“To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening.”
-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
It has been a challenging time. Quarantine, necessary civil unrest, loss of norms, loneliness, lack of alone time, and financial concerns are just a few examples of the things we’ve scrambled to cope with this year. We’re rattled. This is a once-in-a-century crisis that’s provided us with as much discomfort as we usually encounter in a few decades. You’ve likely found yourself, at one time or another, pinned against the wall by a pandemic moment. This sticky spot – this window into our unfinished business – is our chance, our opportunity, to know more. This place we hate is where we can heal and begin to befriend ourselves when we need it most. We can practice finding comfort in the discomfort.
This blog will explore the biological and cultural reasons we tend to stay away from difficult emotions. It will also offer an exercise that enables us to drop into our experience just when we want to flee.
LEARN MORE: myTherapyNYC clinicians address how to manage pandemic stress.
The biology of avoidance
“Social rejection and grief have effects visible in the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex, which is also involved in physical pain, and both types of pain affect the heart and hormonal systems. This is why we say ’it hurts’ when we feel rejected or unloved.”
-Kenny Lomas, Science Focus
Have you ever stopped in the middle of a psychologically difficult moment to notice what’s going on in your body? Most of us are aware when we dislike what’s happening, but our frantic minds usually take center stage. Because unwanted emotional moments frazzle us, we’re distracted from messages coming from our bodies. These messages often cause us to run without realizing it. Imaging has shown our brains look similar when we’re experiencing bodily and psychological pain.
Alan Fogel, professor of psychology at the University of Utah, points this out in the article “Emotional and Physical Pain Activate Similar Brain Regions.” He explains that a person shown a picture of a partner they recently broke up with had activity in the same part of their brain as if they had been physically harmed. Mind and body pain are so neurologically entwined, Fogel reported, that patients who suffered psychologically negative events were able to diminish their hurt feelings with Acetaminophen. It turns out our evolutionarily-efficient bodies use the same neural system to notice physical and psychological stimuli.
Handling your body’s response to stress
Knowing that rejection or loneliness can feel as alarming as an actual gut-punch, our conscious or unconscious desire to wiggle away from life’s less desirable moments makes perfect sense. All living things avoid pain.
In order to be effective amidst our brain’s aversion-carnival, it is usually helpful to slow down when we get a dose of unease. Doing so enables us to notice what’s actually going on. This helps us make good use of the information that’s waiting for us underneath our resistance. Of course, when we’re already feeling miserable, it can feel counterintuitive to say, “I’m in agony, I’d love to slow down and get closer to this seemingly unbearable experience.” You may find, however, after knowing the pleasure of not running, and finally riding the wave of your emotional encounter to its calm end, that your “instincts” change.
READ MORE: Pema Chodron on our emotional reaction to life’s unknowns.
Cultural emotion-phobia
“Emotion-phobia dissociates us from the energies of these emotions and tells us they are untrustworthy, dangerous and destructive. Like other traits our culture distrusts and devalues – vulnerability, for instance, and dependence – emotionality is associated with weakness, women, and children. We tend to regard these painful emotions as signs of psychological fragility, mental disorder, or spiritual defect. We suppress, intellectualize, judge or deny them.”
-Miriam Greenspan, “The Wisdom of Dark Emotions”
Our society is built upon the concept of our unbridled agency. The “American Dream” purports that, with willpower, the sky’s the limit. Movies, music, social media, and advertising promises us that if we just try hard enough (and buy this product), we will live a life entirely on our terms; We won’t age, lose our health, or feel sorrow. These messages are not all bad. Being tuned into our agency can be very helpful. But hard power alone will not deliver wellbeing. Effectiveness looks different in different circumstances.
To be truly constructive we need to understand that a little receptivity and acceptance of the moment can deliver significantly better results than avoiding, fighting, or denying an experience. A culture that teaches you to avoid discomfort is not giving you the tools you need for the truth of life. Despite what the zeitgeist tells us, there are a few things we simply can’t elude in life; One of those is our inner world. So, having a plan for how to find comfort in discomfort, and finally beginning an effective conversation with our own minds can be a huge relief.
