Let’s start by framing what emotional pain really is, because there’s the emotion—the physiological sensations that we give names to, like anger, sadness, disgust, and so on. And then there’s suffering, which is the resistance against those feelings.

For a lot of us, and especially guys like myself raised in New Zealand or Western culture, we’ve been taught to suppress or hide emotions.

Most emotions are not allowed—they’re seen as a sign of weakness.

This belief, of course, doesn’t stop them from coming up.

It just means that we don’t know how to deal with emotions when they arise, other than to try and pretend they’re not happening or to manually override them with something like substances or busyness.

The real problem comes from a deep-down, conditioned belief that the emotions themselves are bad or wrong, that they are painful.

However, it’s our association with them that hurts us. The belief that they’re bad and wrong is where most of the suffering occurs.

If you talk to somebody who's okay with being emotional—a person who’s emotionally sensitive without any shame—they’ll tell you there isn’t really pain associated with emotions, just sensation.

To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here:

https://youtu.be/lgGetRAvTdo

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