469 - Discomfort is Good For You
Healthy discomfort versus unhealthy pain
Discomfort can be good for us, but it’s different from unhealthy pain. We often go to lengths to avoid any type of discomfort, but using avoidance tactics indefinitely can affect us in the long run. Dopamine is key in emotional processing by influencing motivation and pleasure, and avoiding difficult emotions has shown to alter dopamine levels. This can potentially lead to depression and substance use disorders, and the body tries to balance itself by suppressing dopamine and making things worse. Avoidance tactics also reinforce short-term rewards, creating dependency on external sources.
Behaviors that enable us to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions - social media, gaming, etc. - correlate with alexithymia, or difficulty identifying, understanding, or expressing emotions. Also known as emotional color-blindness, and can come with difficulty separating emotions from bodily sensations. It is especially prevalent in men, but the number of cases in women has been growing, likely to common daily usage of social media.
There are also psychological implications of avoiding emotions, such as:
Reduction in stress coping ability.
Diminished self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
Contributing to mood and/or anxiety disorders.
Suppression increases stress responses.
Additionally, some impacts it can have on our relationships are:
Intimacy Issues:
Emotional avoidance and alexithymia hinder emotional connection, making it difficult to understand and respond to a partner's needs.
Communication Breakdown:
Difficulty identifying and expressing emotions can lead to frustration and miscommunication.
Common pushback against discomfort
A lot of the common arguments against treating alexithymia or focusing on feeling difficult emotions are:
Fear of emotional overwhelm and concern that confronting uncomfortable emotions could lead to an inability to cope with the intensity of those feelings.
Belief in ineffectiveness, or skepticism based on past attempts that did not yield positive outcomes, leading to a belief that such efforts are futile.
Lack of skills, or the perceived absence of necessary coping mechanisms or emotional intelligence to effectively manage and process discomfort. Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is specifically for treating this.
Fear of repercussions, or anxiety about the potential for negative consequences, such as damaging relationships or exacerbating mental health issues as a result of confronting difficult emotions.
There is comfort in familiarity, or a preference for the status quo, rooted in the comfort and predictability of familiar coping mechanisms, even if they are maladaptive.
Stigma and vulnerability, or concerns about societal stigma or being perceived as vulnerable or incapable by others if one acknowledges and confronts their emotional discomforts.
Misunderstanding emotional growth, or the belief that facing discomfort means allowing emotions to dictate one's actions, rather than understanding it as a process of emotional growth and resilience building.
Time and effort concerns, or belief that the process of facing and processing discomfort is too demanding or not worth the investment of time and emotional energy.
Doubt in personal benefit, or skepticism regarding the personal gains or improvements in well-being that can result from facing and processing uncomfortable emotions.
Preference for professional help, or believing that only mental health professionals can or should address deep-seated emotional issues, coupled with a reluctance to independently engage with discomfort.
Addressing these objections requires empathy, understanding, and often the guidance of a professional to navigate the complexities of emotional wellness.
Actionable takeaways
Some ways to start leaning into discomfort for long-term growth are:
Identify Healthy Discomfort
Situational versus Chronic: Try to recognize temporary discomfort during difficult conversations or growth periods, versus long-term patterns of emotional avoidance.
Growth Mindset: Acknowledge that healthy discomfort can contain curiosity, openness, and a desire to improve.
Body Awareness: Pay attention to physical cues. Does discomfort feel restrictive, or is there a sense of openness, even with negativity?
Tools for Navigating Emotional Discomfort
Mindfulness Practice: Introduce simple mindfulness techniques like observing emotions without judgment. This fosters self-awareness and non-reactivity.
Journaling: Writing about thoughts and feelings can increase clarity and promote emotional processing.
"Name it to Tame It:” Simply labeling emotions (e.g., "I feel anxious") can reduce their intensity.
Give yourself time to be bored or uncomfortable without avoiding it.
When you feel the urge to turn to something to make you feel better, like video games, scrolling on social media, drinking, weed, masturbation, etc., instead take some time to sit with your feelings and just let your mind wander.
Gradual Exposure: Starting with small challenges and building up tolerance for discomfort over time.
Take a 30 day break. The first 2 weeks will be awful, but then you’ll go back to a more neutral baseline and you’ll have more power over that relationship.
Seeking Support
Trusted Friends/Family: Confiding in supportive individuals can provide validation and perspective.
Support Groups: Connecting with others who understand similar experiences can reduce isolation.
Professional Help: Seek a therapist if emotional avoidance significantly impacts your well-being or relationships. Therapists specialize in teaching emotional regulation skills.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're looking at the ways we avoid feeling uncomfortable and how they may actually be making the problem worse. Whether you feel pressure to be happy all the time, or you just can't stand being bored, or upset, or scared, or you just want to feel better, it can be easy to turn to distractions or quick fixes. While the three of us all love those from time to time, too much can have a significant effect on our well-being and on our relationships.
Today, we're going to be taking a hard look at some of the emotions we try to avoid and explore some techniques for reclaiming our ability to feel our emotions and improve our relationships. If you're interested in learning about some of our fundamental communication tools that we reference a lot on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers some of our most used communication tools, as well as general thoughts about what even makes a good relationship.
You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever you like to get books. Also, check out the first nine episodes of this podcast, which covers some of our most widely used and shared communication tools. Why are we talking about this?
Dedeker: I love avoiding stuff, if I do say so myself.
Emily: You do?
Jase: I do love it from time to time as well, yes.
Dedeker: It's funny, my relationship to social media specifically has transformed quite a bit over the last, I want to say, four-ish, five-ish years, or so. Back in the day when I was first starting to think, I got to change this somehow, I don't like just scrolling mindlessly. I really wanted someone to make a custom program where I could set a certain amount of time where it could tell that once I've scrolled for maybe longer than 10 minutes that something would pop up that would say, "What are you avoiding right now?" and I would have to write something in. I would have to write in what I was avoiding.
Jase: That's good. I like that.
