I am so good at avoiding discomfort. A lot of us are. We’re just not very good at sitting with discomfort.
We scroll. Snack. Joke. Dissociate. Fix. Explain. Numb. Optimize. Absolutely anything but sit still with that bowling bowling ball in our stomach, the restless legs, and the buzzing anxiety that shows up uninvited.
Let’s name something super important before we go on: this isn’t a personal failure. It doesn’t make us broken. Just… deliciously, complexly, human.
No one taught us how to sit with discomfort. They did teach us how to escape it.
Discomfort Is the Signal, Not the Enemy
Discomfort isn’t danger. Strange, right? It feels so real in the moment.
Also: brains can be jerks. It feels urgent, but it usually isn’t.
Grief doesn’t mean you’re broken and awkward silences don’t mean you did something wrong.
When Hajime and I first started dating, quiet, silent moments threatened me. I’d ruminate. I’d ask myself if I did something wrong. That he’s bored with me and is just looking for a way out.
The reality: he was just chilling and enjoying the company.
Often (though not always) the discomfort is just your nervous system saying, “Hey. Something unfamiliar is happening.”
But because we live in a culture obsessed with ease, speed, and constant stimulation, discomfort gets mislabeled as a problem that needs immediate correction.
So we rush to fix the feeling, analyze it to death, and shove it into productivity. And immediately blame ourselves for having it. At that point, it’s just piling on.
That isn’t emotional intelligence. It’s avoidance with A+ branding. Shiny.
Avoidance Works–Until it Doesn’t
And that’s the annoying truth. Avoidance works short-term.
If it didn’t none of us would do it. And if I don’t catch it fast enough, I still do.
Avoiding the feeling reduces distress right now but it teaches our brains a dangerous lesson: “This feeling is intolerable. Next time, panic faster!”
And that’s how small discomforts become big ones. It’s how anxiety generalizes and grief calcifies. It’s also how resentment builds when feelings never get metabolized. Ask me how I know.
Avoidance shrinks your emotional range. Sitting with the feeling expands it.
“Sitting With It” Does Not Mean Suffering
Seriously. Sitting with discomfort doesn’t mean forcing yourself to feel worse, relive trauma, or white-knuckling through pain. Don’t refuse support if you have it. The “strong, silent” type isn’t hot.
All it means is allowing the feeling to exist without immediately trying to remove it. You’re not meant to become one with it, or let it run the show. It definitely doesn’t mean you’re agreeing with the story it tells.
You’re just saying “I can be here while this feeling passes.”
Because it will. Feelings do pass when we let them. Even if it sucks in the moment.
Why Does It Feel So Hard?
Because we’re not taught how to do it. Sometime along the line we learned something else:
- to people-please your way out of tension
- to intellectualize emotions instead of feeling them
- to perform calm while dissociating internally
- to equate emotional needs with being “too much”
In that context, discomfort isn’t just uncomfortable–it feels unsafe. So when someone says “just sit with it,” your nervous system hears: “You’re on your own.”
And that’s why the skill has to be built slowly, with your body and not just imposed through willpower.
What Sitting With Discomfort Actually Looks like
It’s super unglam. Boring, even.
It might look like:
- noticing your jaw is clenched and not forcing it to relax
- letting anxiety sit in your chest without narrating it
- resisting the urge to send the text just to calm yourself
- allowing sadness to exist without turning it into your life story
- staying present for five extra breaths before distracting yourself.
That’s it. That’s the practice.
Not transcendence.
Not enlightenment.
Just five more breaths than the last time.
We want to tolerate the feeling. Not control it.
When you can tolerate discomfort, you stop panicking about it’s presence.
When you stop panicking, the feeling loses its leverage.
When it loses its leverage, it moves through faster.
Letting the discomfort exists is often what shortens its lifespan. Weird, right?
You’re Not Behind—You’re Learning Late
If this feels hard, it’s because you’re learning a skill most people were never taught at all.
There’s nothing wrong with you for wanting relief.
There’s nothing weak about discomfort knocking you sideways sometimes.
But learning to sit with it—even imperfectly—is one of the most quietly powerful things you can do.
Not because it makes life painless.
But because it makes you less afraid of your own inner weather.
And that changes everything.