Getting Comfortable with Discomfort

We run from pain and towards pleasure our whole lives. This is human nature. When a child touches a stove, he naturally pulls away when he realizes it's hot. When you give a child candy, she will naturally indulge until you cut her off. We do this on an emotional level as well when we run from the unpleasant feelings and towards the pleasant ones. Most of us also learned at a young age that the unpleasant emotions were not welcome. Maybe when you were a child you were told to go to your room and stay there until you could come out with a smile on your face. Perhaps you do the same with your own children. Admittedly, I have said something to that effect myself. Or maybe when you were a child you heard, "Stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about." You sucked it up, internalizing the idea that the emotion sadness was not welcome.

Now perhaps you're the one who attempt to cheer her friend up when she cries by saying, "It will all be okay, you don't need to feel sad, look at all the things you should be grateful for instead." You try to "happy up" other people, maybe because you yourself never knew how to get comfortable with the discomfort of sadness.  Or maybe you don't do that, but you have your own inner critic that judges you when you are angry, sad, or anxious. Most of us have that one emotion we don't know how to "handle." So when that emotion surfaces, we may begin to tell ourselves a story around that emotion and judge ourselves for even having it which then escalates the emotion. Sometimes, we even add a second emotion on top of it. Perhaps when fear arises, you actually fear the fear and the anxiety rises more. Or maybe yours is anger. Maybe you were brought up in a family where anger was not allowed. So you suppressed your anger. You told yourself that you shouldn't be angry at (insert person's name here), and that the feeling was wrong because look at all the other nice thing he or she does for you. But that anger seeps out in the subtle form of frustration, irritability, and resentment towards others. Or perhaps your feeling is sad. You feel guilty for feeling sad because your life is so good in so many other ways, something must be wrong with you if you're sad. So you now have guilt on top of sadness, which later manifests as hopelessness. Or perhaps you fear the sadness because you think sadness will engulf you, and you won't be able to recover so you keep yourself distracted, hoping you can run away from it, but then both sadness and fear escalate into anxiety and depression.

Many of us (whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not) buy into this notion of happy ever after. We watch 30 minute TV shows where the characters resolve their issues at the end. We watch Disney movies where the prince rides off on a horse with the princess. We watch get rich quick advertisements and we see curated Facebook posts of a distant friend who is in Tahiti with her husband sipping margaritas with the status, "Living The Good life." And as we watch this highlight reel, we tell ourselves, "We must be comfortable. We must be happy. If we're not, we must be doing something wrong." Either that, or "Others must have wronged us." But I challenge both notions. I think these two underlying scripts actually cause us to suffer, not the emotions sadness, anger or fear themselves. It's the story we are telling ourselves about sadness, anger, and fear. 

Just like happiness, contentment, and joy are part of the human experience, so are sadness, anger, and fear. Denying an emotion doesn't minimize its existence no matter how much I want to refute the statement. There is a saying that "what you resist, persists." If I told you not to think about a purple unicorn, your brain would automatically picture one. The same bears true with emotions. When we judge ourselves and tell ourselves NOT to feel sad, NOT to feel angry, NOT to feel scared, we are actually increasing the feeling that does arise. 

What story do you tell yourself when you feel anger, sadness, or fear? Do you feed it, do you judge it, or do you try to avoid it? What if instead you became an observer of the emotion when it arose, even if only once during the day. When you get triggered by the in-law who criticizes your cooking and you feel the heat rise up through your legs and your chest, what are you saying to yourself in that moment? 

I believe when we can become comfortable with the uncomfortable emotions like sadness, fear, and anger we are actually surrendering control and allowing ourselves to be just as we are. We are showing ourselves compassion in that moment and self-compassion has far reaching effects. According to author and researcher Kristen Neff, self-compassion increases: happiness, optimism, positive affect, wisdom, personal initiative, curiosity, exploration, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

Next time instead of listening and believing the story you tell yourself around your feeling try to allow yourself to feel the feeling without judgment. Watch it like an outside observer, and eventually it will pass.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/compassion-matters/201610/the-many-benefits-self-compassion