Leaning into Discomfort to Create Your New Life

Welcome to the Overcoming Sexual Abuse podcast where you get the tools and inspiration to help you overcome childhood sexual abuse. I’m your host, Christina Enevoldsen, certified coach, author and incest survivor, and I’m here to help you heal and live your very best life!

Avoiding discomfort is wired into your brain as survival, but it keeps you trapped in survival. To flourish in life, you have to experience discomfort. I’ll give you a new perspective when it comes to avoidance and share the empowering keys you can use to escape the comfort addiction and create your new life.

This is an obstacle to growth and healing and I don’t know if there is any bigger challenge than this resistance toward feeling discomfort. And when you’re learning to own your life, when you’re learning to assert your boundaries, to say no, it feels very uncomfortable. When you stop going along with what anyone else wants, it feels worse before it gets better. And that feels very uncomfortable. It feels uncomfortable to receive praise if you’re not used to it or to receive genuine love when you’ve never had it before or feeling peace when you’re familiar with chaos or feeling happy when you’re used to feeling sad or calm when you’re used to feeling angry or safe when you’re used to feeling unsafe. And it’s really normal to feel discomfort when you’re making these kinds of changes, when you’re making any kind of changes, even when they’re wanted changes. 

And as much as you want to leave the past behind, there’s a kind of certainty in the old familiar ways. And so it is very uncomfortable to create something that you’ve never had before. But discomfort is just something that you have to pass through before you get to the part where it actually feels good and there’s just no getting around that. 

Discomfort is like a bridge between where you are now and where you want to be because growth and healing only happen through discomfort. And you probably already know that, but it’s still just so hard. Like, how do you deal with that? 

You might find yourself avoiding discomfort like it’s life or death. And that’s not actually far from how your brain thinks of it. That’s because our brains are actually designed to tell us that discomfort is bad and dangerous. And pleasure is good. That’s what’s safe. And that’s because that’s what’s worked and kept the human race alive for most of our history. It was much simpler. Just run away from the lion or pursue food and sex. And that really served us well. But that simplistic way of viewing discomfort and pleasure has really exceeded its usefulness in the time that we live in. And that’s because in comparison to past generations or past history, our life right now is easy and pleasurable and comfortable, and comfort is available everywhere. 

And it’s not just human history that compels us to avoid pain, but it’s our own personal history too. That’s because when a child is in physical or emotional pain, she’s actually in fight or flight. And when we’re born, we cannot regulate ourselves, so our parents’ calm response to our needs make us calm and regulate us. And that tells us that we’re not alone and that consistent pattern of being in distress and then being calm down allows us to be calm. It allows us to know that okay we can be stressed and we can be in pain but that’s temporary. And when you have parents who are unreliable when they don’t calm you when you’re in distress, then you don’t learn to soothe yourself. You don’t learn how to be present in your pain and you don’t learn that being in your pain is survivable and it’s just temporary and your nervous system doesn’t return to that calm state. 

And when you don’t have that, your pain is compounded by a sense of abandonment and abandonment is just intolerable to a child because a child can’t survive in that. A child can survive being beaten or sexually violated but can’t survive abandonment. And so a child seeks comfort to return to that regulated state. And unfortunately, we learn that comfort can’t be found in people, so we seek it wherever else we can find. 

And pursuing comfort is the absolute best a child can do. When a child finds comfort, that’s survival. That’s what helps her to get to the next day because a child isn’t empowered to change the circumstances. She can’t get to the root of her problems. So comfort eases the pain and helps her to just have as normal a time as she can, so she can just get to the next day. And if she does that, she’s doing a great job. So comfort becomes a matter of that life or death. 

However, when you learn these lessons, your brain still thinks that the same things that helped you survive then are going to help you now. And it thinks that it’s dangerous not to seek comfort. And added to that, trauma keeps you focused on the immediate, what’s right in front of you now. 

So consider how the stress response inside of us works. Your fight or flight is triggered and your vital energies go toward your limbs and your eyes, the parts of you that are going to help you get away or to defend yourself. And so anything that you don’t need for immediate survival is just placed on the back burner. And that means that your digestion, your reproduction, your tissue repair, all of that healing, that is temporarily stopped. You don’t need those right now. All of those functions are for the future. And if you don’t survive this threat, then you don’t have a future anyway. 

And so that’s why when you’re in survival, the long term, you can’t plan for that when you live in that stress response when you’re more dysregulated than regulated, you’re just burning your resources like crazy and you can’t use those valuable resources on a future that you don’t know if it will ever come. And so that sets you up–that just puts you in this position to grab whatever pleasure you can like there’s no tomorrow. So you prioritize this instant gratification over delaying pleasure. 