Dedeker: Now, I use the Freedom app myself. This is not an ad. They're not paying us but I do recommend it to everybody. That's what I've used to really get a curb on that and that's been great.
Jase: It doesn't do exactly that thing, but it just blocks certain apps.
Emily: That would be really cool though.
Dedeker: It blocks stuff. Unlike a lot of the built-in digital well-being stuff, it's actually more difficult to get around, so it's been much more effective.
Emily: Excellent. Yes, I think it's very difficult in our world today to not, from time to time, feel really anxious, and really worried, and really uncomfortable about a lot of things. There is so much that is coming at us at all times telling us that the world is an uncomfortable and shitty place at times. That's a difficult thing, I think from an existential viewpoint to look at, and to feel, and to know, and it's understandable to want to numb ourselves of that knowledge. Yet, we can do it too quickly, or too often, I guess, instead of actually really just living with and dealing with our own emotions.
Dedeker: Whenever I'm feeling like maybe I'm a brave person, I will read some Pema Chödrön books because her approach is very much about, there's nothing really for you to hide behind so you may as well stop hiding behind stuff, and just lean straight into the most uncomfortable shit you can think of, and lean into your fears, and it's always a ahhhh kind of experience. Even just reading her books are very challenging in that way.
Emily: There's nothing for you to hide behind, goodness.
Dedeker: Oh, yes. It's very Buddhist. It's just about accepting that there's literally nothing real for you to hide behind from your discomfort, so you may as well stop pretending.
Emily: Goodness, okay.
Jase: That type of stuff comes up a lot in various Buddhist writings of this idea of not trying to just hide and feel good all the time, but actually, confronting some of those harder thoughts or more challenging things. I do think, Emily, you bring up a really good point about part of this whole landscape, and we'll get into this more as we go. Part of it is we have easier access to distractions like social media, but also that same distraction can often be the thing that's making us feel like the world is a worst place because of how much news there is and how much attention scary upsetting things get, and so those get favored.
Dedeker: People being scary and upsetting, and acting in scary and upsetting ways.
Emily: Sure, yes.
Jase: It gets attention and that gets rewarded, which then makes you see more of it. The whole thing is there is a big systemic problem here. I guess just starting out that it's not like something is wrong with you or any of us, if we feel this urge to, I want to stop feeling these things and escape it. However, we can get ourselves in trouble with that. I guess we can inadvertently be making things worse. To start off a little bit, to set the stage here, the whole concept here is about what's healthy discomfort versus unhealthy pain.
I think that many of us can at least conceptually understand this when it comes to physical discomfort versus pain, but it's a little harder to do emotionally and mentally. I think when it comes to practically identifying the difference between good, healthy physical discomfort and physical pain, we're not always the best at that, especially if we don't have a lot of experience with healthy pain.
What I mean by that is the difference between, "I'm doing some kind of exercise, it's uncomfortable, it's painful, I end up sore," it's not an enjoyable experience per se on its own, yet, it's good for you, it will make your body healthier, function better, and feel better the rest of the time, especially as you get older, things like that, or meditation, there's physical discomfort that goes along with that besides even the mental discomfort, but that is an okay thing that you can get through.
On the other hand, we have things like, "Oh, every time I take a step this way, my knee has this sharp pain right along the edge of my kneecap." That might not be a, "Oh, that's good pain, just keep pushing through it." It's like, "No, actually, this is something you should either back off of or maybe see a doctor about because this could be a much more serious thing that's going to get worse if you push it," versus something like strength training that's uncomfortable but gets better as you push it, again, up to a point.
Even with that, it's like if you identify when it switches from good pain to bad pain can help you avoid injuring yourself. I think we can, at least, conceptually understand that physically. Here's another good one is building up guitar calluses, playing guitar. Your fingers hurt, but I know that they hurt because I'm building up calluses, not they hurt because I'm going to destroy my fingers or something like that.
Dedeker: I don't know. Jase gave me my very first guitar lesson last night, actually.
Emily: Oh.
Jase: That's why it's on my mind.
Dedeker: Yes. At the end of that, I was just like, "My fingers are going to bleed. How do you do this?"
Emily: Were you showing her an A chord or what kind of stuff were you showing her?
Jase: An E chord, actually.
Dedeker: An E chord.
Emily: An E chord. Okay, nice.
Dedeker: Tons of bass playing. He gave me a little bass lesson as well.
Emily: Lovely.
Jase: Yes, I did some of each.
Emily: Very cool. Wow.
Jase: Again, another example of if you burn yourself and you pull away from it, that's bad pain that you're like, "I need to avoid this and try to treat it and fix this," versus building up calluses could be a good pain. Learning to identify those when it comes to emotions and our thoughts is what this episode is about.
Dedeker: This seems so relevant to so much of what we have talked about on this podcast with relationships and specifically with non-monogamous relationships that often is this big question of this discomfort that I'm going through in my relationship is that just, I got to power through it and get to the other side of it, and be present with it, and then I'll be okay, or is this really bad and I need to get out of this relationship where I really need to change what's happening right now?
I think especially when you're doing any non-normative relationship where we're not quite sure what the standard is for some sort of healthy discomfort versus unhealthy or dysfunctional pain in the relationship.
Emily: I think that's the real challenge because so many of us may just cut and run early, and decide, "Okay. I'm not going to continue with whatever discomfort or feeling as though this isn't necessarily the right thing, so I decide to leave," versus, "Oh, I'm going to stick this out even though maybe it's not really a great relationship for you." That is the really tricky thing, and I think very challenging to know which is the right way to go. I guess, that's a very personal question.
Jase: Yes, right. When it comes to physical feelings or emotional feelings, the only way that we can understand what anyone else is feeling is by watching them and listening to what they're describing. That's so subjective on their part and then also on our part hearing it. Even in a more normative relationship, we can often not have very clear understanding of what is that bad pain versus this is okay to push through this. In this episode, we're going to focus more on the side of experiencing some of that healthy discomfort and not shying away from it.
