When Trying Harder Makes It Worse

3 a.m., and you are still arguing with a thought that will not sit down. You have reasoned with it, distracted from it, told it to leave and somehow it is still the loudest thing in the room. If this sounds familiar, you have already discovered something most of us take years to learn: some pain does not leave because we worked hard enough to make it.

The Effort We Cannot See

In session, I often notice clients describing their exhaustion less as sadness or fear, and more as fatigue from the fighting - the bracing, the mental rehearsing, the constant low-grade effort to keep a feeling from taking over. We are raised to believe effort solves things. Struggling at work means work harder. However, struggling with grief, anxiety, or shame, though, often follows the opposite rule. 

A Useful, Uncomfortable Image

Picture someone caught in quicksand. Every instinct says thrash, kick, climb free. But that instinct is precisely what pulls a person under faster. The counterintuitive move is to stop struggling, let the body go still, and trust the surface to hold. Difficult emotions can behave the same way. Panic met with more panic compounds. Shame met with self-criticism deepens. The effort aimed at ending the feeling can be exactly what keeps a person submerged in it not because they are doing something wrong, but because the instinct itself is built for a different kind of threat.

So Where Do You Draw the Line?

This is the part clients ask about most, and fairly so because "stop fighting it" is not a blanket instruction. Some pain genuinely responds to action: a conversation that needs to happen, a boundary that needs setting, a habit that needs changing. The skill is not choosing one mode forever, but learning to ask, each time pain shows up:

• Is this within my control, or outside it? A technique helps when it changes something in your circumstances. It stops helping when it is only trying to control an internal feeling that has no external lever left to pull.

• Has this strategy actually worked before, or have I just repeated it hoping this time is different? If you have tried the same fix for months with no real shift, that repetition is often the clue, not a sign to try harder.

• Am I solving a problem, or avoiding a feeling? Both can look identical from the outside. Only you know, honestly, which one it is.

• Is the pain about something that happened, or something that is still happening? Old grief and current danger call for different responses.

  
  

There is rarely a clean line. Most people move back and forth between effort and acceptance many times over, sometimes within the same day, and that back-and-forth is not failure but is rather closer to how this actually works.

The Grief Hidden Inside Acceptance

Here is the part that often goes unsaid: accepting that a pain may be a long-term companion, not a problem with a finish line, does not feel peaceful at first. It can feel like giving up. Like confirming your worst fear that this really will always hurt, that you really will have to carry it. That reaction is not a sign you are doing acceptance wrong. It is grief, showing up, and it deserves space rather than being rushed past.

Why We Do It Anyway

Because the alternative staying in the fight indefinitely has its own cost, one that is easy to underestimate until you have been paying it for years: the exhaustion, the shrinking life, the relationships and moments missed while all your energy went toward a battle that could not be won that way. Acceptance is not resignation. It does not mean the pain stops mattering, or that you stop wanting things to be different. It means the energy once spent forcing the feeling out becomes available again for the parts of life that were waiting on the other side of that fight.

So if hopelessness shows up when you consider that this pain may not fully leave let it be there, without letting it be the final word. The next time it does, the question worth sitting with may not be how do I make this stop but what would it look like to build a life that has room for this, too?

References

Ehrnstrom, Colleen. Compedium Of Accpetance and Commitemnt Therapy Metaphors. July 2011, https://coping.us/images/Compendium_of_ACT_Metaphors.pdf.

Harris, Russell. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Introductory Workshop Handout. 2007, https://www.actmindfully.com.au/upimages/2007_Introductory_ACT_Workshop_Handout_-__Russ_Harris.pdf.

Disclaimer: This blog post is meant for awareness/entertainment purposes only. It is not medical advice and one must refrain from self-diagnosing. It is in no way a substitute for therapy with a mental health professional and it is not meant to be clinical. To consult with a psychotherapist on our team, you can contact us on fettle.counselling@gmail.com.