Emotional Suffering Quotes & Sayings

There are many of us who live alongside others, less fortunate, watching them go through everyday suffering for one reason or another, and we're not moving even our little finger to help them. It's in human nature, unfortunately: for the most part, the only people we genuinely care about are ourselves. However, once in a while we encounter different species, different kind of human beings among us: full of compassion, willing and wanting to help, and doing so with joy and happiness. Those are a rarity. But you know what, my dear? Being one of them is not a special calling- it's a choice. So what will you choose, huh? — Yoleen Valai

If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering . — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Knowledge.Grace. True union with the divine. I find that sort of prayer so much more difficult than the other, because it requires an extreme emotional and spiritual vulnerability. It's frighting,because we're trained not to expose the weakest parts of ourselves, the things that cause us pain and shame and suffering. It's those same things that often block our access to God
basically, we stand in our own way. — Anna Jarzab

I also worry that my reporting will become this deluge of tragedy for people, who like myself, unable or uncertain of what to do, let it wash over them. Some African journalists call it poverty porn - stories or images of intense suffering designed solely for emotional impact, but often have the effect of shutting people down rather than helping them step up. — Kevin Sites

She had not had the relief of amnesia. She had suffered longer, and she had suffered more. Each second was agony in the first weeks. She was like an amputee in the days before anesthesia, half crazed with pain, astounded that the human body could feel so much and not die of it. But slowly, cell by painful cell, she began to mend. There came a time when it was no longer her whole body that burned with pain but only her heart. And then there came a time when even her heart was able, for a time at least, to feel other emotions besides grief. — Diane Setterfield

The things that drive me crazy are coming from this place of people suffering because of people polluting into rivers or whatever. It's not simply just about systems; it's an emotional reaction to seeing animals or people suffering. — Mike White

Bear one another's burdens, the Bible says. It is a lesson about pain that we all can agree on. Some of us will not see pain as a gift; some will always accuse God of being unfair for allowing it. But, the fact is, pain and suffering are here among us, and we need to respond in some way. The response Jesus gave was to bear the burdens of those he touched. To live in the world as his body, his emotional incarnation, we must follow his example. The image of the body accurately portrays how God is working in the world. Sometimes he does enter in, occasionally by performing miracles, and often by giving supernatural strength to those in need. But mainly he relies on us, his agents, to do his work in the world.We are asked to live out the life of Christ in the world, not just to refer back to it or describe it.We announce his message, work for justice, pray for mercy . . . and suffer with the sufferers. — Philip Yancey

Unless we possess high spiritual qualifications, there is no doubt that the events life throws upon us will give rise to frustration, emotional turmoil, and other distorted states of consciousness. These imperfect states of mind in turn give rise to imperfect activities, and the seeds of suffering are ever planted in a steady flow. — Dalai Lama

She promised new, tantalizing diversions. She whispered words of raw, intense pleasure the likes of which he'd never experienced. He was intrigued. She had the power to drag his mind into his body and keep it there, unable to think or worry. And that was how he found himself in the basement of her town house in Toronto, naked, restrained, and on his knees. She confused his senses by both pleasing and punishing him. With every strike, all his emotional pain seemed to bleed away. His single errant thought was why had he waited so long to use physical pain to alleviate his mental suffering. But even that thought was soon forgotten. — Sylvain Reynard

Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism - in terms of human suffering - is the belief that love is a matter of "the heart," not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. — Ayn Rand

Every life and every childhood is filled with frustrations; we cannot imagine it otherwise, for even the best mother cannot satisfy all her child's wishes and needs. It is not the suffering caused by frustration, however, that leads to emotional illness, but rather the fact that the child is forbidden by the parents to experience and articulate this suffering, the pain felt at being wounded. — Alice Miller

There is an element of selfishness to this, I suppose. It feels pretty good to be able to so quickly help someone. That is, after all, one of the great emotional payoffs of medicine. That isn't to say that ECT is either a panacea or without flaws - but when used in the right way for the right purposes it's of great benefit, and condemning it because it isn't perfect would lead to more suffering and harm, no less.