The hope is that by doing that, it helps you build up a better sense of what type of discomfort does fit here to also better identify things that are not this. Please, don't take this episode to mean all pain is good. If your relationship is upsetting to you, just keep on doing it.
Emily: Definitely not.
Jase: Not necessarily that, but the point is developing the skills to learn how to tell that difference. That's the whole idea here. When we get into this, one thing to start with is just talking about dopamine. It's a hot neurotransmitter these days, everyone's talking about it.
Emily: One of my favorite neurotransmitters really.
Jase: Right, probably one of the three that most people know the name of.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: It comes up in terms of you'll hear people talk about dopamine fasts, or you'll talk about dopamine addictions, things like that. The short version is that dopamine is the neurotransmitter that feels good. It makes you feel reward for doing something good. This could be completing a task, someone saying yes when you ask them out, having sex, doing drugs, getting drunk, eating a bunch of sugar, winning at a video game, getting more likes on social media. There's a lot of different ways we can get this. Some of these might be healthier than others, but the point is that our body then releases this chemical which makes us feel good, it helps motivate us.
We've talked before about how having a desire for dopamine helps us achieve things, accomplish things, build better relationships, make new friends, and provide-
Dedeker: To eat good food.
Jase: -for our families. Exactly. All those things. It's a good thing to have. If anyone tries to tell you dopamine is bad, if you didn't have it, things would be very bad. The key is having a good balance of it. It's having the right amount.
Dedeker: Yes. We've evolved to be these dopamine-seeking machines, and that's to a certain extent, good. What I've been really interested in recently is I've been reading some interviews with Anna Lembke, who is the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University. She's also the author of this book that came out recently called Dopamine Nation. She has highlighted some really interesting findings about when we do something that does produce that dopamine, we eat a piece of chocolate or we have an orgasm or something, that your body does want to be in homeostasis, so it will stop producing extra dopamine.
The way that Anna Lembke describes it is almost like you have these two little teams of competing gremlins in your brain, that you eat the chocolate, and then, these little gremlins come that tick up your sensitivity to pain actually and discomfort to balance you out.
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: That's when you have that sensation of, I really want another piece of chocolate, now that dopamine has worn off. She talks about how sometimes when people are addicted to something, a substance or behavior or something like that, they will think that their discomfort, their anxiety, their depression, is what's driving the addiction, when really it is this you seek out more dopamine, your body balances it out, you feel bad, you feel cranky, you feel irritable, maybe you're literally feeling withdrawal symptoms, so then, you seek more of that dopamine-producing thing.
Your body tries to balance it out again. The thing that you're addicted to itself, the thing that you are seeking to produce that dopamine, is making it worse, potentially creating the cycle. What we often see with addiction is then, you need more of it, and more of it, or you need to do whatever the behavior is for longer periods of time, or more intensely in order to get that same effect, which then often gets balanced out by equally intense come-down or irritability in some way.
Jase: There's also a balancing on the other side, where when we do some of these things that are less comfortable, like exercise, is an example that she gives. Our body will then make more dopamine to balance us back out because we're feeling a little bit in pain, or a little bit uncomfortable. If you've ever heard of the runner's high that marathon runners will experience--
Emily: Never felt it in my life.
Dedeker: I've never felt it either. I think it's a lie.
Emily: Yes. I know. I was like how much discomfort do you have to get in order to feel that? Because yikes?.
Dedeker: That's true. I've never been willing to push really to get that.
Emily: No. Thank you.
Jase: Interesting.
Emily: Definitely felt it while working out.
Jase: It can happen then. I've definitely experienced the runner's high. The cool thing about that one is the more you do it, the faster you get to the high part, which is cool, but it's essentially that. It's your body saying, "Hey, you're doing something uncomfortable. You're still doing it. I better try to fix it up by making you feel a little bit better." On either side, our body is trying to find this balance. Sometimes, actually, doing the less comfortable thing will ultimately help us feel a little bit better.
The next thing here is that if we're doing these things to avoid feeling uncomfortable especially when it comes to our emotions, like if I'm ever bored, I'm ever anxious, or I'm ever worried, turning to social media or gaming or whatever it is, that has been correlated with alexithymia. Which is something we've talked about a while back just briefly, but is worth talking about a little bit here because it's related to this whole discomfort cycle of things.
Emily: Alexithymia is also known as emotional color blindness. Essentially, if we're to define it, it is basically trouble identifying or understanding, or expressing emotions. I think all of us, to some degree, have this at one time or another. We did an episode on this a while ago where we discuss this a little bit, but also just discussing how difficult it is sometimes for us to even know how to put emotions into words. 10% of the population is believed to be affected by alexithymia at least moderately. I think some of us have a easier or harder time putting emotions into words, but then, those of us who maybe have a moderate to more difficult time, that could be labeled as alexithymia.
There is this link between alexithymia and difficulties separating emotions from bodily sensations. It's that idea that if you feel something really uncomfortable within your body, which I think often will happen if you're feeling anxious, feeling upset, feeling tired, feeling scared, or any of those things, that it's difficult to understand, "Okay, that's an emotion that I'm having, not just a really crappy awful bodily sensation." It's like not being able to marry the two together and understand that one is happening because of the other.
Jase: There's a scale that's used in a lot of assessments for alexithymia, which is called the Toronto Alexithymia Scale or Test. Some of the questions on there, one of them is, "I have physical sensations that even doctors don't understand." You rate on a Likert scale of agree or disagree, or "I'm often puzzled by sensations in my body." A lot of the questions have to do with not being able to name emotions, or not knowing how to describe them, things like that, but that there's also these ones about I feel physical things that I don't have a reason for.
It can be linked to hypochondria-type feelings of illnesses, but that there doesn't seem to be any physical cause for. Basically, what's going on is that emotions have a physical component to them, and there's a lot of research to back up that they may actually be physical first before they're ever mental even though we experience them as if they start as a mental, emotional experience, and then become physical. There's actually some research suggesting that connection goes the other way around, but that through the way that we're raised or through avoiding experiencing these things or feeling like we're not able to, we can lose the ability to realize these are emotions we're feeling.
