

And then five years down the road,

We get laid off and have to start all over.

The one thing about life is,

Is that it changes.

And it's not that predictable.

Some things do work out,

But some things don't.

And we just don't know.

But when it comes to suffering,

Where our lives are going really hard,

Is when our expectations don't match what's happening.

And we get in emotional trouble,

Not so much from what's happening,

But from our expectations of what should be happening,

And then it's not happening.

And what causes us to suffer is the discontinuity between our expectations and what's actually happening in our lives.

So if our expectations are important in the ways in which we can suffer or live a happy life,

Where do these expectations come from?

And how do we change them so we don't have to suffer so much?

Our expectations come from our environment.

That would be the people that we surround ourselves with,

Who raised us,

Things that we expose ourselves to in the media,

Just all the different things that have shaped us into who we are.

So let's say we grew up in a culture where education was highly valued,

And then for whatever reasons,

We don't go on and get those higher educational degrees.

Because of this expectation,

We may find that happiness isn't anywhere to be found because our expectations didn't match our accomplishments.

But of course we all know people that didn't get higher education that are happy.

So when it's blatantly obvious,

It's simple to realize that our expectations like this can get us into trouble.

But of course we wouldn't hold them because they seem silly.

But unfortunately,

There's a lot of prevalent expectations in the cultures that we're being raised in that have such a gigantic and enormous impact on our level of happiness that we experience each day.

So I want to ask a question of you.

What would make more sense?

Let's say someone we know dies.

If we've known them a long time,

And they were a big part of our life for years,

Perhaps even decades,

Do we think we would grieve more than someone,

Say,

That's new to our life,

Maybe we've only known a few years or even a few months,

And then they die?

Wouldn't we grieve a lot more over the first person who we've known for decades,

Perhaps most of our lives?

I think that makes sense.

We would be a lot more grief-stricken over someone who we've known for a much longer time.

And yet because of our expectations,

That may actually not be true.

All of us have parents,

And most of us have a close relationship to our parents.

We may speak to them every day,

Call them up,

Visit them regularly,

And they're a big part of our lives.

And yet,

When they get older,

And let's say they die in their 80s and 90s,

Even though we may miss them,

We're probably,

For the majority of us,

Not going to suffer from our attachment to their loss and struggle with suicidal ideation.

It's just not going to happen for most of us.

But if we have a child who maybe has been with us for a year,

Or maybe four or five years,

Or maybe even ten,

Much less than our parents,

And they die,

It's a very different story for almost everyone.

The type of depression and anxiety and actual suicidal ideation is much higher in these situations.

And yet we've known them for a much briefer part of our lives.

And in many ways,

They haven't been there for a lot of it.

And of course,

This is a horrible loss when we lose a child.

Please know I'm in no way negating this.

I've known people very close to me who have lost their child,

And I've cried,

And I've been there with them through that loss.

And yet,

We suffer,

Not necessarily because it's a greater loss than the loss of our parents.

We suffer far more because of our expectations.

Because we didn't expect our child to die before us.

We didn't expect to outlive our child.

And that expectation is what causes us to suffer far more than the loss of the child.

Life is impermanent.

Life changes.

The only guarantee life gives us is that it's going to change.

When change happens,

Of course it can be upsetting.

Of course it can require tears of sadness.

But if we attach too strongly to our expectations,

That's what causes us to stay stuck.

That's what causes us to want to end our lives.

Going back to the movie,

A Man Called Otto,

He had a heart condition,

And he expected to die before his wife.

But he didn't.

And when she died,

He had put all his energy into taking care of her.

She had gotten in an accident and was in a wheelchair.

And they didn't have a child because she lost her child during the accident.

So he put all his energy and love into her,

And not so much into his own life.

And when she passed,

He saw no meaning to life anymore because he expected her to be there.

And when she wasn't,

He didn't want to be here anymore.

It wasn't the loss of her that caused him to suffer.

It was his expectation that she couldn't be gone and that she was his life.