It’s like when a doctor treats a terminal patient. The way that a doctor helps is that they can make the patient more comfortable. And that means they’ve given up hope that there’s anything more that can be done. And when you opt for that immediate comfort and pleasure over your long-term wellbeing, it’s the same way. 

And in childhood, comfort saved you, but now you’re actually empowered to give yourself better than comfort. You have the ability to actually create a life that makes temporary discomfort feel worthwhile. You can actually improve your life instead of simply coping through it. And you don’t deserve to be abandoned again by giving up on yourself. 

In my reparenting program, Healing Your Orphaned Heart, seeking comfort at the expense of your well-being corresponds to the unloving mother. And I talk about these roles that we have within us, not literal roles, but you can work with these roles to truly learn to take care of yourself. And this unloving mother part just wants to keep you comfortable. But she also keeps you small and weak. And this is the part of you that enables you. It doesn’t want you to stretch and grow. She’s just like, “Stay safe and stay my little baby.” 

And it also might be the unloving father who shows up. And this is the part of you that is harsh and rigid and critical. And he drives you to do more and do better. It’s never good enough. And criticism doesn’t make you better. 

So if you find that you criticize yourself and give up on yourself, realize that you’re just using that as you’re out, your excuse. “See, I knew I couldn’t do it,” as though it was impossible the whole time. And I used to see myself as this unreliable employee and I’d complain, “Do you even see what I have to work with?” And I was just seeing myself as a victim of this part of myself that didn’t show up for myself. 

And the roles that you need to bring in are the loving mother and the loving father. And the loving mother comforts you, but she doesn’t shield you from challenges. Her unconditional love for you is the fuel for doing the hard things and no matter what happens, she’s there for you. And then the loving father comes in and he’s the one who believes in you and he knows your potential and he encourages you and he coaches you to be your best self and he guides you towards growth. He helps you learn from your mistakes and he doesn’t shame you or criticize you because true compassion is about patience and understanding, but it also doesn’t leave you in your mess. 

And then there’s the child self. And children are very in the moment, you know, a child isn’t thinking about consequences, she’s thinking about what feels good right now. She doesn’t care about the future because she doesn’t have that perspective. And that’s where the loving parents need to step in. They have a different perspective, a higher perspective, and they can see the past, the present, and the future. They understand cause and effect, and they know behaviors come with both consequences and rewards. And that’s the part of you that needs to be in charge of your decisions, to set boundaries, to guide, and to protect the inner child from herself and to really truly nurture her and care for her, not just her present needs, but her future needs, instead of just giving her what she wants in the moment. 

And this is a part of boundaries that not a lot of people talk about. It’s boundaries that you need to set with yourself, with that part of you that really really wants one thing and it’s really really not good for you. And really all of your boundaries are for you because boundaries aren’t for controlling someone else’s behavior. It’s for deciding what you’ll do in response to their behavior. 

But you can think of this younger version of you as stuck in the past and this part of you doesn’t have boundaries and so if you don’t give her boundaries then she’ll keep you stuck in the past. Your higher self wants you to grow and flourish and so these parts of you want different things and it can be challenging and just notice when you have that kind of internal conflict. That itself feels uncomfortable. 

And for me, I have this little narrative in my head sometimes when I’m feeling discomfort and I sound a lot like a little child. “I never get to do what I want to do.” Or, “I never get to have what I want.” And there’s this feeling of being deprived and there’s this scarcity as though I’ll never be comfortable again. I’ll never get to do anything enjoyable or pleasant again. “Life is so hard and it’s only hard and it’s always hard!” And, “Life is so hard because I have to do taxes”. Or “Life is so hard because I don’t have a vanilla latte.” And when I noticed that it’s so funny because, of course, I get to do what I want. Not all the time, but actually a lot of the time. And if I let the child self decide my life, she’ll only want to do easy and fun things. And I don’t think that I would like the kind of life that that would produce. 

However, if I really did look objectively at my life and recognize that it is so full of responsibility and commitments that I rarely get to choose what I want to do, I’d take care of myself by creating space for pleasure. But that isn’t at all the case right now. I get plenty of pleasure. 

So there are really two types of comfort and two types of discomfort. There’s the comfort you choose now for the involuntary discomfort later. That’s the consequences. And then there’s the voluntary investment of discomfort now for the later reward of comfort. 

So you can choose the comfort of procrastinating on your project now, but then experience the discomfort of having to scramble to meet the deadline later. And you can choose the comfort of spending your whole paycheck now, but then experience the discomfort of debt when you have an unplanned expense. And you can choose the comfort of avoiding the past, but then you live with the discomfort of continuing in the same painful patterns. And you can choose the comfort of eating junk food, but then there’s also the discomfort of poor health as a result. So short-term immediate comfort leads to long-term discomfort. But if you choose temporary discomfort now, it leads to long-term comfort.