Instead, it's like, "Why am I having this symptom that feels like nausea or a tightness in my shoulders or a pain, or pounding of my heart? Am I having a heart attack?" These kinds of fears that can be very serious. Severe alexithymia can be a quite severe thing, but what we're focusing on for this episode is more in the moderate territory, which affects a surprisingly large number of people, especially men. There's a term for this that's called normative male alexithymia, which I think, for the most part, tends to be on this low to moderate end of the scale, although a lot more men, in general, are diagnosed with alexithymia.
Emily: That's really interesting and I'm not surprised.
Jase: It's not surprising at all, right?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Do you think that's a nature or nurture thing?
Jase: I think it's nurture for sure, but I tend to lean on the side of nurture for most things, but if you think about it, as men, we're generally-- and this is changing, but generally not raised to think that emotions are okay to feel besides anger, and that's it. That fear or vulnerability or loneliness or anxiety, these things are seen as weak or unattractive and so I can't feel those. It must not be that because if it was those, I would be a weak, shitty, unlikable person, so it can't be that. It must be nothing. We lose this ability to describe those and that has to do with how we're raised.
There's a really fantastic video that-- if this is something that's interesting to you, there's a YouTube channel by this guy named Dr. K called HealthyGamerGG. His whole deal is-- he's a psychotherapist. His whole thing is making videos explaining psychological phenomena to gamers. Generally, his audience is pre-teen through young adults, maybe 20s, 30s men.
Dedeker: He's specifically aiming at male gamers, generally, right?
Jase: Right. People who play competitive online games like Fortnight, or League of Legends, or whatever, those sorts of things, Apex Legends, those types of people who can get very addicted to the gaming side of things. Anyway, his channel's great. He very much speaks to that audience and tries to speak the language of that. He can be a little bit crass and a little bit intense sometimes, but I love what he's doing. That he's actually putting this out there in a way that will actually reach some people who really need it.
Anyway, he's got a lot of videos about alexithymia that will have titles like Why You Feel Nothing or How I Go Through Life With No Emotions. Things like that to get you to go, "Oh, yes, that might be me. Let me go check that out." One of the things that he talks about is that there is stuff you can do to treat it. Also, that he sees a growing number of women showing up with it. He thinks that that mostly has to do with this correlation between social media and technology use as a way to numb out, especially starting at a younger age.
With men being raised, boys being raised where it's more okay to express your emotions. It's like it's getting a tiny bit better for men and it's getting worse for women, but it's also getting worse for everyone because of technology and how easy that is, and then escape. It'll be very interesting. One of the things that he talks about is, it's going to be uncomfortable as you get better from it. It's going to be this, 'it gets worse before it gets better' because when you first start learning to identify and face and be present, and mindful of those emotions, they're not positive, happy emotions, so it's going to be difficult.
Quick shout out to Episode 348, Transforming Feelings Into Words, where we talked about the emotion wheel. That is actually something that can be used in alexithymia treatment to work your way from the inside of the wheel, which are big emotions, like sad, angry, happy out to the more nuanced things of insecure. Or, those more nuanced emotions. It's learning how to identify these as you move further out in the circle.
Dedeker: There can be some negative effects to avoiding discomfort, avoiding emotions on a habitual basis, outside of just creating dependencies on your brain or creating this particular addictive cycle in your brain. It also reduces your ability to cope with stress in general. It encourages a lack of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. It can contribute to mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and then also suppression of emotions. Increases the stress response. Then if your stress coping ability is reduced as well, this can be yet another vicious cycle that happens.
It can also impact your relationships as well. That if you're avoiding your emotions, or if you're really not able to even pinpoint your emotions and talk about them, that can be a stumbling block to emotional connection. It can make it really difficult to understand and respond to what your partner is feeling or for your partner to understand and respond to what you're feeling. Then also, that can lead to communication breakdowns because if you can't really identify and express when you were just on your phone and not paying attention to me when I was trying to talk to you, if you can't get the nuance of I was feeling ignored.
I was feeling lonely, I was feeling confused, whatever it is, and all you can do is act out or shut down or something like that, there probably isn't going to be any resolution there or mutual understanding.
Emily: This is really interesting for me because I feel like I've had partners in the past who it's as though I can't really discuss complex emotional things with them or almost like we're speaking different languages. I think that if people don't have the words or the understanding of what's going on within them internally, then it is going to be really difficult to be able to have those types of conversations with them.
Even with all of the tools that the three of us have, and that we're trying to give to the world at large, if somebody is unable to really discern and understand what's going on within them at a very basic level, then how can you really have a conversation that is as complex as some of the ones that we try to have with our significant others? It's going to be impossible. This is very basic, and yet extremely important.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: This is also helping me connect the dots on a particular relationship from my past, where I was with someone who he really identified that he was just super chill and laid back and very even keel all the time. He really harshly defended that, to a certain extent. A lot of denying being upset too much and always really coming back to this very even keel place or at least in a legit even keel place. He also had so much medical anxiety. I would probably label it as hypochondria, as well. All of these weird-- it's same thing, weird health issues that would come up that doctors couldn't really explain or put a diagnosis on but they would still prescribe stuff, which would add into the cycle.
That's giving me some question marks of I wonder if those two things were connected. I don't want to get all conspiratorial with it, but it does seem like it tracks.
Jase: It's like Emily was saying, these are all very fundamental skills that are the prerequisites to having good communication in your relationships. What I'm hoping that we can get at in this episode, is to not just say, "You should be more emotionally available," or "You should communicate better about your emotions," but to say, "But how?" It's like, "Sure, maybe I realize I need to do that, but how?" Part of that is learning to be a little bit more mindful. By that, I mean when you're feeling these uncomfortable things, just realizing that the being uncomfortable can be okay. It could actually be really important. Not just okay, but necessary to learn how to identify those.