It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life. I have memory problems as a residual of it; however, I'm alive. That was the main point. — Kitty Dukakis

Everyone has a story. I see many clients suffering from chronic diseases such as Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, and generalized pain. Especially in these clients, I always look for the emotional component. And there is always an emotional component. Either there's a recent divorce, death in the family, trouble with a child or parent, or financial strife that's led to excessive stress. To reemphasize this point: you cannot heal if you don't heal your emotions. — Michelle S. Fondin

Suffering begins when you mentally label a situation as bad. That causes an emotional contraction. When you let it be, without naming it, enormous power is available to you. The contraction cuts you off from that power, the power of life itself. — Eckhart Tolle

I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends - the fear, the terror, the pain - and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being. — Rai Aren

Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else's behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation. — George K. Simon

A lot of men not only fear emotional pain, they are afraid to be transparent and vulnerable. To let an outsider even glimpse their confusion or suffering is a taboo that starts in adolescence and becomes more entrenched with adulthood. — Michael R. French

Indeed, we find that almost all the mental and emotional suffering which is such a feature of modern living - including the sense of hopelessness, of loneliness, and so on - lessens the moment we begin to engage in actions motivated by concern for others. — Dalai Lama XIV

To diminish the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain, and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain. — Howard Cutler

Maybe lobsters, who are also without frontal lobes, are detached from the neurological-registration-of-injury-or-hazard we call pain in just the same way. There is, after all, a difference between (1) pain as a purely neurological event, and (2) actual suffering, which seems crucially to involved an emotional component, an awareness of pain as unpleasant, as something to fear/dislike/want to avoid. [ ... ] To my lay mind, the lobster's behavior in the kettle appears to be the expression of a preference; and it way well be that an ability to form preferences is the decisive criterion for real suffering. — David Foster Wallace

In the dream of the planet it is normal for humans to suffer, to live in fear, and to create emotional dramas. The outside dream is not a pleasant dream; it is a dream of violence, a dream of fear, a dream of war, a dream of injustice. The personal dream of humans will vary, but globally it is mostly a nightmare. If we look at human society we see a place so difficult to live in because it is ruled by fear. Throughout the world we see human suffering, anger, revenge, addictions, violence in the street, and tremendous injustice. It may exist at different levels in different countries around the world, but fear is controlling the outside dream. — Miguel Ruiz

Young girls today were more sensible, more sophisticated. Nowadays they worried more about their exam results and did their best to ensure they would have a decent career. For them, going out with boys was simply a game, a distraction based as much as on narcissism as on sexual pleasure. Later, they would try to make a good marriage, basing their decision on a range of social and professional criteria as well as shared interests and tastes. Of course, in doing this, they cut themselves from any possibility of happiness - a condition indissociable from traditional and transient emotions which are incompatible with the practice of reason - but in doing so they hoped to escape the moral and emotional suffering which had so tortured their forebears. — Michel Houellebecq

But pain's like water. It finds a way to push through any seal. There's no way to stop it. Sometimes you have to let yourself sink inside of it before you can learn how to swim to the surface. — Katie Kacvinsky

My childhood was one of both poverty and plenty, suffering and joy. I was taken out of poverty, both financial and emotional, and lavished with love. I was given a gift I could never repay if I lived a thousand lifetimes, it was the gift of hope and trust, given to me by my uncle who believed in me so strongly that I began to believe in myself. — Sara Niles

~Remember this always:
Your body and mind can be broken, but your Spirit, is unbreakable, and unchangeable~


When we talk about people or circumstances breaking our spirit, what we mean is that a person has been affected emotionally to the point of feeling broken; however, NOTHING in this world has the capacity to break or change our Spirit!
Our Spirit is what gives us the ability to overcome the misery and suffering experienced by our body and mind.

