What Can We Learn From Discomfort?
The discomfort is a feeling we have all experienced. However, despite being so universal, we do not usually seek or provoke it. Quite the opposite! We try to tiptoe over it, as if it were a freshly scrubbed floor that we don’t want to step on.
However, once we have left the wet area behind, it is good to reflect so as not to miss the learning opportunity it offers us.
If we have already suffered and we have not been able to avoid it, let’s get the most out of it. You do not agree?
The situations that make us uncomfortable are a good opportunity to go deep inside, observe ourselves and appreciate what is happening – Why does this situation cause me discomfort? An important question that we often skip, as we have a tremendous desire to get out of the situation in which we find ourselves. As animals that we are, we have a physiological reactivity that often limits our “intelligent or cognitive reactivity.”
Why does discomfort help us in our personal growth?
We naturally seek comfort, it is our trend. When you feel comfortable you are safe, clothed and calm; all or most of what happens is under your control and you do not perceive any potential threat. However, be careful! On the one hand, you will not be able to always remain in this state and, on the other, it is not good for you to do so either: you will weaken your strength and limit your growth.
Looking for comfort, we limit our world, thus avoiding situations conducive to our development and personal growth.
Situations or people are not uncomfortable by themselves, discomfort arises from our personal experience, and we are the ones who feel uncomfortable in certain situations or people. When this perspective is adopted, we change the focus of our attention; we leave to the outside to look for answers and proposals within us.
It is the path to self-knowledge and personal growth. It happens when we stop avoiding situations that are annoying or uncomfortable for us and we allow ourselves to be in them, trying to find the original causes of that feeling. What does that have to do with us? What is this discomfort telling us about ourselves?
When we put this feeling on the outside we tend to blame, criticize or judge it as good or bad. When the same situation can awaken completely different sensations in another person.
By taking responsibility that we are the ones who experience the sensation, taking into account our uniqueness -experience, personality traits, etc., we can respect others and obtain a much more intense and enriching learning with respect to what we live.
Learn to stay in discomfort
Letting ourselves be in discomfort is only possible when we understand that getting out of our comfort state is necessary to broaden our life experience. Without a doubt, a powerful and intelligent reason to prolong our presence in certain situations that are unpleasant for us.
The tendency to avoid discomfort causes us to be alienated and lose our own identity. Thus, learning to remain in discomfort leaves us with several important lessons:
– We can face the discomfort that arises at the beginning when faced with a situation that bothers us, we will observe how this feeling decreases.
– When we find ourselves in this situation without trying to avoid it, we break the habit of intervening and ending the experience.
– Living this experience helps us to become aware of our behavior, considering the repercussions that our avoidance has.
– The emotions that we find uncomfortable appear to alert us to something about ourselves, if we learn to listen and feel them, we will live the full experience in a more authentic way; so that it does not encyst and reappear causing us constant greater discomfort.
There will come a time when, when we have become accustomed to not avoiding this feeling, we can easily regain calm, live it more naturally; in a way in which we realize that discomfort has other ways of disappearing, apart from the ones we already know of flight and avoidance of the situation.
The well-being produced by having faced the situation that was uncomfortable for us is the consequence of having known how to manage our uncomfortable emotions, without repudiating or rejecting them, but paying attention to them to know what they are telling us.
When we do not intervene in the discomfort, everything flows more naturally
Rushing out of awkward situations is also learning. It makes our life conditioned and the underlying problem is hidden under the blanket, ready to go out at any moment and we have no weapons with which to deal with it. In addition, this emotional stagnation produces great dissatisfaction and a disconnection that impedes our personal development.
Staying in discomfort without trying to run away from it makes us reestablish our own control over ourselves and take charge of what happens to us. It is a guarantee of immunity against feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
Taking all this into account, we could say that it is necessary to go through discomfort, experience it and stay in it; seeing it as a productive sensation, which serves as an indicator of our own emotional regulation and self-knowledge.