Now, of course, you might be saying, "I don't want to." That's what we're going to get into next is all the reasons why you might not want to do this or all of the objections that you might come up with. First, we're going to take a quick break to talk about supporting this show. It's really important to us to be able to put this out into the world for everyone out there for free. We do that in a couple of ways. One is through direct support on our Patreon. If you go to multiamory.com/join, or just find us on Patreon, and join there, that directly helps support our show.
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Emily: Now we're going to get into some of the reasons why many of us may not want to feel overwhelm or discomfort or fear or anger, all of those things. Because yes, it does suck.
Jase: It doesn't sound pretty fun when you put that way.
Dedeker: There's a lot of good reasons to not.
Emily: Definitely. Yet, I think that we've tried to highlight some of the good reasons why it's okay to feel those things. Honestly, would all of us want to feel good all of the time? Maybe the answer is yes, but it puts into perspective the times when we do get to feel good. It gives us some context for realizing, "Hey, I've had some really shitty moments in my life. This moment right now where I'm feeling on top of the world, is because I have gotten myself to that place where yes, I've been through a lot and now I get to have a great time in this moment." I don't know.
We can't have everything be good all the time. I'm just going to put that out there. It's also understandable when you don't want to feel shitty because that does suck too. Let's go down a list of some of the reasons why we may not want to feel discomfort. The first is this feeling and fear of emotional overwhelm. A lot of us may think that facing my discomforts will overwhelm me emotionally. I think that's a really understandable one. A lot of us don't necessarily know especially if we have varying degrees of alexithymia, we don't really know how we're going to react in a situation where we're feeling a large amount of discomfort.
That may be really scary to us. We may feel concerned that confronting uncomfortable emotions could lead to an inability to cope with the intensity of those feelings. Even if you are looking at really big decisions in your life, you may want to put those decisions off because you're like, "Shit I don't know how I'm going to feel about this. It may lead to something that ultimately is going to really be sad or difficult for a while and I just don't want to feel that so I'm not going to even go there."
Dedeker: Sometimes the emotions and feelings that we're avoiding, it can be that that emotion first showed up at a time when we didn't have the ability to cope with what was going on. There's a reason why so much of our shit stems to childhood at a time when we were young and not developed and didn't have knowledge and didn't have skills. Sometimes in order to protect ourselves, we had to find ways to avoid it because we really didn't know how to deal with it. Then we can get stuck in that assumption that it's always going to be overwhelming if I let myself feel this way and I'm not going to be able to deal with it.
Emily: I think that leads us into this next one, which is this belief in ineffectiveness. Thinking I've tried to face my feelings before and it didn't help, or it didn't put me in a better place emotionally, ultimately, maybe again, just because at the time when that happened, you didn't have coping mechanisms to help you through that moment. Maybe now if you're a little bit older or a little bit wiser or have gone through more things in your life, perhaps you actually will have a bigger capacity more easily to deal with something.
Jase: I think there's also that in real life, we lack the little booting of the achievement that you get for faced an emotion and then you know that you completed it. I remember years ago someone talking about, "Oh, I think mindfulness is bull shit." Because there was this study that showed when people who were stressed out meditated, they felt worse. I'm like, "Well, yes, because they're just sitting with their thoughts one time or for a short amount of time." It's going to be a little bit worse. It's like saying, "I'm out of shape but I went to the gym once and I was sore, so that's not a good solution. I think that we can give up a little too early sometimes on this.
Dedeker: I think there can be this general sense of, "It might be overwhelming and I won't know what to do," but then there can be also this more tangible sense of really though, if I sit with this emotion, what am I going to do with it? If I get myself upset, all I will have done is just gotten myself upset and then I don't know what to do. This perceived absence of coping mechanisms or the emotional intelligence to be able to process it or manage it, and this is the basis of DBT that it's about, okay, what we need is to get people equipped with the right skills and the right tools for being able to regulate and handle their emotions.
Related to this fear of overwhelm or fear of, I don't know what I'm going to do, or I don't really have the skills to handle this discomfort, is the fear of repercussions. This could be, if I let myself feel this way, what if it's going to get worse? Or what if something bad is going to happen? I think this one is a legit anxiety that if I let myself feel the sadness and I cry a whole bunch and I'm sobbing for hours, if I let myself feel the anger and I'm very visibly angry to the people around me, that could damage my relationships or that could really make me spiral.
Maybe at the other end of it, I won't feel better, maybe I'm going to feel even much worse. Maybe this is not going to get resolved. This happens a lot with anger when I'm working with clients that anger is one of the earliest emotions that we tend to get shamed out of us because of its negative consequences. Sometimes people get really scared feeling into their anger, feeling like, "If I actually let myself feel this, what if I completely lose control?" Which is so funny because very few people actually do. We have a lot of inhibiting responses coded into us that helps for most people keep their anger under control.
Sometimes there is this fear of this black and white that if I tip over into too much anger, then something really bad is going to happen, then I'm going to destroy the house.
Jase: Maybe not quite as extreme as that but I literally had almost that exact conversation with a counselor that I was seeing. This would've been 16 years ago or something quite-
Dedeker: A while.
Jase: -a while back. She was talking to me about expressing-- basically, in my modern day, I would say it was about expressing boundaries and also expressing some anger or being upset about certain things. I just could not go there. I was like, "But everyone will hate me. I will ruin every relationship I have. Everyone will hate me. I can't do that." It was a really confronting thing to even think about. What she said there was, "Tell people first, don't just spring it on them, let them know this is something that you're working on to try to let them be on a team with you a little bit and understand they might get a little bit upset by some things, but that that's part of the process."
It was a slow many-year process of figuring out how to unravel all that. I just want to say, I feel super sympathetic to this concern. Because 100% was exactly feeling that like, "But I can't because there's going to be repercussions." The next one we have is a comfort in familiarity. On the other hand, you could say, "Well, but avoiding discomfort works for me. Playing video games all day every day works for me. Why should I change?"
Dedeker: Or pretending that I'm super stoic, that works for me. I think there's a lot of people hung up on that.