Our spirit is what drives prisoners of war come out unbroken; our spirit is what drives the victims of rape and abuse to overcome the emotional burdens of their mind.
Believe this! NOTHING can break or change your Spirit, because your spirit is above all things! — Martin Suarez

In the preshent human condition, pain is unavoidable. As long as you inhabit a physical body, you have to experience pain from time to time. Suffering is of a different nature. It is a reaction of the manas/mind that magnifies the pain and adds various emotional frills and thrills to it. In many cases, pain is only transient; but if one wishes, one can always add to it and suffer more - there is no limit. — Samuel Sagan

my physical suffering some of my emotional suffering would fade away. — Cheryl Strayed

What is our human dilemma? That the nature of life is problematic. Problems are not an exception; they are the norm. The world offers recurring and seemingly endless conundrums for us to deal with. We cannot stop problems, but we can end our suffering, and we can achieve true, lasting happiness by understanding the nature of our mind and changing the way we approach our emotional struggles. — Karuna Cayton

Suicidal pain includes the feeling that one has lost all capacity to effect emotional change. The agony is excruciating and looks as if it will never end. There is the feeling of having been beaten down for a very long time. There are feelings of agitation, emptiness, and incoherence. 'Snap out of it and get on with your life,' sounds like a demand to high jump ten feet. — David L. Conroy

If a person's basic state of mind is serene and calm, then it is possible for this inner peace to overwhelm a painful physical experience. On the other hand, if someone is suffering from depression, anxiety, or any form of emotional distress, then even if he or she happens to be enjoying physical comforts, he will not really be able to experience the happiness that these could bring. — Dalai Lama

I have spent hours and hours watching elephants, and to come to understand what emotional creatures they are...it's not just a species facing extinction, it's massive individual suffering. — Mike Bond

We in the revivalist tradition have viewed grace only in terms of privatized, individualized spirituality. Give people enough Jesus to save their souls, move them to an emotional decision, help them get their hearts right and acquire a more responsible morality, and that will be enough. But that is not enough. It is not even the beginning of enough. God was concerned about those living in dire suffering long before Bono, Angelina Jolie, or George Clooney turned into social activists. — Ronnie McBrayer

what is a psychopath? The short version." "A person who is superficially charming and well-spoken; demonstrates inflated self-esteem, arrogance, and a sense of superiority; is consistently deceitful and prone to pathological lying; is cunning and manipulative, maneuvering others for his or her own personal gain; has no remorse and feels no guilt; is callous, inconsiderate, and unconcerned by the pain and suffering of others; shows shallow affect, demonstrating a limited range and depth of emotional responses and feelings; exhibits minimal fear responses and a disinclination to change behavior in response to pain or negative social stimuli; and gets bored easily, needing constant stimulation. — Paul Draker

You are suffering from an ailment that affects ladies of romantic imaginations. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You'll survive.' pg. 303 — Diane Setterfield

The child to be concerned about is the one who is actively unhappy, [in school] ... In the long run, a child's emotional development has a far greater impact on his life than his school performance or the curriculum's richness, so it is wise to do everything possible to change a situation in which a child is suffering excessively. — Dorothy H Cohen

Earlier in the day, while killing some hours by circling in blue ballpoint ink every uppercase M in the front section of a month-old New York Times, Chip had concluded that he was behaving like a depressed person. Now, as his telephone began to ring, it occurred to him that a depressed person ought to continue staring at the TV and ignore the ringing - ought to light another cigarette and, with no trace of emotional affect, watch another cartoon while his machine took whoever's message. That his impulse, instead, was to jump to his feet and answer the phone - that he could so casually betray the arduous wasting of a day - cast doubt on the authenticity of his suffering. He felt as if he lacked the ability to lose all volition and connection with reality the way depressed people did in books and movies. It seemed to him, as he silenced the TV and hurried into his kitchen, that he was failing even at the miserable task of falling properly apart. — Jonathan Franzen

Every moment of this experience we call a physical life is determined by the choices you make in your thoughts, intentions, and actions. Thus, when you choose to experience a thought, image, or activity from a place of loving, joyful, and compassionate intentions for yourself and others, you have the power to weave a lovely fabric that heals your mind, body, and soul. When you choose differently, the fabric you weave may contribute to an experience of suffering and pain in the form of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual anguish. The choice is always yours. — Susan Barbara Apollon

