Writing on Therapy, Relationships, and Emotional Change
This essay reflects how I think about therapy: emotional difficulty, psychological growth, and the ways people change through understanding rather than avoidance.
A Resolution to Suffer (Differently) - January 2026
At the beginning of the year, many of us make resolutions to improve ourselves. We plan to meditate more, lose weight, exercise regularly, drink less, or finally get organized. Beneath most of these goals is a familiar hope: to feel happier, calmer, or more at ease.
And yet, by February, most resolutions have already faded.
Perhaps the problem isn’t effort, but the goals themselves. When happiness becomes the measure of success, discomfort is easily interpreted as something to fix or eliminate. In this framework, feeling bad comes to mean something has gone wrong. In the effort to “correct” this or to be good at life, there is often pressure to move past difficulty quickly and return to feeling “normal.”
And yet, much of what causes distress in life cannot be resolved with more effort or better habits. Loss, uncertainty, conflict, and disappointment are not failures to overcome, but inevitable parts of being human. But when these experiences feel confusing, contradictory, or overwhelming, we often respond by pushing them away — distracting ourselves, numbing out, or criticizing ourselves for having them at all.
Over a century ago, Sigmund Freud suggested that the aim of therapy was not happiness, but the capacity to tolerate what he called ordinary unhappiness — the emotional strain that comes with a full and complicated life. In this view, therapy is not meant to erase difficulty, but to help people live with it more freely. When emotional struggles can be understood rather than fought against, people often feel less trapped by familiar thoughts, reactions, and patterns.
Learning to live with emotional difficulty does not come from fixing or avoiding sadness or disappointment. It comes from staying with uncomfortable feelings long enough to notice them, make sense of them, and, at times, grieve what has been lost. When people stop rushing to push feelings away, those feelings often begin to soften. They become less urgent, less frightening, and easier to carry. Over time, what once felt overwhelming begins to loosen its grip, and what felt confusing becomes more understandable.
This doesn’t mean suffering disappears. Life will still include uncertainty, loss, and difficulty. But one’s relationship to suffering can change. Instead of feeling overtaken by emotions or trapped in familiar patterns, people develop a steadier sense of themselves — and more choice in how they respond.
Perhaps this year’s most meaningful resolution is to stay with what is difficult long enough to learn from it. Not because life should feel good all the time, but because difficult feelings often reveal what matters, what has been lost, and what still needs care. When we take time to understand how our experiences have shaped us — the stories we carry about who we are and how the world works — something begins to shift. What once felt fixed or overwhelming starts to open up, creating room for growth and change. When those feelings are allowed rather than numbed or pushed aside, people often find they are not only better able to meet life’s hardships, but more able to fully take in its pleasures as well.