Ep. 169 – Suffering Is A Choice

Jeff 00:00
Hello, everybody out ther, welcome to Episode 169. Today, we’re going to be talking about pain. You know, if you’ve been through a divorce, you’ve been through pain, it’s inevitable, but the suffering that you go through is your choice. So if you’re ready, let’s get started.

Doreen 00:28
Are you ready to create a life that’s better than ever before? We are Doreen Yaffa and Jeff Wilson, and we are here to give you the strategies you need to create the life after divorce that you deserve and desire. As partners, both in marriage and coaching, we use our expertise as well as our own personal experiences to help you make the next chapter of your life, the best chapter. Hey, Jeff.

Jeff 01:02
Hello, Doreen. How are you?

Doreen 01:03
Good.

Jeff 01:04
What is that on your lap?

Doreen 01:06
So for those of you that are watching us by video on YouTube, I’ve got zenzen on the lap, our little Frenchie who looks rather tired, doesn’t he? He’s so cute. He was begging and itching to come up, and so mommy let him up. He’s kind of like, just prompting, like, putting his like head, like partially on my leg here.I think he’s gonna fall asleep.

Jeff 01:32
He might. It’s the perfect weather for a nap.

Doreen 01:36
Yeah, it’s rainy here.

Jeff 01:38
So what’s going on? Tell me something new.

Doreen 01:40
Something new, I don’t know. We’re gonna talk about pain. Pain and suffering, babe.

Jeff 01:46
Well, I like the pain part of it is inevitable, but the suffering is kind of that doesn’t sound fun.

Doreen 01:55
No, it doesn’t.

Jeff 01:56
Yeah.

Doreen 01:57
We all recognize that going through divorce is challenging. I like to use that word, and it can be painful, but the suffering part of it is where the beauty lies. You can get out of the suffering part of it, and that’s what we want to talk about.

Jeff 02:14
A lot of times we talk about 50/50 of life. Life is good and bad, there’s pain, there’s happiness, there’s all kinds of, you know, Yang and Yang when it comes to emotions. So if pain is a big part of the world, a big part of our- let’s say 50% of our world, and on our life, and we accept it, look at it as a way to check your capacity to feel.

Doreen 02:42
Right, because without the pain, you wouldn’t understand the good things.

Jeff 02:44
Absolutely yes, truly.

Doreen 02:47
We believe pain gives us an opportunity for us to deepen our ability to feel, right? Because it really- imagine if things was all rainbows and daisies and unicorns all day long, like much of social media likes to portray, side note. Television and all that. But the bottom line is that, you know, when you go through bad times, you can appreciate the good times. So divorce, hey, it’s just one of those things. Nobody goes into marriage thinking, oh yeah, one day I’m gonna get divorced. No, we all go into marriage wanting the marriage to work, and sometimes things just don’t work out. That doesn’t mean it was a failure. I always talk about that, but you know, it’ll be painful getting from here to there, because change requires- any change, anything you do that is different, that is goal oriented, that is focused on your future. There is some pain involved in that. It’s not all gonna be like, you know, easygoing.

Jeff 03:46
Well, I wish I was a coach when I was going through my divorce.

Doreen 03:48
Why?

Jeff 03:49
No, well, I just, you know, sharing with everybody out there.

Doreen 03:52
When did you get divorced?

Jeff 03:53
When?

Doreen 03:53
Yeah, how many years ago?

Jeff 03:55
15, 16, about 16 and a half.

Doreen 03:59
16 and a half?

Jeff 04:00
Yeah, 16 and a half years. Yeah, but no, I was just going to share with everybody out there when I thought- think back when I was writing the episode, I was thinking how much additional pain I added to the process with the drama, the anger, the hate I really did add to the-

Doreen 04:24
You got involved in it, didn’t you?

Jeff 04:26
Well, I got involved in it.

Doreen 04:27
You don’t know about coaching back then.

Jeff 04:29
I only coach. I had- was football coach and martial arts coach.

Doreen 04:33
You weren’t able to control your thoughts.

Jeff 04:35
I had no control over my thoughts.

Doreen 04:36
And so you had a lot of anger?

Jeff 04:38
Well, I thought I did have control of my thoughts. I said that thought because I chose to think of anger and meanness and but what I didn’t do is realize that those thoughts did not serve-

Doreen 04:55
What results were you getting by having anger as part of your core emotion?

Jeff 05:00
More, more anger.

Doreen 05:02
Probably the results were horrible.