True adulthood would mean no longer denying the truth. It would mean feeling the repressed suffering, consciously acknowledging the story remembered by the body at an emotional level, and integrating that story instead of repressing it. Whether contact with the parents can then in fact be maintained will depend on the given circumstances in each individual case. What is absolutely imperative is the termination of the harmful attachment to the internalized parents of childhood, an attachment that, though we call it love, certainly does not deserve the name. It is made up of different ingredients, such as gratitude, compassion, expectations, denial, illusions, obedience, fear, and the anticipation of punishment. Time — Alice Miller

It is impossible to control outcomes or results, although most of us have been programmed from a very young age to believe otherwise. The idea that we can perform actual 'magic' causes tremendous dysfunction, unnecessary suffering and prevents the development of emotional resilience. — Christopher Dines

In the infinity and chaos that swirls around them, they have fulfilled their purposes: to live their lives with less suffering, to further humanity's forays into the inhospitable void, to love one another unconditionally, endlessly. — Kay Simone

ALLOW THE SENSATIONS TO BE PRESENT, BUT DO NOT ACT ON THEM This is probably the hardest thing to do when you start using the Four Steps. When you refuse to give in to the content of your deceptive brain messages by not performing the action your brain is telling you to do, your Uh Oh Center fires even more intensely, which makes you feel extremely uncomfortable. You want to do virtually anything to get rid of those sensations, both physical and emotional, and know that simply following your deceptive brain messages will accomplish that task in the short term. The problem, as we all must learn the hard way over time, is that doing so will only fuel the negative messages and further entrench the maladaptive circuits ever more powerfully into your brain. Said another way, short-term relief rapidly causes more pain and suffering, not less. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Emotional Distress (n.): A negative emotional reaction - which may include fear, anger, anxiety, and suffering — Whitney Gracia Williams

There are humans versus humans in a jungle of predators; humans full of judgment, full of blame, full of guilt, full of emotional poison - envy, anger, hate, sadness, suffering. We create all these little demons in our mind because we have learned to dream hell in our own life. — Miguel Ruiz

Emotional suffering needs spiritual encouragement. — Edward T. Welch

If we are able to read stereotypical language of the Bible in reference to suffering -- and particularly the suffering involved in siege warfare -- as a measure not so much of the historical details of the disaster or catastrophe, but rather as a measure of the emotional, social, and obviously therefore spiritual impact of the disaster (after all, this is religious literature), then our analysis of a good deal of biblical literature in relation to the exile would need to be rethought. Stereotypical literature of suffering is not literature that can somehow be 'decoded' to mean that the exiles actually lived in Babylonian comfort. (p. 104) — Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

I'm often asked, "Isn't nursing depressing?" I have experienced real depression in my life, but not because of my profession. Nursing is the opposite of despair; it offers the opportunity to do something about suffering. But you have to be strong to be a nurse. You need strong muscles and stamina for the long shifts and heavy lifting, intelligence and discipline to acquire knowledge and exercise critical thinking. As for emotional fortitude- well, I'm still working on that. Most of all, you need moral courage because nursing is about the pursuit of justice. It requires you stand up to bullies, to do things that are right but difficult, and to speak your mind even when you are afraid. I wasn't strong like this when I started out. Nursing made me strong. — Tilda Shalof

Compared to other parents, remarried parents seem more desirous of their child's approval, more alert to the child's emotional state, and more sensitive in their parent-child relations. Perhaps this is the result of heightened empathy for the child's suffering, perhaps it is a guilt reaction; in either case, it gives the child a potent weapon
the power to disrupt the new household and come between parent and the new spouse. — Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Thoughts of suicide exist, simply because the individual is suffering from a lack of emotional and physical nourishment, hence the term, "starving for attention". The person who is suicidal feels that, no matter what they do, it is never good enough for society, and hence, they are never satisfied. — Carlos

