Discomfort...
The most underrated emotion IMO.
Discomfort: a wiggly edge in the body that makes you want to squirm.
Discomfort: the feeling of an ant crawling on your skin, barely detectable, but itchy and you want to swat it away.
Discomfort: a feeling that leaves you wanting to escape the confines of your own skin.
Discomfort: a low tone within the body, easy to circumvent, overlook, avoid while quickly changing the dial of your attention to another station, another distraction.
Have you ever felt the embodied experience of discomfort?
For me, it’s such a low hum in my body that it’s easily missed. I notice discomfort is one of those emotions that is with me a lot…let me give you just a few examples…
Life transitions = uncomfortable
Moment of uncertainty = discomfort
A brave choice = discomfort
Setting a boundary = discomfort
Letting go of something you love = discomfort
Choosing rest when your worth has been tied to productivity = discomfort
Receiving support instead of over-functioning = discomfort
Being seen = discomfort
Outgrowing a version of yourself = discomfort
Waiting without certainty = discomfort
Saying no when you are used to saying yes = discomfort
Not fixing, rescuing, or emotionally laboring for someone else = discomfort
Allowing silence without rushing to fill it = discomfort
Being with your emotions instead of escaping them = discomfort
Trusting yourself without outside validation = discomfort
Wanting more for your life = discomfort
Taking up space = discomfort
Letting people misunderstand you = discomfort
Choosing yourself = discomfort
Allowing change before proof arrives = discomfort
Releasing control = discomfort
Facing emotions without numbing them = discomfort
Allowing joy without waiting for the other shoe to drop = discomfort
Receiving love without earning it = discomfort
Becoming unfamiliar to the people who benefited from your self-abandonment = discomfort
Are you with me in this stream of consciousness? This isn’t even an exhaustive list!
There is no shortage of reasons why we feel uncomfortable each and every day, and yet rarely do we honor the depth of the message this emotion truly offers.
What is the spiritual message of discomfort?
Discomfort reveals where our coping mechanisms have become substitutes for our connection with self.
Discomfort is the doorway between survival and embodiment.
Discomfort is the sensation of your inner world asking to be witnessed instead of bypassed.
Discomfort often arises right before a moment of deeper truth, deeper alignment, or deeper self-understanding.
Discomfort is the nervous system learning that change does not equal danger.
Discomfort invites us to sit at the edge of our own becoming without immediately reaching for escape.
Discomfort asks us to stay present long enough to hear what our soul is trying to say before we rush to relieve ourselves of the feeling.
Discomfort points us towards the pathway of feeling congruent within our selves.
When we feel uncomfortable, our natural desire is to reach for comfort. But what is comfort truly? It’s a feeling that all is well. It’s a feeling that you are safe within yourself. And the place to access that sense of safety is always within.
So the moment you’re reaching for the glass of wine or the gummy to take the edge off…
The moment you’re reaching for the ice cream or cookies…
The minute you notice yourself doom scrolling and or checked out binge watching…
The impulse to start buying things or filling space…
The desire to over-work, over-function, keep moving, keep doing…
Booking a reading immediately with a psychic…
Pulling oracle cards….
You may want to pause for a moment and ask yourself? Am I trying to escape from something here? Am I trying to find comfort outside of myself in any of these things?
Let me be clear - I’m not judging any of these things because there is room for all of these things in your life and from a place that doesn’t involve judgement.
The differentiator for is the “why.”
Why am I reaching for this right now?
Am I reaching for the joy and pleasure it brings?
Am I reaching to escape something?
Am I reaching for certainty?
Am I reaching for safety?
For me, I have to catch myself long enough to pause because if I don’t, I miss my own body’s signals…I’m right here in the thick of it with you.
For me, my vices are usually comfort eating and pulling cards and chemically, they make sense as well.
Why do people emotionally eat? Because it gives you a hit of dopamine.
What does dopamine do in your body?
It’s the “I am safe in the world” hormone.
Why do I reach for Spirit and my cards when I’m uncomfortable? Because their support brings me comfort.
And again, none of these things are wrong or bad, it’s simply a matter of bringing our attention to “why” we are seeking out these things.
Because safety is not achieved by anything outside of yourself. It is a process of returning home to the place of safety that lives within you at all times. Nothing outside of you will ever be able to bring you a sense of sustainable happiness and when we place our focus there, our needs to keep seeking that safety will be insatiable because your true safety can never be sourced out there.
When we reach outside of ourselves to alleviate the discomfort, we actually miss the opportunity for healing and a true release of the emotion within our bodies. And then, we miss the message. We miss meeting our own need of creating safety within. Of holding ourselves through the discomfort as a way of feeling safe and comforted.
The other day I caught myself about to reach for my cards before going within and I immediately paused and got still. I went within, and I connected to my heart and witnessed in that moment all the places my body was holding something and I realized: I was uncomfortable.
And in that moment I connected the dots about how I was reaching for my cards to feel comfortable and to bypass actually feeling the emotion within my body. And that isn’t how we transmute energy within us.
There was nothing I needed to do in that moment other than witness the discomfort, feel it, allow it to move through me, and come back into this state of love and being again. In that place, I reconnected to my own feeling of safety within. And from that place, I didn’t abandon myself. I loved myself through it. And then I created the safety within me through that action — the very safety I ultimately would have been looking for in the cards.
From that place of safety, I then still chose to pull some cards to understand what lurked beneath that discomfort, but I was no longer reaching for safety in the cards because I had already established it within myself. And that difference is important.
So many of us have been taught to seek safety outside of ourselves, but really, the only true source of safety we have lives within.
So, I would love to hear from you where you feel like you’re reaching outside of yourself for safety.