Jeff 05:04
But I didn’t have a desired outcome to choose that these thoughts were not serving my wants. They were not serving- well, if I said- if I for an example, so I wanted a happy life, I want to live my last life with peace and joy, health. These thoughts aren’t serving that. It’s making me feel tired. It’s making me feel afraid.

Doreen 05:29
The biggest problem and why I see divorces dragging on and then they get upset with the lawyers, because we charge money, right? We charge for our time. The biggest problem isn’t the complexity of the issues. I mean, that’s rare that we have such involved issues. I mean, it does happen, but most cases we could figure it out. It’s the emotions.

Jeff 05:54
Well, that was much driving it.

Doreen 05:56
So anger drives continued litigation.

Jeff 05:59
Right, well that was my point.

Doreen 06:00
The result is you’re spending more money. You’re stuck in anger. You’re not getting through the divorce. Your kids are taking taking it as well, and your family and your friends and everybody around you. I mean, come on, so get control of your of your pain in a way that serves you.

Jeff 06:15
Right. And that’s what that was. My original point was to let everybody know out there that my additional drama and myaddition to the pain and suffering, it delayed the healing process. It delayed the healing process. It delayed the end of the divorce. So things went on a little longer with something I really didn’t even want because I wasn’t recognizing it.

Doreen 06:40
Right. What would you have done differently? Tell me what you know now.

Jeff 06:46
I would have had more cotton for my ears, tape across my mouth.

Doreen 06:52
Oh, I like that cotton in your ears

Jeff 06:57
So I didn’t hear anything. And said-

Doreen 06:59
Well, we’re gonna have to tape your fingers too, because I remember texting going on.

Jeff 07:03
Yeah okay, I have to use blinders, I guess also, and then read.

Doreen 07:08
Yeah, you have to blind. You cannot see, you cannot hear, and you can go beat the three monkeys.

Jeff 07:14
What’s that? Hear no evil, see no evil?

Doreen 07:15
Yeah.

Jeff 07:16
But the bottom line is, I wasn’t controlling my thoughts.

Doreen 07:20
Right. So you were acting out without slowing down and thinking about it.

Jeff 07:23
And I’m very surprised, being a martial artist and having such great control over my my emotions and my thoughts and everything didn’t work for that at all.

Doreen 07:35
Now I had the opposite experience, and again, I wasn’t coaching or I didn’t know about the model and everything we know now. I wasn’t schooled on this and, you know, done as many much coaching as we have, and learned so much. I just didn’t want to be in an angry place. I don’t like that feeling. I know at times you probably question that.

Jeff 07:59
Yeah. I mean, I don’t know anybody likes being there.

Doreen 08:03
I think there are people that get into the anger and like drama and all that, but I didn’t like that. I knew the relationship was over, and I think because I had clarity on that level, I was able to accept it, and then just decided that it needed to be done. And both of us shared the same thoughts, I think, as peacefully and as carefully and as respectfully as possible. So I don’t recall that. I recall almost being more sad than angry.

Jeff 08:39
Well, I think that-

Doreen 08:41
I got angry at the other side- the divorce lawyer. He did something silly. My ex’s divorce lawyer, I won’t mention him. He knows what he did. When he wasn’t supposed to do it, but anyhow, that kind of pissed me off. But I just, I just talked to my ex about it. He’s like, “Yeah, he shouldn’t have done that.”

Jeff 08:58
So I think the bottom line is, it takes two to tango. You had two people that wanted the peace and wanting to move forward where, you know, we had two people that liked gasoline on a fire.

Doreen 09:10
To you and your ex?

Jeff 09:11
Yes.

Doreen 09:11
Yeah. And you guys did that for a long time, though. Because when we got married, which was, what? Almost two years after your divorce? You know, it’s like I still saw it. But who am I to sayOkay, anyhow, we move on. So there’s two different types of pain.

Jeff 09:29
There is?

Doreen 09:30
Yeah, pretty simple. There’s physical pain, it hurts ow, kind of thing. And then there’s emotional pain. And both are very real.

Jeff 09:38
Well, let’s explain physical pain. So what happens is, I touched a hot stove. The touch sends a message to my brain that says, “That is unpleasant.” And then it sends back the message to get the fingers off and then don’t touch it again. So it’s teaching me what hotness is.

