“I avoid thinking about it because every time I think about it, I cry. In fact, part of me didn’t want to come to session today because diving into this has felt so hard.”
I appreciate the bravery of my client who told me this. A lot of us avoid emotional pain way more than we do physical pain.
You might be a marathon runner, fatigued and aching for a week after the race, or be a rock climber, getting scraped up with bleeding callouses, but when it comes to dealing with feeling sad or anxious, you’ll grab a drink or go shopping instead of feeling your feelings.
Credit: @ShalitaGrant
Why is it important to sit with discomfort?
Whatever you avoid is what controls you. We all have difficult feelings about things in our past, but many people try to avoid them at all costs. This might mean needing a drink every time a sad memory comes up, or avoiding certain areas of town where a terrible break up happened.
In this way, you are driven by avoidance, and you are no longer free.
Do you want to be controlled by your reactivity and keep shrinking away from things that feel hard? Or do you want to build your abilities to reach out, grow, improve, and live?
As I’ve aged, I notice more ways that I move that bring me physical pain. My knee doesn’t want to move that direction. My foot needed to be at a certain angle to not ache when I walk. One solution might be to make smaller movements and restrict what I do.
Instead, under the guidance of my specialty fitness trainer, I’m sitting in a low lunge, with my knee pushed way far in front of my ankle. And it no longer hurts.
I didn’t get here all at once; I slowly did weighted stretches and breathed through the discomfort signals. I had to remind myself that I was supervised by a professional, and that this particular pain wasn’t going to harm me.
Pain doesn’t always mean harm. It means pay attention. It means your body or heart is saying “I’m not used to being in this space and it’s intense.”
Just like in physical stretching, to build our emotional freedom, we have to breathe through the uncomfortable signals our body is giving. When you get brave with your feelings, you build emotional muscle that can carry you through the roughest times.
Since you’re reading this, I know you’re already at least halfway there. If you need a specialist to get to those deeper emotional stretches, I’m here for you. Just book a chat with me to get started.
