The Practice of Becoming Comfortable with Feeling UNcomfortable
I’ve been thinking about this blog post for quite a while now and mulling around many thoughts in my head over the past several months. This topic has come up for me several times – both in teachings I’ve been reading and pondering as well as conversations with friends and family. It feels like an important topic and so I’ve waited a bit to get the thoughts in my head just right for sharing. Well at least I hope they come out just right…
It’s true for me and, from what I’ve seen, for many in our culture, that we don’t like feeling uncomfortable. We take an aspirin at the first sign of a headache or cramp. We dive into a glass of wine after a long day to “take the edge off”. We start to fidget or distract ourselves or shut down when confronted with difficult conversations. We avoid speaking our truth when it seems like it might not be well-received (even if we’re ultimately wrong in that calculation). And I’m both using a generalized “we” here and speaking for myself.
It can be exceedingly difficult to actually FEEL uncomfortable.
But why is that? It’s just another way of feeling.
The truth is we aren’t supported much in feeling uncomfortable in our day-to-day lives. I never saw a “How to Enjoy Feeling Uncomfortable” class in college. It wasn’t something my friends and I discussed, (until recently!), when we got together. And how many times are we told to “Suck it up”, “Suit up and Show up”, or “Just get through it so you can move on”? Far too often in my opinion. In my experience a person may not even know they feel uncomfortable until they are about to explode. We can almost be disconnected from the baseline knowing, (that deep in-the-body kind of knowing), of feelings of discomfort.
I’m no expert on this but I’ve been thinking about it and working on it a lot this year.
Towards the beginning of the year I actually set my intention to “speak my voice and speak my truth” this year – not something I’m always very good at and definitely not something I often feel comfortable doing. Go figure, when one states an intention in life the Universe tends to provide many opportunities to have the experience of said intention. For me speaking my truth can be VERY UNcomfortable. I tend to be conflict avoidant and want to make everyone happy, all the time. The “disease to please” as I’ve heard it called. This means that I often hold back from speaking in group settings where I don’t know people very well, I don’t share my opinions or feelings unless I’m with very close friends or family, and, in a nutshell, I hold a lot in. And the bottom line is, this impacts me energetically to the point where I feel even MORE uncomfortable – just to avoid feeling uncomfortable in the first place! What a vicious downward spiral.
So, what ARE we supposed to do? How can we expand our range of emotional experiences in life to be OK feeling uncomfortable? Something I truly believe helps us grow as human beings. How can we let ourselves become comfortable feeling UNcomfortable and move forward from there; interact with others from there.
I’ve taken recent inspiration from Michael Singer, author of the book The Untethered Soul. He suggests the practice of leaning back, figuratively, from that which is making us uncomfortable or whatever it is we are trying to push down or away. I’ve long known that just ignoring something does not make it go away, but the concept of leaning back and making space for something is a relatively newer practice in my life. I appreciated Singer’s talk about it and the softening he tacitly encouraged, which I’ve been doing when I started to feel uncomfortable. I’ve even started leaning back literally. Just to add to the intentionality behind it.
While making mental space for discomfort or uncomfortable ideas has been something I’ve actively practice for a few years now, adding the extra element of leaning back, to allow space at different levels of the body, is helping me deepen this practice.
Singer suggests that by making space for something that is uncomfortable we literally give it space to move through and out. And this practice in and of itself it also uncomfortable and counterintuitive – again, why give space to something we don’t like or find awkward or uncomfortable. And again, as I learn more and more every day, it’s because it won’t change if we don’t. It won’t become less UNcomfortable without first being allowed to be present.
It rather feels like a trapped monster in the closet that really just wants to escape but we’re so afraid of what it might do to us that we keep it locked tightly inside and spend a LOT of energy trying to keep it locked inside… rather than opening the door and letting it run away, move on, and let us then turn our energy to other endeavors. And if you’re like me, you know one can spend a lot of energy keeping that monster locked inside, all the while giving it so much mental energy and focus.
The second piece I’ll offer on this is one that seems so simple and yet can be so profound and transformative. For anyone who has taken a yoga class from me or worked with me one-on-one in yoga therapy sessions, you’ll know that I have a strong focus on the breath. Working with the breath is one of the most accessible and yet radically therapeutic internal practices we can do. Creating space to expand the breath in the belly can be a way to expand the virtual space in our mind – space to let the monster out of the closet. Slowing the breath can slow the pace of our thoughts, and our heart…
Try it right now: step back from whatever device you’re reading this from; think of something that makes you uncomfortable and then take three slow, deep breaths. If you’re feeling really adventurous, take six deep breaths. What do you notice? (As a side note – I’d really love to hear what you noticed, if anything. Please feel free to contact me and share – kathleen@kathleendowdyoga.com)
Finally – set yourself up for success. Invite others along on your discomfort journey. Make sure they are trusted others, those with whom you can be vulnerable and intimate. Let them know what you are up to and that you’re trying to engage in this practice – of becoming comfortable being uncomfortable. I’ve found the practice of a “safe word” a safe sentence actually, very helpful to help set the stage. Since it could be so unbearably challenging and uncomfortable for me to speak my truth or share what I thought would be difficult information, I used a starter phrase with a few people closest to me. I often began the sentence with… “this is really difficult for me to say but I feel it’s important to share…” or something similar. The effect of this opening statement dramatically increased my ability to say whatever was going to come next and also gave the person listening a chance to be more fully present to what was being said and also to hear it in a different way; a compassionate way.
And almost invariably, sharing what felt SO uncomfortable as I had imagined it in my head, was never quite a bad as I thought it would be once it was out. The discomfort escaped and then I was free. This wasn’t a pain-free process, but as I do it more and more it becomes easier to move through.
Keeping the “discomfort monster” trapped is a lot of work, and, I believe, ultimately stops us from living fully expressed lives. Lives that allow for the vast range of human experiences that make life rich and varied and interesting and yes, even uncomfortable. Furthermore, by holding space for our own discomfort, we are then also better able to hold space for others to feel uncomfortable, which makes us better friends, partners, lovers, and people. That alone seems to me to make it a worthwhile pursuit.
Related articles I found online that might be of interest to you. Happy reading!
2. https://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/7-ways-to-get-comfortable-with-being-uncomfortable.html