Doreen 10:02
Yeah so to avoid pain, don’t touch that. Emotional pain is when you have a thought that creates pain in the body. So when we coach and we learn about the model, which is circumstances create a thought that creates a feeling, the feeling comes from your thoughts. So when you have a thought, he’s an asshole or he is a bitch, that is going to create a feeling in your body. It might be anger, right? And you can feel that physically if you really know yourself well, and you learn you could feel it. For me, when I feel emotion a lot of times, depending on the emotion, I’ll feel it in my throat, like a heaviness, like almost like constricting. When I’m feeling mostly, I deal mostly with a lot of anxiety. I think that’s my number one emotion that I deal with, which is coming from a thought, which is, like, I have so much to do, overwhelm, overwhelmed thought that deal that then leads to a feeling of anxiety, like overwhelm, right? So it’s like this nervous kind of, like, can’t breathe, kind of feeling. When you felt the anger, what did you feel?

Jeff 11:16
I felt the tension in my body, usually in my neck, my back. You know, stiff. I felt like I was working out almost, you know, the whole got the fatigue part of it. But, you know, the next part, I just wanted to- it’s kind of off topic and I wanted to kind of just thought it was kind of interesting. An interesting point that when somebody gives you medication for pain in your body, let’s say you take advil, ibuprofen, or even a prescription drug. That also takes care of the emotional pain.

Doreen 11:51
What do you mean?

Jeff 11:52
Because it comes from the same part of the brain.

Doreen 11:55
So is that why people sometimes get addicted to the?

Jeff 11:58
That’s how addiction carries because did not pass, let’s say the surgery of the knee. The pain from the knee surgery is gone, but the emotional pain may still be there. So they want to take that drug to hide their emotional pain.

Doreen 12:14
Ah, so is that maybe- and so where did you learn about that?

Jeff 12:18
Well, just you know, research. Researching things. And you know, I was understanding that the brain- I’m gonna figure out what it was called again. The interior, something or other, I’m gonna get- we’ll get there when we get there. But the same part of the brain deals with emotional pain and physical pain. It both goes to that part of the brain and it’s doesn’t let you know that there’s pain. It lets you know that it’s unpleasant. It’s the part of the brain that lets you know it’s doesn’t feel good, it’s unpleasant. So even though the pain has gone away, the unpleasant part of the emotional pain is still there. So it’s still- that’s how addiction happens.

Doreen 13:01
I also think it’s important- and we were going to talk about this in another episode, and I think it’s relevant right now. Is that feeling the pain is important, recognizing where it is and what it is, identifying it like anxiety, anger, sadness, whatever it is, and feeling it. We’re taught or many of us are taught from a very young age, sit there, be quiet. You know, raise your hand if you want to speak. In other words, be quiet, right? In a lot of athletics, it’s suck it up. Suck it up. Don’t let the other side know what you’re thinking. You know, put on a tough face, you know, hide your emotions if just get out there and get it done. Don’t let anybody know what you’re thinking. Those types of things that we’re taught and that’s really hurtful for us to to learn how to deal with pain, right? Because we’re taught just to kind of suppress it, ignore it, and not deal with it.

Jeff 14:02
Or deal with it by yourself and I don’t think there’s a lot of people out there that are coped or have the ability to deal with the pain by themselves.

Doreen 14:13
No, no. So what else, honey?

Jeff 14:15
Well let’s talk about the symptoms of emotional pain. You know when you know when you can-

Doreen 14:19
How do you know if you’re there?

Jeff 14:21
Yeah, if you’re going through some emotional pain issues, I know that there’s withdrawal.

Doreen 14:26
Well, let’s talk first about what that looks like. Again, when you’re going through divorce, or after your divorce, during the divorce, for sure, there’s a lot of emotional pain, right? The difference is the emotional pain impacting you day to day, right? Recognizing the symptoms isn’t just critical for your mental health, right? But it also helps you navigate the rough patches and understand and give yourself some some kindness and compassion. So I like to say, be your best friend. Self Compassion is so necessary when you’re dealing with divorce.

Jeff 15:00
Cut yourself a break.

Doreen 15:01
Cut yourself a break. You are allowed to feel emotional pain. You are going through a tough time. Own it, right? Let it be there. Let it live there. Recognize it as just part of the physical- like a physical pain. You touch the burner and you withdraw your hand. Well, we have to really understand where this emotional pain is so we can deal with it. So some of the clues that you’re dealing with, that you have emotional pain are social withdrawal and loneliness, right? Sometimes pushing away friends, family, loved ones, not saying yes to invitations, trying to, just like hide, you know, put the covers over your body.

Jeff 15:46
Becoming a homebody.

