How to be Uncomfortable (without Making it Worse) | Ep. 360

If you want to know how to be uncomfortable without making it worse, you’re in the right place. Today, we’re talking all about being uncomfortable and learning how to be uncomfortable in the most skillful, compassionate, respectful, and effective way. This applies to any type of discomfort, whether it be your thoughts, your feelings, any physical sensations, or the pain that you’re feeling. Anything that you’re experiencing as discomfort, we’re here to talk about it today. Let’s do it. 

Welcome back, everybody. For those of you who are new, welcome. My name is Kimberley Quinlan. I’m a marriage and family therapist in the state of California. I’m an anxiety specialist, and I love to talk about being uncomfortable. It’s true, I don’t like being uncomfortable, but I love to talk about being uncomfortable, and I love talking about skillful ways to manage that. 

WHAT IS DISCOMFORT, REALLY? 

Now, before we get started, let’s first talk about what we mean by being uncomfortable. There are different forms of discomfort. One may be feelings or emotions that you’re having—shame, guilt, anxiety, sadness, anger. Whatever it is that you experience as a feeling can be interpreted and experienced as uncomfortable. 

Another one is sensations. Physical sensations of anxiety, physical sensations of shame, and physical sensations of physical pain. I myself have a chronic illness. Physical sensations can be a great deal of discomfort for us as human beings. We’re also talking about that as well. 

We’re also talking about intrusive thoughts, because thoughts can be uncomfortable too. We can have some pretty horrific, scary, mean, and demanding thoughts, and these thoughts can create a lot of discomfort within us. 

What we want to do here is we want to first acknowledge that discomfort is a normal, natural part of life. It truly is. I know on social media, and I know in life, on TV, and in movies, it’s painted that there are a certain amount of things you can do, and if you were to attain those, well, then you would have a lot less discomfort. But as someone who is a therapist who has treated the widest range of people, I’ve learned that even when they reach fame, a lot of money, or a degree of success, we can see that they have some improved wellness. They do have some decrease in discomfort, but over time, they’re still going to have uncomfortable thoughts. Sometimes having those things creates more uncomfortable thoughts. They’re still going to have physical pain, and they’re still going to have emotions that cause them pain, particularly when they’re not skillful. 

What I’ve really learned as a human being as well is we can have a list of all the things that we think we need in these circumstances to be happy. But if our thoughts and our feelings and our reactions to them aren’t skillful, compassionate, wise, and respectful, we often create more suffering, and we’re right back where we started. 

Now, I don’t want it to be all doom and gloom, because the truth is, I’m bringing you some solutions here today—things that you can apply right away and put into practice, hopefully, as soon as you’ve listened to this podcast. Let’s get to it. 

WHAT MAKES DISCOMFORT WORSE? 

First, I’m wondering whether we can first discuss what it means to make it worse because a lot of you go, “What? Make it worse? Are you telling me I’m to blame?” And that’s not what I’m doing here. But I do think that we can do some kind of inquiry, nonjudgmental inquiry into how we respond to our suffering. 

LIFE IS 50/50

Think of it this way: I am a huge proponent of some Buddhist philosophy here, which is that suffering is a part of life. Discomfort is a part of life. I believe that life is 50/50. There is 50% wonderful, but you’re still going to have 50% hard. Sometimes that percentage will be different, but I think it creates a lot of acceptance when we can come to the fact that there’s going to be good seasons, but there’s also going to be some really hard seasons in our lives. It doesn’t have to be that it’s 50/50 all the time. Sometimes you might be in a really wonderful season. Maybe you’re in a really tough season right now. I’m guessing that’s the case because you’re listening to this episode. I recently went through a really tough season, which inspired me to make this episode for you. But in life, there is suffering. But what we know about that is how we respond to that suffering can actually determine whether we create more and more suffering. 

WE RESIST IT

One way that we make it worse is, when we are experiencing discomfort, we resist it. We try to get rid of it. We clench up around it. We try to push it away. What often happens there is, what you resist persists. That’s a common saying we use in psychotherapy. Another thing to consider here is, the more you try to push it down, the more it’s going to bubble up anyway, but in ways that make you feel completely out of control, completely lost in this experience, and maybe overwhelmed with this experience. Another thing is, the more you resist it, the more you’re feeding your brain a story that it’s important and scary, which often means that it’s going to send out more anxiety hormones when you have that situation come up again. That’s one way we make it worse. 

WE JUDGE IT 

Another way we make it worse is, we judge it. When we have discomfort, we judge it by going, “This is wrong. This is bad. You’re a bad person for having this discomfort. What’s wrong with you for having this discomfort? It shouldn’t be here.” 

