Beck allegorizes Dante’s experience of entering hell and applies it to the presence of pain and suffering in a person’s life. She makes a distinction between the two terms, defining “pain” as the immediate emotional and physical effect of an event, while “suffering” is a feature of the way we choose to handle the events that happen to us. Suffering, then, can come as a result of our own thoughts, even thoughts which we convince ourselves that we believe: “Our worst psychological suffering comes from thoughts that we genuinely believe, while simultaneously knowing they aren’t true” (91, emphasis in original).

Such thoughts include beliefs like “money will make me happy” or “sticking to my unpleasant job is the path to success.” It is important to verbalize the actual truth in such circumstances, even if it might sound negative at first—for example, instead of the foregoing statements, being willing to say, “I’m getting more money but still feel unhappy,” or “I don’t like my job” will lead one closer to the truth.

Beck leads her readers through an exercise to consider the troubling “hellgate” topic they identified in Chapter 4, but now to observe all the frightening thoughts and fears one might have about that topic.