Jase: Pretending that I'm just so unaffected and I'm a real rock of a person that just can't be shaken by anything. Like, "That's working for me. People seem to react well to it," or "I feel fine, why is this a problem?" Unfortunately, a lot of times it's not a problem until it is and then everything falls apart. That's when your partner's like, "Hey, I'm sick of being with someone who sits on the couch every day." Or your parents finally kick you out, because they're like, "You need some motivation to get you out there to actually do something because as it is now you're not." There's a lot of different ways this can look.
This could be when you're losing your job, losing your partner, losing relationships and friends. It can have very serious consequences but they might not happen till later, so better to get ahead of it. Then related to that is what the stoic thing is. The vulnerability of it. Of like, "Well, but people will see me as weak." I'd say that the second part of that thought is, and therefore unattractive or undesirable or unhirable or whatever goes along with that. This stigma and this romanticism of our heroes from movies and games who are unaffected by everything except when appropriate for them to be sad enough to motivate them to take action or something.
That we can get caught up in that idea and then feel like, "I couldn't ever express being sad or being scared or being vulnerable or being afraid of being alone because then everyone will go, 'Aha, we knew it. You are a weakling. Get out of here.'"
Emily: I think a lot of people out there look at a thing like emotional growth and they dismiss it or they say that emotions in general shouldn't control what it is that we're doing in our lives, for instance. If they see discomfort and can pinpoint, "Okay, this is an emotional reaction that I'm having." Then maybe they will shy away from doing something to help that. Because they're saying, "Okay, the emotion isn't going to control me and I don't want it to dictate my actions." Instead of realizing that it can hopefully lead to emotional growth and resilience building.
Jase: My favorite analogy with this one is it's like saying, "I don't like being held down and so I don't really believe in or think about gravity ever." It's like, "No, it happens to you no matter what, but learning about it can then help you figure out ways to fly but pretending it doesn't exist isn't going to help you."
Emily: For sure. Also, a lot of people will say that it just takes too much time and effort to deal with discomfort and to move past it or figure out coping mechanisms for it. I think that just the belief that the process of facing and processing discomfort, it's demanding a lot. A lot of people think that it's way too difficult and so they're just not going to invest time and emotional energy into working on that. Instead, they'll turn to these coping mechanisms that are just going to mask the problem instead of facing it head-on.
Dedeker: Honestly, I can relate to this one. I forget if I've talked about this on the show before so my apologies if this is a repeat. I have a certain amount of what I call my junk drawer issues, which are the issues or the uncomfortable feelings that are maybe not front of my mind or top of my mind all day every day but maybe old stuff. Stuff that I haven't dealt with yet. I think of it like the junk drawer where I'm like, "I don't know how to deal with this. I don't know where it belongs. I'm just going to stick it here and then forget about it."
It does become a little bit of this, "It's going to be too much effort to organize that junk drawer or to like to find a place for this screw set or whatever it is, I'm just going to leave it in the junk drawer." There are some things seriously for me where I'm just like, "I don't know if I'm ready to deal with that yet. I'm just going to not think about it." That's how I'll deal with it is just not thinking about it or just avoiding the things that make me think about it. That leads me to this one where I feel very called out by also is having a preference to just leave it to the professionals in the sense of, "When I get into therapy someday, then I'll deal with this stuff.
I don't really have the ability to deal with it on my own, or "It's going to be too big and too overwhelming. I really shouldn't deal with it on my own. I'm going to put it off until I can talk to a therapist. Now, sometimes that could be the right choice. You're the one who's going to make that call. Also, part of the whole point of therapy is to develop your own sense of resiliency so that you're not reliant on a therapist the entire time. I'm definitely guilty of this one. There's a certain list of issues where I'm like, "When I have the time and money to just jump into six somatic sessions back to back, then I'm going to deal with that, but I've got other things that I want to deal with."
Emily: I'm surprised.
Dedeker: Are you surprised? Really?
Emily: A little. Yes. Just because I almost thought that you were saying that you were called out by this because you are in the therapy sector and that you're like, "How dare people don't come to me as soon as they can?"
Dedeker: No, man. Literally, my current therapist that I've been seeing for a number of years now, we're finally getting to some junk drawer issues that I've had. Some of it is just down to if I've run out of the chronic stuff that I'm facing in my day-to-day life, that then I know it's time to dip into the junk drawer of the stuff that I've been avoiding. It's not fun.
Jase: I just want to acknowledge for a second and celebrate, the fact that you're running out of the more pressing stuff is actually a great place to go.
Emily: Yes, look at that.
Dedeker: Here's the nature about life, though, Jase, is that life will always present you with new chronic stuff to deal with.
Jase: All right, fine.
Dedeker: It becomes very easy for me to guide the therapy session away from, "But let's talk about actually, this other thing that I've been thinking--" just this stuff is tricky. I just want to normalize it.
Emily: Definitely.
Dedeker: That yes, I feel this too. There's stuff that, to me, feels like it goes beyond my own sense of capacity to cope or willingness to dive into the discomfort.
Jase: With all of these objections, I think the point we're trying to make is they're all pretty reasonable. Also, I would argue that none of them are good enough reasons to put these things off completely or to put them off forever. That working through this is going to involve one listening to this episode and hopefully feeling like, yes, this is important enough. This is something that's valuable enough to do, even if it might be uncomfortable, but also generating some understanding of yourself and have a little empathy for yourself too.
Don't feel like, "Ugh," just tear the band-aid off and force it, right? You might want to seek some guidance from a professional or maybe someone else in our online community. You could form a little group of, "Hey, let's support each other in trying to do this." Finding some way to help you get into that and navigate the complexities of this is really important because it is hard. There's a lot of reasons to not do it. Hopefully, we can get into now some things that you can do and some tools you can do that I'm hoping are something that feels reasonable. It doesn't feel like, "Oh, I just suddenly have to face every bad feeling all the time every day."