It was in this man's class that I first began to wonder if people who wrote fiction were not suffering from some kind of disorder--from what I've since come to think of, remembering the wild nocturnal rocking of Albert Vetch, as the midnight disease. The midnight disease is a kind of emotional insomnia; at every conscious moment its victim--even if he or she writes at dawn, or in the middle of the afternoon--feels like a person lying in a sweltering bedroom, with the window thrown open, looking up at a sky filled with stars and airplanes, listening to the narrative of a rattling blind, an ambulance, a fly trapped in a Coke bottle, while all around him the neighbors soundly sleep. this is in my opinion why writers--like insomniacs--are so accident-prone, so obsessed with the calculus of bad luck and missed opportunities, so liable to rumination and a concomitant inability to let go of a subject, even when urged repeatedly to do so. — Michael Chabon

O, great wise man,' she said, 'I have been wondering so many things. Is life more than sitting at home doing the same thing over and over? Wise man, is life more than watching one's relatives do unpleasant things, or more than grim tasks one must perform at school and at work? Is life more than being entertained by literature, wise man, or more than traveling from one place to another, suffering from poor emotional health and pondering the people one loves? And what about those who lead a life of mystery? And the mysteries of life? And, wise man, what about the overall feeling of doom that one cannot ever escape no matter what one does, and miscellaneous things that I have neglected to mention in specific? — Lemony Snicket

You see the suffering of children all the time nowadays. Wars and famines are played out before us in our living rooms, and almost every week there are pictures of children who have been through unimaginable loss and horror. Mostly they look very calm. You see them looking into the camera, directly at the lens, and knowing what they have been through you expect to see terror or grief in their eyes, yet so often there's no visible emotion at all. They look so blank it would be easy to imagine that they weren't feeling much.
And though I do not for a moment equate what I went through with the suffering of those children, I do remember feeling as they look. I remember Matt talking to me
others as well, but mostly Matt
and I remember the enormous effort required even to hear what he said. I was so swamped by unmanageable emotions that I couldn't feel a thing. It was like being at the bottom of the sea. — Mary Lawson

This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness — Charles R. Swindoll

Nevertheless the severance is rather casual and it drops a stain on our admiration of Nora. Ibsen has put the leaving of her children on the same moral and emotional level as the leaving of her husband and we cannot, in our hearts, asssent to that. It is not only the leaving but the way the play does not have time for suffering, changes of heart. Ibsen has been too much a man in the end. He has taken the man's practice, if not his stated belief, that where self-realization is concerned children shall not be an impediment. — Elizabeth Hardwick

I'm choosing to suffer less. To put myself and my family through less pain. — Brittany Maynard

Managing emotions is about living your truth rather than suffering a series of reactions.
You are a powerful creator and more than your emotions.Emotions are a good guiding system to let you know what is going on inside; but they are not the rulers of your world. Appreciate your emotional range which is part of the wonderful human experience, but keep your inner guidance system in place. Follow your path. Choose your destination. — Sheri Kaye Hoff

The economic benefits of investing in children have been extensively documented. Investing fully in children today will ensure the well-being and productivity of future generations for decades to come. By contrast, the physical, emotional and intellectual impairment that poverty inflicts on children canmean a lifetime of suffering and want - and a legacy of poverty for the next generation ... — Carol Bellamy

JACK KIRBY is also the central personage of this novel because this is not a good novel. This is a seriously mixed-up book with a central personage who never appears. The plot, like life, resolves into nothing and features emotional suffering without meaning. — Jarett Kobek

The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of
unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of
judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the
more ore you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind.
Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and
remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as
threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable. — Eckhart Tolle

When faced with emotional pain, I become still for hours, sometimes days, doing absolutely nothing. It helps me get to the truest source of my suffering. — Romany Malco

Many animals flourish not in spite of the fact that they are "animals" but because they are "animals" - or even more precisely, perhaps, because they are felt to be members of our families and our communities, regardless of their species. And yet, at the very same moment, billions of animals in factory farms, many of whom are very near to or indeed exceed cats and dogs and other companion animals in the capacities we take to be relevant to standing (the ability to experience pain and suffering, anticipatory dread, emotional bonds and complex social interactions, and so on), have as horrible a life as one could imagine, also because they are "animals."