Let’s imagine…
Let’s imagine you’re back in the middle of quarantine homeschooling your six-year-old. You haven’t been outside in ten days, you lack the Master’s in Education necessary to teach common core math, and you want to throw your computer against the wall. Or you’re living alone in a studio, you haven’t been outside in ten days, you haven’t touched another human being in months and the loneliness may or may not remind you of how alone you felt as a child. Right in the moment of feeling terrible, whether you’re surrounded by children, a roommate, a partner, or your plants:
An exercise
- Close your eyes and slow your mind by breathing deeply.
- Get curious about what’s happening in your body. Where are you feeling discomfort? What is the nature of the sensation? Is it sticky? Does it have a color? If you could assign it a name would it be “shame” or “grief” or “anxiety”? What else might it be? It doesn’t have to make sense. Free-associate.
- Ask yourself if you’ve felt this before? When was the first time you felt it?
- If the first time you felt this was when you were eleven, try to imagine that eleven-year-old you in your mind.
- Begin to talk with your eleven-year-old self (this is merely a way of interfacing with your mind so you can parse out your hidden emotional world). Ask questions like, “why are you worried/ashamed/shut down?” Or, “what do you need?” Or, “what would you like to tell me?”
- Listen and be present to the emotional experience this elicits by staying with your body. Breathe deeply and feel the sensations of the emotion.
- If the eleven-year-old you has a fantasy, allow your mind to play it out. Maybe that part wants to be held or to yell at someone. It’s only in your mind, so really indulge. Follow your fantasy through, until something inside you shifts.
- If your body delivered a sense of settling or relief, honor it, however long it graced you with its presence. That moment is a “muscle” that you can grow by exercising it. The “muscle” is you staying with yourself when you’re vulnerable. It’s also you having the nerve to be present to the full range of your life’s experience. Beyond that, it’s you memorizing the payoff of allowing your emotions to flow naturally.
On being mammals
“When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.”
-Robert Frost, “Putting in the Seed”
As much as we think, achieve, build, and work to differentiate ourselves from the grass and dirt and bugs and apes, we are nature. Mammals, to be exact, and mammals feel as a means of survival. Diana Fosha, creator of the experiential therapeutic modality AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) explains, “each categorical emotion prepares the body for a different kind of response. Emotions are in essence impulses to act, the instant plans that evolution has instilled in us.” So those times that feel dark, dully-negative, gnawing, or searing aren’t indications of some kind of failure. They may simply be your beautiful, deeply wired, essential messengers asking for your ear.
Using your feelings as a guide
Contrary to what our culture may have told you, feeling badly can be you, your body, and your mind working properly. Fosha emphasizes, “nothing that feels bad is ever the last step.” So, while it’s natural, normal, and sometimes helpful to experience negative feelings, they are not a destination. They are the launching point for your journey towards living solidly in your own skin, no longer skittish around your own mind.
Finding comfort in discomfort is a tall order, but attempting to do so offers agency in a time when it feels like we have so little say. It’s not easy to stay with our experience when our bodies are flooded with a physiological response to negative thoughts. But, in doing so, we are building a tolerance. Now that we understand a bit more about what’s happening in our bodies, how normal it is to want to run, how to stay if we want to, and why our emotions are valuable and inevitable, we can rewire our response in a way that makes feeling less scary.
READ MORE: Why Feeling Bad is Good.
Are you interested in learning more about how to explore your emotions and build tolerance for discomfort? Many of myTherapyNYC’s staff therapists are trained in AEDP therapy. Reach out today to find out which of our therapist is the right fit for you.
When was the last time you felt an emotion you wanted to avoid and how did you handle it? Join the conversation in the comments below!
- Your Child’s Attachment Style: How to Recognize It and Work With It - October 21, 2021
- Building Tolerance to Find Comfort in Discomfort - May 20, 2021
2 comments
Thanks for this amazing post, Lisa! You do such an amazing job of explaining why we avoid emotions and why it is helpful to resist that urge. I know, for me, just giving an emotion some space to breathe can help me get grounded and know how to handle challenging situations. I think the exercise you offer is a great guide for that. Thanks again for this resource!
Hi Lisa! I LOVE this blog! Your explanation into the avoidance of emotions as well as why we are drawn to doing this is so helpful! I found the section of handling your body’s emotion to stress especially interesting. I also did the exercise and found it was very helpful. Thank you for this important information into our complex emotions as humans!