Clean vs. Dirty Pain: Are You Creating Your Own Suffering? How to Process Your Emotions 4/30

Clean Pain vs. Dirty Pain (How to Tell What Kind of Suffering You’re Dealing With)

• Clean pain = natural, human emotions that arise from real experiences and caring.

  • Examples: joy, gratitude, wonder, hurt, grief, regret, sadness
  • Example: compassion/sadness felt when a friend is going through a divorce.

• Dirty pain = suffering you create through thoughts, choices, and actions—often driven by anxious or distorted thinking.

  • Examples: taking offense, holding grudges, taking things personally, blaming (self or others), victim mindset, avoidance, shaming yourself, comparison, reactivity, chronic stress
  • Example: Rose ruminates for two weeks, assuming a coffee conversation is about what she did wrong—creating extra fear and guilt beyond the situation itself.

Key Wellness/Self-Care Strategy: Separate “What Happened” From “What Your Mind Is Adding”

Ask yourself:

• Is this pain a natural part of being alive (clean), or am I intensifying it with my thinking/behavior (dirty)?

If you can distinguish, your next steps become clearer:

• Option A (dirty pain): “I’m doing something to make this worse—so I’ll work to change it.”
• Option B (clean pain): “This pain is a natural result of caring—I’ll continue to care.”
• Option C (uncertain): “I’m not sure—so I’ll stay open and explore what I can change.”

Emotional Processing Tip: Avoid Two Mental Traps That Block Healing

• Don’t blame outside circumstances as a way of staying helpless (e.g., “It’s my parents’ fault,” “I can’t help it.”)
• Don’t blame yourself as a way of staying stuck (e.g., “Everything is my fault, I’m terrible.”)

The goal isn’t that depression/anxiety are “your fault,” but that you can reduce self-created suffering by recognizing what you control.

Responsibility Without Blame (Accountability as a Practical Tool)

• Let go of victimhood and blaming.
• Practice: “I am 100% responsible for what I am responsible for.”

Redirect your energy:

• Stop trying to change other people
• Put energy into improving your own actions, mindset, and responses

Practical Thinking Tool: “Locus of Control” Written Exercise (Used to Reduce Dirty Pain)

This exercise (done on paper) helps clarify:

• I am responsible for:

  • skills you learn
  • effort/work ethic
  • how you communicate (e.g., assertiveness with your boss)
  • how you choose to think (e.g., growth mindset)
  • where/when you choose to work and how you respond to obstacles

• I am not responsible for:

  • other people’s emotions and reactivity
  • their pace or choices
  • factors outside your control (e.g., supply chain delays, team completion)

Outcome: you can choose the most effective action rather than ruminating.

Example Application (Workplace Scenario)

• Mike interprets his boss’s reaction as proof he’s “incurable/unworthy,” then blames others and himself, spiraling into hopelessness (dirty pain).
• When he uses locus-of-control clarity, he identifies helpful next steps:
  • have a conversation with his boss
  • discuss scope/timeline
  • communicate obstacles
  • replace black-and-white thinking with balanced learning (“some successes, some failures; keep growing”)
• Result: more hope and empowerment—and less unnecessary suffering.

Presenters or Sources

• Rose (example person in the story)
• Mike (example person in the scenario)
• Speaker/Creator of the video (not named in the provided subtitles)