WE THROW “TANTRUMS” 

I’ve done a whole episode about this, and this is something that is my toxic trait, which is I go into this emotional tantrum in my head where I’m like, “This is bad. This is wrong. It shouldn’t be happening. It shouldn’t be this way. It should be this other way. It’s not fair. I can’t believe it’s this way.” I totally can catch myself going down a rabbit hole of judging the situation, the circumstance, and myself and my discomfort, which only creates more discomfort for myself. 

WE RUMINATE

Another way we make things worse is rumination, which is similar to what I was just talking about. But rumination is, we try and solve things, we loop on them. Again, it could be a looping on, “Why is this happening? It shouldn’t be happening,” like I just explained. Or maybe it’s trying to figure it out. Often, we ruminate on things that actually don’t have a solution in the long run anyway. 

Maybe you have chronic pain. Let’s say you do, and you’re ruminating, “What could it be? Why is it there?” I mean, the truth is, we don’t usually have a medical degree. Our rumination, it might feel productive, but we don’t actually have the details to know the answer. 

Let’s say something went wrong at work and you made a big mistake, and we ruminate about what we did, how bad it was, and how humiliating it was. But in that situation, we’re trying to solve something that’s already happened that we have no control over anymore. 

For people who have anxiety, maybe they’re trying to ruminate, trying to solve whether bad things will happen in the future, but we all know we can’t solve what’s going to happen in the future. That’s a dead end. That’s a dead-end road, and it again creates more suffering on our part.

WE PUNISH OURSELVES 

The next piece here is, we punish ourselves. We punish ourselves for having discomfort. We might withhold pleasure. We might treat ourselves poorly. We might not show up in ways that really honor our mental health and our self-care because we’ve made a mistake, we are going through a hard time, or we’re having this uncomfortable experience. These things, while in the moment they feel warranted and they feel productive and effective, they’re actually not. All they’re doing is adding to the suffering you’re already experiencing. 

For those of you who say, “Yeah, no, but I deserve to suffer more,” that’s actually not true either. We have to really catch that because punishing someone with this sort of very corporal punishment kind of method—or we need to beat you up—actually, we’ve got so much research to show it doesn’t make you better. It doesn’t prevent uncomfortable things from happening. It doesn’t make it so that you don’t make a mistake. You’re a human being. We’re all struggling. We’re all doing the best we can, and we’re not going to do it perfectly. 

HOW TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE, EFFECTIVELY & COMPASSIONATELY

What can you do differently? Let’s now talk about how we can be uncomfortable in an effective, productive,  compassionate, and respectful way. For me, one of the first things that helps me is to really double down on my mindfulness practice. Sometimes the best thing you can do with mindfulness is to become aware that you’re engaging in these behaviors, to catch them, and to label them when you are. It might be as simple as labeling it as “I’m in resistance.” You might just say ‘resistance’ or ‘rumination.’ You’re bringing to your mind and you’re bringing to your attention that you’re engaging in something that you’ve identified as not helpful. That in and of itself can be so helpful.

Now, for those of you who are new to me, I have two episodes that I’ve done on this type of situation in the past. Number one was Episode 188, where I talked about how to tolerate uncomfortable sensations specifically. The other one is Episode 113, which is where we talk about specifically how to manage intrusive thoughts. You can go on there after you’ve listened to this, but stay with me here because I’m going to give you a little step-by-step process. 

MINDFULESS

Number one, with mindfulness, we’re going to identify and become aware that we’re in resistance, that we’re ruminating, that we’re beating ourselves up, and we’re also going to practice non-judgment as best as we can. Think of this like a muscle in your brain. You’re going to practice strengthening that muscle. But once we are aware of it and once we’ve acknowledged that we’re judging, we’re then going to be aware of or bring our attention to where we are in resistance to allowing it to be there because that’s ultimately a part of our work. 

Discomfort rises and falls so much faster when you do nothing about it. What I want to offer you is, the solution, in some way, can be quite simple, which is to do nothing about the discomfort except love it. Be careful and gentle with yourself. Do nothing at all about trying to make it go away. Do nothing at all about punishing yourself. 

NON-JUDGMENT

The non-judgment piece is where we allow it to be there without making a meaning about it. Here’s an example. You’ve had an intrusive thought that was really, really scary, and you wish you didn’t have it. You actually are concerned about it. It alarmed you. What you can do is, in that moment, acknowledge that thoughts are thoughts. They’re not facts. They don’t mean anything. They’re just sentences that our brains come up with. What we often do is, when we have it, we think, “What does that mean about me? Why am I having this thought? Why am I having this sensation? Why am I having this anxiety? Why am I having this anger? Why am I having this shame? Why am I anxious in this social situation? Why is this hard?”