Doreen 15:47
Give yourself- this is what I like to tell my clients. Give yourself permission for a long weekend to go through all that. You can sit in your- and you know, be all upset. You can dwell, you can hide. You can stay in bed, watch Netflix, eat whatever you want, and then you’re over it. Okay, have your time with it. Deal with it, and then say, “Monday morning, bright and early, six o’clock, I’m done with this.” Okay, being kind to yourself. If a friend of yours was going through a divorce and they felt a lot of emotional pain, what would you tell them? You certainly wouldn’t tell them to hide it or ignore it. You tell them, “Listen, this is understandable. You’ve been through a lot. This is challenging. Give yourself a break”, right?

Jeff 16:31
And then you may even go as far as doing unsafe things, when you’re dealing with emotional pain and like maybe you’re blaming yourself and you’re taking it out on yourself, dangerous habits, you know, you take up risky behaviors. I’m going shark diving tomorrow.

Doreen 16:51
No you’re not. Especially since we have a hurricane on the horizon. Okay. Emotional fatigue, this is also an indication, right? Mental, emotional exhaustion can sneak into your daily routines. You know, gradually they start to be like, “Well, I’m not going to make it to the gym today. I’m just not feeling it.” And physically, you’ll probably really feel it. You will feel that you’re dealing with an emotional pain, because physically, you’re just feeling really run down and tired.

Jeff 17:21
And your lack of enthusiasm. And maybe your lack of enthusiasm for something that you used to love.

Doreen 17:27
Yeah, negative thoughts is another one. You know, lots of negative thoughts can come up and those can interfere fear tremendously because if you’re living with all these thoughts of negative issues, that’s just going to bring you- like again,thoughts create results. So if you’re having negative thoughts, guess what’s going to happen to your result line? Gonna have negative results. You got it? Negative results gently start to change that, right? That’s where coaching changes in appetite and weight.

Jeff 17:55
Well, I mean, we talked before about buffering and if you’re going through, you know, things like this. You might drink more, you might eat more, and you’re gonna- your friends are gonna see your change.

Doreen 18:09
You might lose your appetite.

Jeff 18:12
Get heavy, might be, you know, sleeping till, you know, one o’clock, two o’clock in the afternoon. So you- there’s going to be telltale signs that you’re going through emotional issues.

Doreen 18:21
So we already talked about support. I want to talk more about the thought part of it. I know we have here the things, eight ways to support yourself. But everybody knows this. Regular exercise, even when you don’t want to do it, just get up, go for a walk, get your tushy to the gym, take a class. Listen, you don’t have to spend a whole hour there. I used to suffer with this thought process that if I couldn’t get to the gym for an hour, then I would just give it up. No, that is silly. Go for a 15 minute walk, right? That’s good. Mindful practices such as yoga, breathing exercises. What else?

Jeff 19:06
Could be just reading, you know, when you’re when you’re reading a good book. I mean, that’s, that’s definitely, you know, exercising your mind.

Doreen 19:14
But that wasn’t one of your eight-

Jeff 19:17
You know, definitely feeling your feelings is an important thing.

Doreen 19:21
I think we talked about that.

Jeff 19:22
We did, okay, healthy lifestyle, healthy habits. You know, you’re you’re working out, you’re eating healthy, you’re stretching. Flexibility is very important for- all this good stuff.

Doreen 19:35
Reaching out to support networks. Find a creative outlet to coach emotional pain. Find a creative outlet to express your emotional pain.

Jeff 19:43
Yeah, so you were saying about thoughts?

Doreen 19:45
Writing, painting, playing, music, those types of things. So those are, like the eight quick things. Now it’s that you know your thoughts are leading to the emotional pain. If you can recognize that the thought is creating the actual pain, emotional pain. That’s where, again, the beauty lies, right? Is figuring out and first, I think recognizing you are having these thoughts that are painful and now gently just trying to move them to thoughts that are happier thoughts or maybe even just a little better, right?

Jeff 20:29
Yeah. It’s definitely a gradual change.

Doreen 20:31
It’s a gradual change. These things that we teach in coaching with our clients, these are that’s why it takes time. Nothing is like a you know, do this and it’s gonna be a miracle changer in like a minute. No, these things take time, right?Now, I did want to say though that dealing with emotional pain from divorce, there is a place for that. Just like grieving, you have to work through it. I think a lot of times you have people that just want to jump past the emotional pain and they don’t recognize it or deal with it and then they never dealt with it and it comes back and it bites you.

Jeff 21:11
Or people telling you that you should get over it and you should do it this.