And notice what true wellbeing is. The temporary comfort are things that aren’t good for you. Some people call that self-care. I’ve heard a lot of people call that self-care. They call it pampering. But they’re actually coping methods that sabotage you. And that may have been self-care when your job as a child was to get to the next day the best you could. But if you continue in that pattern, you won’t truly be taken care of. Your true needs are never met in that place.

So meeting your desires and cravings and urges in the moment only satisfy small desires, those temporary desires. But bigger desires take longer to be fulfilled and they are more fulfilling and they last longer. When you give up what you want now for what you want most, that’s when you see progress. That’s when you get the life that you want.

So you can see this pattern of choosing now or choosing the future again and again in many different models. Even at a cellular level, you can see this play out. How in survival, you live from this defensive position instead of growing. And here’s what happens. There are two classes of cells. There’s growth and protection. And a cell moves toward nutrients. That’s the growth mode. It’s open. And it moves away from toxins. That’s protection mode. It’s closed. And a cell can only move in one direction at a time. It can’t move toward nutrients while protecting itself from a toxic environment. And cells interpret an environment as good and healthy or toxic and dangerous. And if the cell constantly perceives its environment as toxic, then it stays in protection mode and it’s starved of the nutrients it needs.

And we are talking about how one cell, an individual cell behaves, but the same is true of you. You’re a collection of cells. And the more you stay in that protection and that survival, the less you’re able to grow. In protection mode, you don’t have the ability even on a cellular level to create anything new. And that’s a big problem when you want to heal because the healing process is part of growth mode. 

I already shared how this corresponds to the nervous system. There’s the calm state associated with the regulated state and it’s often called the state of rest and digest which corresponds to growth mode. And then there’s the stress response that is associated with the fight or fight and that corresponds to protection mode. You can only learn and grow and heal when you feel safe and when you feel calm. And so you’re either operating from this primal place, this survival place, this automatic place, or from a powerful state.

So when you feel discomfort, you withdraw and shrink and contract. But in growth, you’re open and expansive and pursuing nourishment. And in growth, you have access to creativity and inspiration, vitality, energy, and resources that you need for actually creating your life. And that’s why it’s so vital to regulate yourself. When you notice what state you’re in and you recognize that you’re dysregulated, bring yourself back to a regulated state. Especially notice that when you are feeling discomfort, when you are experiencing a challenge, when you’re making a decision, because your state will determine what resources you have available to create your future. Your state will determine if you choose to stay in the past or if you wanna move forward toward growth. 

And this is a really good place to invite compassion in. And when you invite compassion into any stressful situation, then your nervous system moves from dysregulated to regulated. And that allows you to consciously engage. And compassion settles that fight or flight response that compels you to move away from the pain and discomfort. It really just equips you, it energizes you and motivates you to respond. 

And when you direct compassion toward yourself, you reduce feelings of powerlessness and you feel grounded and ready with action. And the action that you need might be holding still, just being present and listening to yourself or it might be accepting or doing something difficult. But whatever it is, there’s a called-for action that’s being responded to rather than avoiding or escaping. And you can think of this as inviting the loving mother in that part of yourself. When you’re facing discomfort, you can imagine there’s a part of you that wants comfort at any price, but then there’s the loving mother and she’s there with true comfort. She’s truly with you, soothing you so you’re not alone in it. And she doesn’t help you to avoid discomfort. She helps you to be with it. And that helps you notice and be with your thoughts and sensations and emotions without getting swallowed in them, without getting caught up in them or overwhelmed in them. 

And you might acknowledge at that time how bad discomfort feels and simply be with that. Just name what’s going on, “Right now I’m feeling very uncomfortable”. And also notice that discomfort is just a feeling. It doesn’t actually do anything. It doesn’t harm you. It doesn’t control you. It doesn’t hinder you. It just feels uncomfortable. That’s the only power it has. 

And it’s unpleasant, but it’s just temporary. 

And you also might reframe what it means to feel discomfort. You could tell yourself discomfort is coming up because you care about yourself. And this is old wiring telling you that being comfortable is how you care for yourself. You can put your hand on your heart and say, “My heart is for me.” And just keep coming back to the present. You can put your hand on your heart and say, “I’m here. I’m with you.”

You might also bring to mind another loving person who supports you–who cares about you. Remember a time when you felt safe with someone. If someone else is available, you might also just regulate yourself by their calmness.

Those things let your nervous system know that you’re not in danger, you’re not alone. 