Clearly, then, the question here is not simply of the "animal" as the abjected other of the "human" tout court, but rather something like a distinction between bios and zoe that obtains within the domain of domesticated animals itself. — Cary Wolfe

I think we start suffering as soon as we come out of the womb. I think that people tend to stereotype. When they think of suffering, they think of abuse - physical abuse, emotional abuse, poverty, that kind of thing. There's different levels of suffering. I don't think that it has to do with how much money you have - if you were raised in the ghetto or the Hamptons. For me it's more about perception: self-perception and how you perceive the world. — Lucinda Williams

If you have ever experienced that feeling of being "stuck" with writing, it is not because you haven't put your butt in a chair. It's because you are suffering from emotional procrastination toward writing. — Monica Leonelle

Freedom is self liberation and liberation of people from any suffering. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Sometimes we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being. (109) — Jean-Yves Leloup

Relief is a great feeling.
It's the emotional and physical reward we receive from our bodies upon alleviation of pain, pressure and struggle. A time to bask in the lack of the negative.
And yet, think about it - relief is really the status quo, a negation of the suffering, a nothing in itself. It is the way things were before the pressure and struggle began.
So, is it a step back? A regression?
Or is it an opportunity to regroup, start over, and move in a different direction?
Use your moment of relief well. — Vera Nazarian

I have said that the attempt to avoid legitimate suffering lies at the root of all emotional illness. Not surprisingly, most psychotherapy patients (and probably most non-patients, since neurosis is the norm rather than the exception) have a problem, whether they are young or old, in facing the reality of death squarely and clearly. What — M. Scott Peck

Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Luckily, we humans evolved not only mental habits that lead us into emotional difficulty but also faculties through which we can free ourselves from them. The same skills we have used for millennia to understand and thrive in our environment can help us understand how our minds create unnecessary suffering and how to free ourselves from it. — Ronald D. Siegel

Don't make a physical decision on an emotional feeling that will led you to mentally suffering in the end. — Jerome D. Williams

Once we're willing to confront our emotional suffering, we begin making choices based on attraction instead of aversion, love instead of fear. Where we used to think about what was 'safe,' we now become interested in doing what seems right or fun or meaningful or ripe with possibilities. — Martha Beck

It had begun to occur to me that perhaps it was okay that I hadn't spent my days on the trail pondering the sorrows of my life, that perhaps by being forced to focus on my physical suffering some of my emotional suffering would fade away. By the end of that second week, I realized that since I'd begun my hike, I hadn't shed a single tear. — Cheryl Strayed

On the ward there was hurt and pain so big and so deep that speech could not express it. I had been interested in philosophy, and suddenly philosophy came alive for me, for here the basic questions of human existence were not abstractions: they were embodied in human suffering — Frank X. Barron

The absence of life is not the same as material privation: we will never again see the same soul occupying the same space. The world refers to them as pets, but that is what we do, not really what they are. Affection pays for itself in proportion to the love we offer, and if the love we lavished on him was any indication, we are inconsolable. The suffering is more on our side now, for he led an enormously happy and productive life, and we are left to remember and agonize. It is all wretchedness now. Grief is the currency for death, leaving us in emotional debt perhaps forever, but love is the tax we happily pay toward the investment of another's company, and we would all rather pay it and be happy and poor than be rich in a friendless life. He is gone, and we are now beholden to him, but we are so much happier for his having been here than we deserve to be.
On the death of Ted, beloved cat — Michelle Franklin

To care only about your pain and suffering, and disregard the emotional toll of others is hypocritically sub-human. — Willie D

Real loved one's aren't afraid, and will suggest to
you, what's in your best interest ... because they wouldn't want too see you suffer the consequences of your, sideways, emotional impulse(s). To see you crash and burn is the gratification of [the] 'yes folk' lurking in your corner. You may not agree, but always consider the voice(s) that have consistently kept it real. — T.F. Hodge

The evidence of grave emotional and mental suffering is clear to see in the growing number of mental health units, "re-habs" and overflowing psychiatric wards as people try to find relief in compulsive drinking, drug abuse, gambling, over-eating, under-eating, chasing prestige, hoarding money, "retail therapy" and over-indulging in pornography and sex. — Christopher Dines