Because I don't think that's reasonable and I don't think that would be very helpful. We're going to get into that, but we're going to take another quick break to talk about some sponsors. Hey, you know what, if you don't like listening to ads, you could also become a Patreon because we have some tiers where there are ad-free episodes that also come out early. You can have these powerful tools before anybody else and also not have to listen to ads in the middle of it. Of course, if you are here listening to the ads, it does help us a lot. If you check them out, use the promo codes and links because they do directly help support our show and to keep this going.
Dedeker: If you're someone who's identified that maybe you need to start leaning into discomfort and uncomfortable emotions a little bit more, what are some things that we can do? I think a really good place to start is just see if you can identify areas where there may be tolerable or healthy discomfort. Some of this is going to be identifying what is situational uncomfortable feelings versus chronic uncomfortable feelings. What is temporary discomfort that I'm going through because I have to face a difficult conversation or I'm going through a life transition versus long-term patterns of ongoing discomfort and ongoing emotional avoidance?
This is things like identifying life when boredom pops up. A super easy way to identify this is whenever you grab your phone. Literally, whenever you grab your phone, chances are very high that it's because you're bored or there's something uncomfortable going on. For me, I've really identified that if I'm in the middle of a task, if I'm writing, usually it happens when I'm writing. The minute that I don't know what to say next is when I feel the strongest urge to look at my phone. It's always that when I'm just like, "I'm not sure what to say next," or "I'm not sure what word to use next," that even that tiny bit of uncertainty is uncomfortable enough that I'm like, "I need to find a little dopamine hit right there."
This is probably the easiest thing for you to track to get a sense of that, right? There can be other things. You can have the little moments of loneliness or little moments of frustration or annoyance. This is in contrast to having panic attacks all the time or having really overwhelming PTSD episodes or crushing depression that is getting in the way of your ability to live your life, that it is important to distinguish the different shades of discomfort of the stuff that maybe you could lean into, that you can learn to tolerate, learn to get curious about, versus something where maybe you need to go get some help.
Some of this is going to be when you identify those areas is adopting that growth mindset, right? Acknowledging that, "All right, I can--" When I'm writing especially, I have to remind myself, it's okay, I can sit in this discomfort of not knowing what I'm going to say next. I can just lean back in my chair. I can space out a little bit. I can stand up. I can go get some tea or something. I can literally do so many other things to just wait through that moment of discomfort instead of immediately reaching for the thing that's going to make me feel better right away.
You have to have that sense of, "I can accept that this could be good for me, that this could help me grow." Also, some of it is developing that body awareness, actually starting to pay attention to the physical cues that when you notice, "Okay, I am bored," or, "I am feeling not sure what I should do next," and scanning to see, how does that feel? Does it feel like a tightness in your chest? Does it feel like a restlessness in your legs or does it feel like an absence of feeling as well? That can also be really interesting to track that if you scan your body and you're like, "I don't notice anything," how does that feel to not notice anything in your body? There's going to be some information here.
Emily: Some tangible tools for navigating emotional discomfort may include things like a mindfulness practice. That can be observing emotions without judgment which can hopefully foster self-awareness and non-reactivity. It can be journaling, something that Dedeker just talked about that Jase loves, that I have really found is super important when I'm going through extremely difficult times emotionally. That just getting it out on paper is so helpful, instead of having it just be internal, be inside of you to get it out there in some way. Often that, for me, is journaling.
It can just feel really great, and then you can also look back on it and see, "Okay, this is where I was in this moment in time." It's great to be able to see where you are now versus how you were feeling then.
Jase: Just a quick note on this because I know that it's become like a meme now about Jase being the one who's always encouraging journaling exercises. I think that the interesting thing here is that it's the writing, not the keeping a journal for me. I actually almost never have looked back at any journal entry I've ever done in my whole life. Most of them are in notebooks that have been thrown away or I've gotten rid of. I think that there's a keeping a journal thing, which is one thing and it's really cool to be able to look back. Dedeker does that and she always has these cool stories of, "Hey, four years ago is when we went and did this thing, and I felt this way."
Emily: Oh, wow.
Jase: For me, what I really appreciate is what you just said, Emily, of just getting it out of my head onto something else. It gives you that sense of I did something about this without just ignoring it, or distracting, or whatever.
Emily: Then you can also name it to tame it. We talked about this in episode 348, where we were discussing, figuring out how to name emotions, how to understand emotions, understand what's going on in our minds and bodies, and brains. Because simply just trying to label an emotion or say, "I feel anxious in this moment," it can help reduce the intensity of that emotion. If you can't name it, then that sometimes can make it feel more overwhelming to you and increase the fear-based response of, "I don't know what this is. I'm just having a really intense emotion." Instead, try to name it. Try to tame it.
Jase: Using an emotion wheel can help with that.
Emily: Definitely.
Jase: To be like, "I don't know quite what this is." I often run into this, actually, where I'm like, "I'm feeling sad. I'm not sure what this is." An emotion wheel can be a helpful tool for being like, "Okay, it's in this area. What are some of these other words? Do you think maybe it's one of these? Could it be one of these?" As a way to explore that. The next one here goes back to the boredom thing that Dedeker was talking about and that is to give yourself some time to be bored or uncomfortable without avoiding it.
Like Dedeker was saying how she's writing and feels that urge to pull out her phone where it's like, "Okay, I'll do something else. I'm going to go get some tea. I'll go for a quick walk," or, "I'll just stand up and stretch for a second." Doing something that's not so clearly distracting, getting my mind away from this thing. When you feel that urge to turn to something like video games, scrolling on social media, drinking, weed, masturbating, any number of things like that that's a quick "I'm going to feel good and it's going to distract me," to instead take some time to just let your mind wander.
This is surprisingly hard to do, so what I'd like to encourage is to think about it not like I won't masturbate, or I won't go on my phone and check social media, but just don't do it right away. An example of this is when I'm having really busy days, I will sometimes hit this point where I'm like, "I'm too overwhelmed that I don't know what's going on. I'm going to go for a walk," and I'll put on my shoes, go out for a walk and I'll immediately reach for my ear pods to start listening to a podcast or music or something like that.
