5 Signs You Need to Deal With Your Emotional Suffering

Why Knowing These Can Prevent Major Issues in Your Life

5 min readJun 30, 2020

There are usually signs that suggest you need to deal with your emotional suffering to avoid major issues later in life.

Everyone goes through periods of mental and emotional turmoil, therefore the ability to recognise those signs is an advantage.

What is Emotional Suffering?

Emotional suffering is what you experience when your internal and external world does not meet your pre-defined conditions, circumstances or expectations.

It’s what you experience when your reality does not match your beliefs or model of how others or the world should be.

For example, if someone does something that violates one of your values, your thoughts about that experience will affect your emotional state. If you generate negative thoughts about it, you will experience unhealthy emotions, which can cause you to not feel good.

If those unhealthy emotions persist, you will experience emotional suffering.

The Costs of Emotional Suffering

Even though everyone experiences pain in life, there is no need to struggle with emotional suffering. If it’s not addressed, the costs include:

Mental and physical health challenges.
Inability to focus well.
Making poor decisions.
Additional strain on key relationships.
Generating more stress or anxiety.

When you learn to identify the signs you are emotionally suffering, you can address it before you experience more problems later.

5 Signs You Have to Deal With Your Emotional Suffering

To identify the signs you are emotionally suffering involves being more self-aware and practicing self-reflection regularly.

Here are five signs that show you need to deal with your emotional suffering so you can return to feeling your normal self again.

You are restless and do not sleep well. If you constantly replay events that did not go as expected in your mind, you will generate thoughts and emotions that will not put you in a healthy vibration. When your mind is chaotic, you will not feel relaxed.
You are triggered easily by minor things. If things unimportant cause you to “fly off the handle” easily, it usually means there are others factors bothering you. Feeling agitated or irritable are signs things are not right with you.
You neglect your health and wellness. If you skip routines and do not take care of yourself, that suggests you are mentally and emotionally unwell. Continuing to neglect your health can cause long-term issues, therefore it’s important you address your issues quickly.
You withdraw from others and want to be on your own. If you are emotionally suffering, you may feel embarrassed or disappointed in yourself. That may cause you to isolate yourself from others, which can cause you to relive the things you experienced.
You lack motivation and feel stuck. If you cannot think well or manage your emotions, it is difficult to concentrate. The longer you don’t focus well, the lower your motivation will be, which can cause you to feel you are not improving your situation.

Things You Can Do to Overcome Your Emotional Suffering

There is no need to suffer. Things you can do to overcome your emotional suffering include:

Acknowledge and accept what you are going through without self-criticism or judgment.
Get to the root cause of what you are experiencing through self-reflection.
Let go of what you cannot change or influence and focus only on what you can do.
Practice mindfulness techniques to calm your mind and feel more relaxed.
Work with a professional such as a coach, therapist or counsellor.
Extract lessons from the experience.
Take action towards what you want to create or achieve.

Final Thoughts

Even though you will experience emotional suffering, you can learn to deal with it intelligently without affecting what you do or how you behave. If you do, you will improve how you manage your thoughts and emotions.

If you don’t deal with emotional suffering well, you risk affecting how you function in your daily life, and you will also affect those you interact with regularly. When you deal with your emotional suffering, you will get back to being your normal self again.

Action Step: Reflect on your recent emotional state. If you know you have not been well emotionally, find out the reasons why. Use the ideas suggested here to overcome them. Reach out to someone you trust to talk about what you have been experiencing.

Question: What are other signs that indicate you need to deal with your emotional suffering?