Scott Kiloby’s method for dealing with unbearable suffering
A friend of mine recently sent me an article that deeply resonated with me. In it, the author, Fiona Robertson, shares her personal experience of working through overwhelming emotions and intense suffering using the Living Inquiries method:
“The biggest revelation for me came when I was able to feel emotions and sensations without the words and images attached to them. I’d always taken it for granted that those feelings were the suffering. Stripped of their associations, the layers of meaning, it turned out that even intense emotions were bearable. More than that, they sometimes became pleasurable, or at least neutral. Energy moving through the body, and being felt. Indistinguishable from aliveness, and no longer perceived as negative in any way. I discovered the breathtaking, exquisite beauty in sadness, the innocence of fear, the high of anger, stripped of its connotations.
Going through the inquiry process, over and over again, the underlying belief that there was something wrong with what I was feeling, that sense of I shouldn’t be feeling like this, began to ebb away. Suffering, as Hafiz pointed out, comes not from life itself, but from our quibbling about it. The more we scream This shouldn’t be happening, the more we suffer. By taking a look at each element of our experience, gently, curiously, and with courage, meeting all of it as it is, we untangle the tale of suffering, and the one who suffers is nowhere to be found.
I used to believe that my suffering would end when my feelings and thoughts were somehow magically transmuted into their opposites. It is delightful to discover that the end of suffering lies in those very same feelings and thoughts, exactly as they are. My life continues as it did, my feelings and thoughts come and go as they do, and yet what was once considered suffering is now vital, alive, precious, and very much less serious than it used to seem.”
Fiona Robertson, “On seeing through suffering”
What made me want to share Fiona Robertson’s words is a powerful phrase from her piece: “Stripped of their associations, the layers of meaning, it turned out that even intense emotions were bearable.” This perfectly mirrors my own experience working with people in deep emotional pain – what Eckhart Tolle refers to as the “dense pain body.” I’ve had clients whose emotions were so overwhelming that I genuinely worried they might pass out. But as soon as I gently asked them to locate where in their body the emotion was felt, its intensity would immediately drop. Simply directing attention to the physical dimension of the emotion had a near-magical effect – it brought calm and groundedness. The suffering, which had seemed unbearable just moments earlier, would reduce to mere physical discomfort. What made it unbearable wasn’t the sensation itself, but the mental layers wrapped around it—interpretations, beliefs, memories, or future projections that distorted or rejected reality.
This distinction between the mental aspect of emotions and their bodily felt experience lies at the heart of the Living Inquiries method, developed by Scott Kiloby – the same method that helped Fiona Robertson “see beyond her suffering” and discover within it an outpouring of energy in many forms. I deeply value its psychotherapeutic power because it targets the root of human suffering: the mind, with its endless analyses, justifications, labels, accusations, interpretations, and other strategies for arguing with reality and avoiding the discomfort of the here-and-now. Through a sequence of gentle, inquiry-based questions, the method invites us to examine the truth of our thoughts and images – those mental overlays that latch onto emotions – and in doing so, it loosens their grip. I especially appreciate the metaphor Kiloby uses to describe this mental-emotional entanglement: the “Velcro effect.” Like the fastening material we use in clothing or bags, these thoughts and images stick easily to our emotional experiences, and peeling them apart can feel just as difficult, but it is both possible and liberating.
The purpose of this method of “unsticking” the thoughts and images attached to our suffering is to help us realise that words are merely labels we place on reality – they are not reality itself. When we manage to let go of these labels, we open the door to a direct, unfiltered experience of what is. And because that experience is no longer burdened by judgments, interpretations, or the personal history we’ve constructed around it, it transforms. What once felt like suffering reveals itself as pure energy – vibrant, dynamic, and flowing through the body.
“All the labels we put on ourselves eventually stop serving us. I once walked around calling myself “addicted,” then “spiritual,” then “empath,” then “highly sensitive,” then “enlightened,” and finally “someone who doesn’t care about being enlightened.” Looking back, it all made a lot of noise – but not much else. As Judy wisely said, take the words “highly sensitive,” drop the words, and just feel the feeling. The feeling itself never says it’s too much. It’s the words that say it.
