05/18/2026
In my Men’s Group last week, the facilitator asked something that struck me.. “What is your relationship like with discomfort?” I sat with that question for a while.. There are so many layers to explore.
Honestly, my relationship with discomfort hasn’t been great. Does anybody actually enjoy it? I can point to many moments in my adult life I have taken the easy route, leaned into whatever felt most comfortable, or avoided whole parts of my life because they were uncomfortable.
Here is a short list:
• Scrolling my phone as a distraction
• Saying “I’ll do it later” when I feel overwhelmed
• Avoiding hard conversations with people I love because they feel awkward, vulnerable, or scary
• Using gratitude to suppress my grief or my anger so I don’t have to feel it
Each of these has come at a cost. The short term relief hasn’t held a candle to the long term consequences. Dopamine addiction, frustration with myself, and ugly resentment are just a few of those repercussions. Some of these patterns have eroded my self-trust, replaced intimacy with disconnection, let unprocessed emotions leak out sideways as frustration or numbness, and led me to live a smaller life than I want. The cost of becoming someone I don’t respect is not worth it.
Lately, I’ve been looking at discomfort through a different lens. Where it once felt like a threat, I am learning to recognize it as a signal. When my discomfort activates my nervous system, I know there is valuable information within it. The question is: will I lean in and learn, or will I use my strategy to avoid, ignore, and distract myself?
Maybe the awkward conversation leads to deeper intimacy with my wife or a friend. Maybe allowing myself to feel grief gives me access to even deeper love. Perhaps my overwhelm is informing me that I need boundaries or that I need to slow down and regulate.