But he learned that there were a lot of other people out there that could use his love,

That could use his help.

And when he saw that,

He started living again.

Now we may not be in a point in our life right now where we're asking the question that Hamlet asked,

To be or not to be.

But we may be suffering.

And what we can ask ourselves is,

How much are my expectations causing me to suffer?

That's the question we really want to look at.

Because we often will find that so much of our suffering comes not from life's events,

But from the way we interpret them because of our expectations.

So let's say we're at our job that we like,

And for whatever reason,

They let us go.

And we have to find something else to do.

We could,

Because of our expectations that our job was supposed to be there permanently,

And we were supposed to be able to retire and live happily ever after,

Go into a pretty deep depression or be very upset.

Or we could say,

Okay,

Now what opportunities is life going to give me?

Am I going to go back to school?

Am I going to apply for new jobs?

Am I going to move?

Am I going to retire early and live on a tighter budget?

Life presents us choices.

Our expectations can cause us to suffer.

That's where we have to be careful.

Or let's say we go to law school and we graduate,

And then we take the bar,

But we don't pass it.

We can go into severe depression because we didn't pass the bar.

But what we need to do is ask ourselves,

Okay,

Maybe I expected to pass the bar,

But a lot of people don't.

I'm not sure why I expected to,

But I didn't.

So now I have choices.

Am I going to study and take it again?

Or perhaps I'll do something else,

Completely different than I was planning on doing.

We have choices presented to us based upon circumstances,

And then we have to make decisions about those choices.

We will suffer because of our expectations.

Here's one of the most common ones that gets so many people.

When people find the love of their life,

And let's say they get married,

Their expectation is to live happily ever after.

Some people do.

It's wonderful.

But here in the United States,

The divorce rate runs around 50%.

So that means one out of two of us that get married won't stay married.

So expecting to spend the rest of your life with your spouse,

It's a good expectation.

But is it one we cling too tightly to?

Because if we do,

And divorce comes,

Are we going to suffer?

Or are we going to see it as new opportunities to do new things?

To conclude with,

Let's ask this question.

It's an important question.

Am I suffering right now?

Is there something that's making me upset,

Angry,

Or sad right now,

To the point that I might be even turning towards addictions to turn off these feelings?

And then say,

Okay,

Yes,

I'm suffering.

Maybe it's not big,

But maybe it's huge.

The next question to ask ourselves is,

Why?

What expectation am I holding onto that's causing me to suffer?

And how do I let that go?

How do I work towards accepting the changes that have happened in my life,

Adjust to these changes,

And ultimately flow with these changes,

Whatever the changes are?

We don't suffer because life changes.

We suffer because of our expectations.

Once we understand what they are,

We can let them go and live a life full of wonder and beauty.

This is work.

This is not easy.

And trust me,

We can hang on to our expectations to our dying breath.

Many people do.

Or we can choose a life where we stop inflicting suffering on ourselves and instead choose a life of wonder,

Of beauty,

Of happiness,

And peace.

This is the life we can have.

It is work.

It is effort.

But it's worth it.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

A difficult reality to accept much of the time for me, but learning to accept and move on is really the only way to recover from these life changing experiences. Thank you for your wise message. 🙏

Thank you very much for this talk. I’m grateful during this grieving time of losing my husband that I’m not suicidal. I’ve been in grief groups where some of the people are. But it’s hard. The hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I really needed to hear this. A Man Called Otto is a great movie. Thank you.

Thank you. The practical wisdom of your talk resonates deeply and makes total sense.
It was needed here.

Helpful 😊😄 thank you so much 😊

Thank you. This is it.

Thank you for your compassionate and enlightened guidance, I will listen to this again. 🙏

Great

Interesting perspectives and undeniably true. Namaste!

Very helpfull. Thank you 😊

Dr. Puff! What a fantastic segment... I saw the movie about Mr Otto and it was so sad but an amazing story ! thank you so much for your wisdom attached!🙏💜🙏

Always such great advice! Thank you Dr Puff for your podcast!

Thank you 🙏