NOT OVER-IDENTIFYING

What we want to come back to is not making meaning of it, not over-identifying with it and just acknowledging that this is a normal part of human life. This is a normal part of being a human. We all have intrusive thoughts. We all have strong emotions, some more than others. But if you’re someone who has strong emotions more than you maybe think others are, there’s a couple of things I want you to remember. Number one, we actually don’t know how other people are doing, so you can’t actually say that they’re not having these emotions. Maybe they are. 

Often, people will say to me, “You always seem so calm.” I’m like, “Oh, you have no idea.” Like, yeah, I am calm in many situations, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have anxiety about certain things or big, big, big emotions about certain things. You just don’t see it. You don’t see it on the camera; you don’t see it in the podcast. You don’t see it in my daily life. It’s at home in my mind when I’m experiencing it as I’m regulating. But we want to work at not over-identifying with “What does it mean about me” and that “I’m bad for having these experiences.”

One thing you must take away, and I say it quite often, is there is no thought, feeling, sensation, urge, or image that makes you bad. The meditation vault, which we just launched, is an online vault, a collection of meditations for people with sticky thoughts, intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and so forth. They’re very, very specific in almost every single one. I work at getting them to not overidentify with the experience they’re having. 

Oh, you’re having an intrusive thought. Let’s not make meaning of what that means about you. 

Oh, you’re having shame. Your shame is telling you that you’re bad. Let’s not agree with it. Let’s acknowledge that it is a thought and a feeling, but it’s not a fact about you. 

You’ve made a mistake; you failed. Okay, we can acknowledge that, but that doesn’t make you a failure. We want to catch over-identifying with what our discomfort is experiencing and how we’re experiencing that discomfort. The over-identification, the labeling, and the making meaning often is what contribute to us feeling double the discomfort. 

MAKE SPACE FOR THE DISCOMFORT

The next thing you want to do is make space for the discomfort. My clients roll their eyes because they know I’m going to say it. I’m going to say, “Why can’t we make some space for this emotion,” or “Would you be willing to make some space for this emotion as it rises and falls?” If we make space for it to be here while we go about our day, while you interact with your child or your loved one, or your client, or your employer or your employee—if we can just make space for it to be there, nonjudgmentally, it tends to be less loud. 

BE WILLING TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE

The whole point of the work that I do here with my patients and with you is to nurture a sense of you having any emotion, any feeling, or any discomfort in a safe way, in a way where you make space for it. I often will say, we want to work towards you being able to have any thought, feeling, sensation, urge, or image so that you know that there’s nothing you can’t handle. If you’re really willing to feel it all, if you’re really willing and have practiced giving yourself permission to feel all the discomfort, there’s very little that can be painful for you. There’s very little that can stump you. There’s very little that can hold you back. 

Often, when people ask me, “How do you do what you do? You spend all day with clients who are suffering, and you’re in the suffering with them. And then you get online and do these videos, or you do social media. How do you do all that?” The only reason, there’s nothing special about me, truly. The only thing about me is I’m willing to feel a lot of discomfort. I really am. The more I practice having it, the more I feel empowered that I can handle anything. 

Confidence to do things isn’t something you just learn and have; you get it by feeling feelings. Having them willingly and making space for them—truly, this is the work. If there’s really anything I’ve learned, it’s that—we have to be better at making space and feeling our feelings and having the discomfort and saying, “Great, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to practice being uncomfortable.” If something gets thrown out of whack this week for you, I urge you to say, “Okay, good. This is another great opportunity for me to practice being uncomfortable. Where do I notice my resistance to being uncomfortable? Where do I notice the judgment? Where do I notice that I overidentify with it? Where do I notice that I’m punishing myself for it?” Okay, good. Now that we know, we’re aware, and we’re non-judgmental, let’s use this as an opportunity to be able to feel any experience that comes up. Things get a whole lot less scary if you’ve already practiced feeling your feelings. 

FEEL YOUR FEELINGS

I actually did a whole podcast on that as well. It’s Episode 65, where I talk about how your feelings are meant for feelings. That’s another resource if you want to jump into that kind of topic as well. But then once you’ve done all that—we’ve done this zooming in and now we zoom out—then you move on with your day. You don’t just sit there and feel your feelings and sit on the couch and stare at the floor going, “I’m feeling my feelings. I’m feeling my feelings. Here they are.” That’s fine if that’s what you feel right about. But ideally, you would take the feelings with you and go mow the lawn or do the things you love or do the things that you need to get done today, your chores or whatever that might be. 

