Getting Discomfortable with “Crazy” People

Episode 23 explores an incident on the subway in Toronto where I encountered a “crazy” person who started yelling after I accidentally confronted her about littering. Instead of putting the “flight” back in “fight or flight” (as I usually do), I stayed just to see what would happen. I learned that instead of “fight or flight” you can actually just sit tight, and in the process, discover that you can “breathe underwater” if you wait out the initial flood of discomfort and emotion. Now I actively look forward to those inevitable scary encounters (usually on the subway) so that I can get more practice at the invaluable skill of getting comfortable with discomfort.

When someone is acting “crazy”, that doesn’t mean they’re mentally ill, or dangerous per se. In fact, when you have a shame breakthrough, you start to realize that you feel less and less pressure to adhere to social norms. You might be surprised to find that by being truly authentic you could be seen as the “crazy” person no one wants to sit beside on the bus.

As mentioned in this episode, you can follow my (usually) non-agressive Twitter exploits here.

This episode is dedicated to the Toronto Transit Commission, forcing people to confront discomfort and social anxiety for over 90 years! Thanks, TTC.