It is just something that has been felt. It’s just .“
Scott Kiloby*
Anyone even slightly observant has noticed that the way we feel is directly linked to the thoughts running through our minds. When our inner dialogue consists of arguments with reality, placing conditions on what must happen before we can accept life, it can become toxic. If such thoughts loop throughout the day, they don’t just lead to tension and migraines, but often to deeper states like despair and depression. On the other hand, when thoughts aligned with acceptance enter the mind – what we might call “agreeing with reality”—negative emotions significantly diminish or even disappear.
There was a period in my work when I deeply valued the therapeutic effect of catharsis. When the tension of long-repressed emotions was finally released, it brought a sense of calm and spaciousness, like the air after a storm. And while I still recognise the beauty and value of experiencing so-called “primal feelings”, I’ve come to see more clearly that without addressing the mind and how it shapes our personal narrative, the effects won’t last. If the root cause—the mindset—is not transformed, the relief is only temporary. The emotional charge eventually builds up again, leading once more to the edge of overwhelm.
Awareness of the mind’s central role in sustaining and amplifying suffering is crucial, especially when it comes to what we perceive as “unbearable suffering.” Whenever you find yourself thinking, “This is unbearable” or “I can’t take it anymore,” try applying the method of separating the two components of emotion: the thought and the physical sensation. This simple yet powerful distinction can work wonders. Often, it is not the bodily feeling that is truly intolerable, but the mental narrative attached to it.
Take, for example, the feeling of loneliness. Applying this method means taking the thought “I am lonely” and trying to locate it as a physical sensation in the body. Then, you set aside the thought itself – “I am lonely” – and remain only with the bodily sensation associated with it. If you can pause, even briefly, the mental flood of thoughts telling you how terrible this is – that you shouldn’t feel this way, that you don’t deserve it, that it will always be like this – you’ll notice that the intensity of the loneliness starts to fade. This is the power of direct contact with reality: when we experience it without the mental story, it softens. It grounds us. And it gently returns us to our innermost center, where there is only presence and awareness.
The burgeoning film industry behind our eyes tends to produce two main genres. One is the “movie of the future,” driven by fear and anxiety. The other is the “movie of the past,” steeped in regret and self-reproach. If we could just manage to step away from the screen and take a seat in the audience, even for a moment, we’d see how rarely we inhabit the present. Most of our time is spent “out there,” either anticipating or remembering, but not actually being here and now.
Yet the moment we shift our attention fully to the body’s sensations, the tight link between thought and emotion begins to loosen. The logic is simple: the fire of suffering keeps burning because we keep feeding it. Remove the mental fuel, and the flame begins to die down.
And this fuel is our thoughts. They swirl relentlessly in our minds, and before we realise it, we’re once again caught in the film of our own making. Then, the key moment comes – pausing to ask, “What if everything my mind is telling me isn’t true?”.
If you take a close look at the mental “stuffing” of what we call unbearable suffering, you’ll see that behind the thought “I can’t take it anymore” lies a whole swarm of other thoughts. The common thread between them is that they argue with reality. For instance, we’ve lost someone we loved, and no matter how much we wish it, we can’t bring them back (because no one has ever returned from the afterlife). Or, we have feelings for someone who doesn’t reciprocate them in the way we want, and we can’t force them to love us. Or, we face situations that stir fear and anxiety – things we have no control over. And sometimes, we confront our own limitations, which we also can’t change. These are all sources of suffering that exist outside of our sphere of influence.
When we don’t want to accept our limitations, suffering comes.
One of the thoughts that fuels the fire of unbearable suffering is the belief that something is happening to us that is greater than our ability to bear it. But what if the opposite is true? What if what’s happening to us is something we can bear? What if the issue isn’t the size of the challenge, but the smallness of our minds, our limited beliefs? Fiona Robertson’s article, which starts with a quote from Hafiz, ends with it too. For me, this quote is the conclusion, and everything shared up until now serves as the introduction leading to it.
“We should make all spiritual talk simple today:
God is trying to sell you something, but you don’t want to buy
That is what your suffering is:
Your fantastic haggling, your manic screaming over the price.
Hafiz
All this bargaining with Life only happens if we think we are separate from the Whole, that we are poor, weak and empty. What if this is not true? What if the opposite is true? And all this happens to us for us to find it?
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
*Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