Often, when a human suffers through major emotional traumas, a lack of well being follows if their feelings about the trauma are not completely expressed. When the trauma is severe and the suffering is continuous, their animal companion's condition may deteriorate too. — Colleen M. Flanagan

What would have been the good of my being plunged into a lot of naked suffering and emotional crisis without any prayer, any Sacrament to stabilize and order it, and make some kind of meaning out of it? — Thomas Merton

Which of us would not be preoccupied with thoughts of food if we were suffering from internal starvation? Hunger is such an awful thing that it is classically cited with pestilence and war as one of our three worst burdens. Add to the physical discomfort the emotional stresses of being fat, the taunts and teasing from the thin, the constant criticism, the accusations of gluttony and lack of "will power," and the constant guilt feelings, and we have reasons enough for the emotional disturbances which preoccupy the psychiatrists. — Gary Taubes

The way we treat animals is the root cause of all the human suffering in the world, from poverty, starvation, disease, and war to lack of clean air and water, not to mention all the varied forms of human emotional and spiritual suffering. — Sharon Gannon

At an emotional level, we feel that things should be happy and when things are difficult or painful, something is wrong. According to the Buddhist teachings this is what causes suffering. — Krissy Pozatek

The fact that each being has its own accordant suffering means that no matter who we are, whether we have a prominent place or the humblest place in society, we all experience suffering. Reflect on all of the ordinary suffering that each and every living being experiences. Many of us face the unbearable suffering of the death of a child. All of us will experience being separated from our parents, either by emotional estrangement or by death. If we are married or in a long-term relationship, that relationship will either break up or end with the death of one of the partners. Many of us have families that do not behave like families due to alcoholism or other kinds of addictions, and we grow up lacking stability and intimacy. Even if we do have a more stable family life, we will still experience the suffering of disagreements, arguing, and fighting. — Anyen Rinpoche

Feel whatever arises fully, and then let go of any identification with what you're feeling. You are at choice. You don't have to go through another moment of suffering. Break free from the societal constructs that say, 'Life is meant to be a challenge.' This is not true. You have the capacity to become the observer of your emotional reactions and check in with your heart each time, to respond from love and compassion. This is the key to becoming liberated from the bonds of emotional suffering. — Dashama Konah Gordon

Even the rich aren't often happy. Their wealth is at best only a temporary distraction. It doesn't make them immune to emotional and mental suffering, or to disease and death. They too must deal with loneliness, the deaths of loved ones and the frustrations and boredom of old age. — Frederick Lenz

Somatize: how the body defends itself against too much stress, manifesting psychological distress as physical symptoms in the stomach or nerves or uterus or vagina ... women who had suffered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse tended to somatize more. It turns out that somatization is related to hysteria, which stems from the Greek cognate of uterus ... Uterus = hysteria. Hysteria
a word to make women feel insane for knowing what they know. Hysteria is caused by suffering from a huge traume where there is an underlying conflict. — Eve Ensler

There is a correlation between the physical and spiritual worlds but only attachment to the physical world causes emotional suffering. — Daniel Marques

The past is behind us," said Boudicca,"but the difficulty there is we keep looking over our shoulders. — Michelle Franklin

Understanding did not provide solace or make the pain go away; in many ways, understanding was just more salt in the emotional wound. Ignorance allowed one to fight back with unfettered cruelty. Understanding inspired empathy, which led to guilt, as well as suffering.
She looked at Gavin, supine, unconcerned, contented, and thought that perhaps there was something to being a sociopath. If you didn't have a heart, it couldn't be broken. — Nenia Campbell

I know you're in a world of pain, but that pain will lessen. At the beginning you can't see that. You can only see your pain and you think it will never go away.
But the nature of pain is that it changes - it changes like a sunset. At first, it's this intense red-orange in the sky, and then it starts getting softer and soften. The texture of pain changes as you work through it. And then one day, you wake up and realize that life isn't just about working through your incest; it's about living, too.
- survivor of child sexual abuse — Ellen Bass