Doreen 21:14
Well whatever- for whatever reason they don’t deal with it. And if you don’t deal with the emotional stages and pain of divorce. What happens is, is that now, let’s say, six months later, a year later, you go on a date, and something that he does triggers you, and it brings back all that anger that you didn’t deal with stemming from your divorce. Or maybe it’s trust issues, right? You’re out there in the world again, you’re starting to navigate through life, and you have made- you encounter someone, you got major trust issues going on. You don’t trust anybody. You just haven’t dealt with your emotions and I think dealing with them is the first step.

Jeff 21:59
I agree.

Doreen 21:59
Right? How do you- how do you propose people do that?

Jeff 22:03
Well, awareness is, first of all what you want to have. And I think that understanding your wants and realizing that this isn’t what I want. I don’t want to feel this way, I don’t want to hide, I don’t want to have any of this emotional pain anymore, and understanding this is what I want. It’s amazing. You know? What’s amazing is, most people, when you ask them, what do they want, they answer with, “Well, I don’t want this, and I don’t want that”, not what they really want. So if you determine what you really want-

Doreen 22:37
What you really, really want.

Jeff 22:39
And then take- maybe just jot down the baby steps. I mean, if you say I want to be this, and there’s-

Doreen 22:46
So many people that we did this last episode about indecision. They don’t- they don’t know what they want, but they don’t try to know what they want. I think like, I think a lot of people live in this thought process world that- they live in this thought- Next episode, “Thought process world.” The next day, they’re going to wake up and have clarity without doing more than just waking up and having clarity. Does that make sense?

Jeff 23:16
Yes.

Doreen 23:16
What I mean by that is you have to figure out what it is that you want. Some of us are lucky enough to have this aha moment where we just like, Oh, that feels good, that feels right. That’s what I want. But many of us don’t know what we want. I know that my own kids are having issues with that, starting their careers and in their careers, what do they want? And so what happens is they end up just going through the motions every day and thinking like there’s gonna have this aha moment. No, the aha moments are created. So you gotta deal with the pain, so then you can work through the emotions, get to the other side of it. The pain’s not going to hurt you. It’s not like the burner that you touch, and if you leave your hand there, it will burn you, and you’re going to have a serious problem physically. Emotional pain can be very very harmful. But the beauty about emotional pain is that it will not usually hurt you physically, right? What hurts you about emotional pain is when you don’t deal with it. You stuff it down and you ignore it and think that’s the way to make it go away. You gotta, you gotta head it on. You got what it takes. You know how to get through this. You can do hard things. You can work through the emotional pain onto your best life.

Jeff 24:35
Wow, I don’t think we can end it any better than that. Just remember-

Doreen 24:39
Remember when you said, you will take me to dinner?

Jeff 24:40
I’m gonna take you to dinner. But emotional pain is normal. Okay, you have to deal with it. Well, you don’t have to do anything, but if you do deal with it there, you don’t have to put up with the suffering.

Doreen 24:54
That’s what we just said. I know. And then what were you doing? A recap for me.

Jeff 24:58
I’m recapping.

Doreen 24:58
Okay, I thought we- you’re stopping on mine, but we’ll stop on yours. You want me to have a last word?

Jeff 25:03
Yes.

Doreen 25:04
Sounds great. I’m just kidding. Everyone, listen. You have what it takes to get through this. You can get past your divorce. You can get on with your life. And yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce. It’s available to you. Work on the pain. Let’s get you through it, and let’s get you on to your best life yet. Okey dokey.

Jeff 25:07
Have a great week, everybody. We’ll see you next week-

Doreen 25:12
Listen, take us up on some free coaching for goodness sake. You know, no, Jeff is offering right now, kind of, the world’s in a little bit of a state of, kind of, you know, not in a great place. So Jeff has been kind enough on his website to have free coaching available. See what it’s like. You know, most of our clients, yes, we deal with people going through divorce, but I’ll tell you. Recently and as we’ve talked about, I got a lot of people that are in stuck marriages, not knowing what to do. And so they come to you as a coach as well. I think it’s a beautiful thing.

Jeff 26:00
How do you deal- how do you deal with this hurricane? How do you deal with the election? How do you deal with- I can help you.

Doreen 26:06
I’ll come for a free session.

Jeff 26:08
There you go.

Doreen 26:09
All right, everybody. Talk to you next time. Have an amazing week.

Doreen & Jeff 26:12
Bye, bye.

Jeff 26:20
You have the vision of what you want your life to look like after divorce, but maybe you just don’t know how to get there. So if you’re ready to take control of your life and want to find out more about our coaching, visit us at LAD-coaching.com that’s LAD-coaching.com

Doreen 26:43
Until next time, have an amazing rest of your day and remember, yes, you can-

Doreen & Jeff 26:49
Have an amazing life after divorce.