But take this practice with you, because if you can get good at feeling discomfort, then you can marry that skill. It’s a skill. It’s not something that you were born with; it’s something that you can learn to do. But once you get good at that, then you can marry it with, “Now I’m going to go live my life while I use that skill.” And then you 10x your life, truly, 10x your ability. You’re still going to be uncomfortable. You’re still going to have hard days. You’re still going to have some discomfort, but your experience of it will not be one of, “Oh no, geez, I hope it goes away. I hope it’s not strong today. I hope it doesn’t stay all day because it really messes me up.” It won’t be like that. You’ll be like, “It doesn’t matter. I know it’s here, and I’m going to be here with it, and I’m going to make space for it. I’m going to be kind. I’m going to be non-judgmental about it. But it can come. I’ve done it as much.”

One thing I did learn, and I’ll use this as an example, is I used to have the most excruciating sleep anxiety. I used to worry about not sleeping. Because if I didn’t sleep, I’d have massive anxiety. The next day, I’d be teary. I just couldn’t function well. As I got pregnant and went to have my first child, I was so worried about how my mental health would go. 

Don’t get me wrong; not having sleep did impact my mental health for sure. But getting less sleep and having to get up and take care of a baby, and then having to get up and go to work once I’m done with maternity leave, and learning that I can actually get through a day, using my skills, seeing my patients, and managing my emotions, a lot of my sleep anxiety went away because all I could think of was that I’ve done worse. I’ve literally gone a night where I slept for 25 minutes and I still was able to cope. Even if I can’t fall asleep tonight, I know I can handle it. That empowerment is gold. That change in perspective. That attitude shift about discomfort is a game changer. 

Now, of course, you know what I’m going to say. This has to be done with an immense degree of compassion. This has to be done in small, baby steps. I’m not here to tell you to throw yourself into 10 out of 10 discomfort, but if you have to, I still trust and believe wholeheartedly that you can still handle it. I always say to my patients, no one has ever died from discomfort itself. It won’t kill you. It’s just going to be really hard. We can practice holding ourselves kindly as best as we can as we ride that wave. That’s the work. 

A RECAP: BRING ON THE DISCOMFORT

To recap, what makes it worse? Discomfort and uncomfortability get worse when we do anything to try and make it go away. We won’t resist it with this urgency to get it go away. But the solution is acceptance, willingness, non-judgment, compassion, making space for it, and then engaging with your life. Again, I’ll say it again. The solution is accepting the discomfort. Willingness is the willingness to be uncomfortable. The non-judgment of being uncomfortable. It’s neither good nor bad; it’s neutral. It is still uncomfortable, but it doesn’t mean you are bad or it’s bad. We’re going to be self-compassionate as we feel this uncomfortable feeling. And then we’re going to keep making space and moving back into our lives, doing maybe baby steps at a time. Even if you do this for 10 seconds, I applaud you. Let’s celebrate you. If you do it for 30 seconds and you’re able to do that multiple times a day, you are on the right track. If you can be uncomfortable for three minutes at a time, you’re basically winning at life. I want to encourage you, this is huge. 

Sometimes, when things are really hard at the Quinlan household and I want to scream, yell, or totally do something that I know I will regret, stopping and saying, “Okay, this is discomfort. Can you stay with it? Can you make space for this for three minutes or 30 seconds,” has given me an opportunity to not say things I don’t mean, to not react in ways that will end up causing me more suffering that keep me in line with my values. This ability to be uncomfortable has saved me from making some big mistakes in my life. Not all of them. I’ve still made mistakes, of course, but relationally, huge mistakes I could have made had I not slowed down and made a little space for the fact that I’m angry. “Okay, I’m going to make space for this anger,” or that I’m hurt, or that I’m really anxious.

There’s been times where I’ve wanted to run away from my anxiety, but my ability to, for 30 seconds at a time or 10 minutes at a time, make space for the anxiety, not judge it, allow it, and bring it on has meant that I've been able to face some really scary things, and that’s what I want for you.

That’s how you’re uncomfortable. Is it easy? No way is not easy. Is it doable? Absolutely. I want to remind you, this is a practice in which you can grow. Before you know it, there will be these moments of empowerment that will shock you, and you can’t believe that you’ve made these changes out of nowhere. I fully and wholeheartedly believe that. I’ve heard it from so many patients and so many students. A lot of you have also shared how helpful it’s been. That is why I say it’s a beautiful day to do hard things, because when we do hard things in a very skilled way, they actually make us feel really empowered, and we have a sense of “I can handle things now.”

All right. It’s a beautiful day to do hard things. Again, please go to CBT School if you’re interested in any of our online courses. They talk about all these kinds of things. We have courses for OCD, anxiety, depression, BFRBs, meditation, mindfulness, time management—the whole deal. My hope is that this type of message can be taken in any area of your life, and hopefully, it makes it so much better. 

Have a great day.