And also regulating yourself isn’t to get rid of the discomfort. It’s to be calm enough to move forward even if you feel the discomfort. And as I shared before, this loving, compassionate part of you gives you fuel for what you need to do. When you’re regulated, you’re ready to do hard things or even unpleasant things or mundane things.

And this corresponds to the loving father who helps you to build your future and reach your potential. And this is the part of you that’s the coach who challenges you. This isn’t the unloving father who drives you and criticizes you because the unloving father he actually sacrifices your wellbeing and your future too just like the unloving mother does with that false comfort that she offers. And so this loving father is ready to step in when you’re regulated so that you can face hard things. 

I take courage from other people who have done hard things. I have a friend right now who is battling cancer and she inspires me to do hard. And this isn’t to minimize or deny the challenges that I face in my own life but to remind myself that throughout human history people have done things that they didn’t want to do. And the human race has thrived because of that. And individuals have accomplished great things when they press past their comfort zone. And that not only inspires me, it reminds me that I’m not alone when I face discomfort. Other people have survived it too. 

When you’re experiencing discomfort, your brain has a narrative that it’s trying to push. And it’s meant to keep you safe. But remember what keeps you safe also keeps you stuck. So you can have a narrative to tell your brain. You can remind it that there is more to the story, that you do want to trade a little discomfort up front right now for long term well being, that that’s actually what you want. You’re not interested in survival. You want to flourish. You want to thrive. 

And there’s lots of thoughts that you can have that will be empowering for you. So just first off, choose thoughts that will serve you because you get to decide which thoughts stay and which thoughts have to go. And here’s some ideas for some empowering thoughts. 

• I’m choosing this now to have a better future. 
• I’m loving myself enough to do what I need to do now, even if it doesn’t feel good. 
• I’m capable of handling this. 
• It’s normal to feel discomfort and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong. 
• I won’t die from this. 
• Discomfort is just his sensation and all I have to do is feel it. 
• I can feel discomfort and take any necessary action anyway. 
• This will feel so good when I’ve taken uncomfortable action. 
• And the last one: Not everything I do has to be pleasant, enjoyable, entertaining, exciting or comfortable. 

If you direct your mind to think about an outcome you want, what is the discomfort going through that bridge of discomfort for? Where are you aiming? You can put your brain to work on that instead of what you don’t want. And you can ask your brain questions to stimulate it to move in a desired direction, such as, “What outcome would make discomfort worthwhile?” Or, “As I face discomfort, who does this allow me to be?” And, “As I become someone who faces discomfort, what else does that allow in my life?” 

However, the more you try and get rid of discomfort, the more you tell yourself that, “Hey, I’m not supposed to feel this,” the stronger it gets because what you resist, persists. 

If you approach discomfort with acceptance, though, the sensation changes, especially the more you do it. Just from the science of sensation, we know that beneception, the sense that something good is happening in your body, helps you to press through something challenging. Beneception is the feeling you get when you exercise a muscle. It might feel painful, but when you sense that it’s something actually good for you, that it’s strengthening you, that it’s a positive thing, it changes the sensation.

So practice moving into discomfort and strengthen your discomfort muscle. Do one thing every day that feels uncomfortable. Approach difficult things. Develop the tolerance for being uncomfortable. So do new things, go new places, learn new things, meet new people. You can ask yourself every day, “What am I intentionally creating rather than avoiding?” ‘Cause that’s an empowering way to live.

And you can tell yourself, “It’s gonna be uncomfortable. My brain is gonna tell me I’m not safe, but I’ve already decided it’s important to grow in this. And I’m willing to go to my edge, knowing that I’m experiencing some kind of transformation. And that’s what I want. That’s what I crave.”

And developing an identity as someone who faces hard things, who invests in uncomfortable things, knowing there’s a payoff. Have you heard how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly? It releases enzymes that allow it to dissolve into this liquid goo and then it uses that to reform itself into this beautiful creature that we see and admire. And to get what you’ve never had, you need to be someone you’ve never been. So surrender to that goo because it’s just part of the process. Surrender to the discomfort and that death process because it’s for a purpose. 

And so this does mean a death to the old you. And death means forgiving the you of the past who didn’t do what she said she was going to do, who didn’t follow through, who didn’t face the discomfort, who quit before foreseeing results. Death to consulting your past to determine what you’re capable of now. So whatever challenge you’re facing isn’t just about overcoming what’s in front of you right now, but it’s training yourself to show up as your most powerful self. Your challenge is bringing out the best of you. 

It’s causing you to rise above it and grow. And at the same time, it’s revealing flaws and weaknesses that hold you back. It’s so powerful.

You are the one in charge of your life, but you have to take uncomfortable action.

Well, thanks for joining me today. I’m bringing you lots more on healing boundaries, self-care, family dysfunction, and so much more. So be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any of it.