What I've been doing recently is right as I start to do that, going actually, "I'm already feeling all over the place and overwhelmed. Let me not do that," so what I'll do is the first 10 minutes or so of my walk will just be that. Then I'll say, "Okay, now I'll listen to a podcast." Usually, at that point, I'll make a better choice of what podcast to listen to. Instead of something that's maybe scary about current events or online security or something like that, I'll listen-- I know.
Dedeker: Because it's the kind of podcasts he listens to.
Emily: I know. Delving into Jase's mind.
Dedeker: The spooky online security stories.
Jase: That instead, I'll listen to the Secular Buddhism podcast or something that is more about mindfulness or something that is not as much of an escape, even if it's still a little bit of one. What I would encourage you to do is start with small challenges and build up your tolerance for that. Actually, some of the idea for this comes from a lot of guides about quitting smoking, that when you're quitting smoking, one of the things that will happen is you'll have this urge for a cigarette. You'll have that craving. One of the tips is to just tell yourself, "I have to wait 10 minutes," and set a timer, and then go do something else, distract yourself.
Which I guess in this case, we're saying don't distract yourself, but the same principle applies of after 10 minutes, that urge will have lessened enough that then you might go, "Actually, I'm not going to have the cigarette." In this case, it's that give yourself that 5, 10 minutes of not immediately going to your phone, not immediately putting on Netflix or YouTube or whatever it is. Give yourself a little bit of time, and maybe it'll change the choice that you make in terms of what you consume, or maybe it will change the amount of it or even what you do.
Just give yourself that little time or on the other side you can do what Dedeker was talking about which is when you're scrolling, stop yourself sooner. Realize, "You know what, this page has refreshed two times now. I've scrolled too much. I should stop and just sit here for a second." It can be uncomfortable at first, but there's actually been a ton of research into just sitting and spacing out for a moment being one of the best ways to actually learn new things and succeed in things that you are actively trying to do, even if it doesn't feel like you're working on them. It's to just space out for a little bit and not distract yourself.
Dedeker: If you find yourself with a particular behavior or habit that is becoming too compulsive or is taking up time that you really don't want it to be taking up, that dopamine researcher that I was talking about earlier, Anna Lembke, she recommends taking a 30-day break from something. Now if you have a physical addiction to a substance, we would not recommend doing a 30-day cold turkey break. This is a whole other issue. I am talking about the things that we've been talking about like compulsively swiping on a dating app, very, very addictive, or a particular video game or pornography or things like that.
She warns people that the first two weeks are going to suck. You're going to go through being cranky. Everyone around you is not going to like being around you because you're irritable. All of those things. Then at the end of 30 days, your brain is going to be in a more neutral baseline. It doesn't mean that at 30 days, "Oh, great. I never have to look at social media again." It's not necessarily about totally kicking it, but it's going to give you a leg up in being able to make decisions about what sort of relationship you want to have to this dopamine-producing thing and give you some power back about how you want it to be in your life instead of it being a compulsive thing that you can't really control.
Last but not least, if it's obvious already, you are not the only person in the world dealing with avoiding emotional comfort. We all do this. What that means is that you can reach out and find people to support you in this. I guarantee you you can find a friend who also wants to kick social media and where the two of you can support each other in that. I guarantee that you can find a family member who is willing to talk to you and you can share about the particular emotional experiences that you both have a hard time dealing with.
Of course, this can also be more formal. This could be a support group. It could be connecting with others who maybe understand similar experiences, whether that's a compulsion, or whether it's having a particular traumatic experience that has been hard for you to sit with and to deal with that can really reduce a sense of isolation, and course, always seeking professional help. Therapy, counseling, coaching is great for these kinds of things, for being able to have someone who can be nonjudgmental.
Something that often holds people back from therapy is again this fear that as soon as I go into therapy, I'm going to have to dive straight into ground zero of my most uncomfortable emotions and all the things that I never want to deal with and a good therapist is not going to make you do that. A good therapist is going to recognize when you have the capacity for starting to go there and is going to help guide you through the more scary territory at a pace that makes sense for you.
Emily: Did we learn something today, everyone?
Dedeker: I learned that I still love avoiding certain emotions.
Emily: Don't we all?
Jase: Yes. Now I do think this, for me, has been really encouraging in putting together this episode to think about developing my skills of identifying the emotions I'm feeling. I think that in general, I'm a fairly emotionally available person. I'm not afraid to admit those. I think I've come a long way in that over the last 15 years of my life especially, but I still think there are certain areas where it's like there are just areas where I don't know the difference between chartreuse and eggplant and violet. It's that thing of like, "Yes, I get they're all in this general area, but I don't know how to identify the different ones by name."
That's something that got me thinking about that kind of exercise of how to spend a little time, use emotion wheels, things like that.
Emily: I feel like I recently did a big thing that I really didn't want to face because I knew how difficult and challenging it would be from an emotional standpoint. That was get out of a relationship that wasn't really right for me anymore. I feel like even just taking the first plunge of realizing, "Yes, you can do difficult things and it is going to suck," but it shows me that I am able to keep doing that and in other situations too. That I don't just have to avoid the discomfort forever because hopefully, better things will come on the other side of that discomfort.
Dedeker: I love that. That's a great note to end on.
Jase: We would love to hear from all of you as well on our Instagram. If you're taking a 30-day break from social media actually, never mind. Don't even worry about it, seriously.
Dedeker: We don't want to hear from you.
Jase: I will not be offended. We will not hear from you for 30 days. That's super cool. If you would like to go on our Instagram Stories, we're going to be posting the question of what type of discomfort do you avoid that might be better if you faced. Definitely interested to hear from people. You can answer us by responding to the story there. Also, if you want to discuss this further or look for people to help support you in this, the best place is to share your thoughts with other listeners in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server or you can post about it in our private Facebook group.
You can get access to both of those groups and join our exclusive community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share publicly on the social medias, again, if you're not taking a break from those. Multiamory is created and produced by Dedecker Winston, Emily Matlack, and me, Jase Lindgren. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh & Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.