Tag: reframe

Getting Comfortable with Discomfort

Making any sort of lasting change requires getting comfortable with discomfort. I know, sounds oxymoronic, but bear with me. Doing the familiar is more comfortable than doing something new. But doing the familiar means little to no change. That’s what keeps it familiar.

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Change requires doing something you may not feel comfortable with. Making lasting change takes time, commitment, and repetition. If you can’t settle into some discomfort, you’ll likely be ineffective in achieving significant difference.

We often seek to avoid discomfort. Avoidance comes in so many forms we may not recognize it. Denial is a form of avoidance. Busyness can be a form of avoidance. Drugs or alcohol can be used to avoid. Video games, social media, binge watching, excessive volunteering, and sleeping can all be used to keep discomfort at bay.

But when we restrict each day to our comfort zone, we miss out on the many layers that define a full life. We miss the entertainment of friends who think differently. We miss disruptors that can deepen our understanding. We miss soreness that means we’re gaining strength or flexibility. We may miss our best health, deep connection, awe inspiring views, innovative ideas, or flavorful food. It’s worth considering that we could be missing out on life’s best moments in order to hang onto comfortable ones.

Ever cry when you smash your finger only to have your dad say, “My dad would have said stop crying or he’d give you something to cry about.” It’s not a bad thing that pain and injury often meet more compassion now. But not all injury or pain is catastrophic, and expectation of immediate and complete relief from all levels of discomfort is unrealistic. Reassessment of your perspective may be necessary if you believe all discomfort is bad.

As you begin to build tolerance for discomfort, it can be helpful to dig deeper. Underneath a general feeling of nervous energy you may find a specific emotion or group of emotions related to the change you’re hoping to make. Identifying fear, sadness, embarrassment, sorrow, longing or whatever feeling(s) applies will help you develop an appropriate plan for handling whatever bubbles up.

We often avoid making change because we don’t want to feel emotions we deem bad or negative. Emotions are not inherently good or bad and our relationship with them can change. We can view pain as a punishment or a helpful signal that there’s something we need to address. When you find a sticking point, imagine how you might feel if it were opposite day. You can approach this as a game. Play with it and see what happens. You’re learning to reframe. Reframing is a powerful tool at everyone’s disposal.

A lot of us watch elite athletes overcome injury and think, they can do it because they have amazing doctors, and facilities, and support. It’s true, they do. But they still experience pain and discomfort. A good takeaway may be that discomfort is easier to tolerate with support.

Once you have a framework and support, it’s just a matter of practice. Let yourself stay in discomfort for a minute longer today than you did yesterday. Slowly, but surely, you’ll get comfortable with discomfort.

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Fear and Hunger

Fear and Hunger is a horror dungeon crawl role-playing video game. I’ve seen it described as wallowing in pain, decay, and death – something to be survived, not enjoyed. Why would anyone play it? It sounds terrible. And yet it has players who come back again and again.

Sometimes humans have an appetite for the horrible. And sometimes we gravitate toward things that feel familiar. In families that deny food to certain members or can’t provide for everyone, life experience may tangle fear and hunger to the degree that when either is out of balance, we feel as though we’re wallowing in pain that may threaten death.

If hunger triggers fear, you may eat when you’re not hungry in order to avoid the opportunity to feel frightened. If fear triggers hunger, you may choose fried food to help calm yourself down. Or you may have other nuanced appetite alterations without knowing why.

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It’s easy to forget how interconnected our emotional and physical needs are when we rarely even acknowledge how connected our physical parts are. We tend to forget that a foot injury may make our hip hurt. We often fail to examine the effect of family discord on our appetite or ability to tolerate certain food. Whether or not we acknowledge it, those relationships exist and affect the choices we make.

We all know the term stress eating, but rarely do we pause long enough to explore ways to shift, reframe, or eliminate our stressors. Instead, we try a shortcut we call willpower to avoid stress eating. And why wouldn’t we? Western medicine has taught us to prioritize treating symptoms rather than underlying disease.

And so, we come back to the game again and again – fear and hunger, hunger and fear. Or fear that prevents us from feeling hunger. It’s a merry-go-round. And it becomes apparent about this time every year when resolutions dissolve into stupid ideas in the first place.

Every journey begins with one step. What’s the first step off the fear and hunger merry-go-round?

Scheduling. Narrow your meal and snack times to small windows each day during which you eat. Over time, your body will adjust to this schedule. This can help you avoid the excess acid production that can cause ulcers.

If that step is difficult for you, begin with something different.

Disrupting. Change something, anything. If you like salty food, eat sweet food. If you like bananas, eat apples. If you like cereal for breakfast, eat yogurt. It’s easier to connect with our senses when we get out of a rut because we have to pay attention.

Once you’ve changed something, change something else. Carefully evaluate how you feel during and after each change.

Feeling it. One way to dissipate a level of fear is to stick with it until it’s gone. This requires some courage and practice. In the beginning, you may feel nauseated. You may have to distract yourself quickly. But eventually, you will be able to feel your way past fear. That can change your experience of food and eating.

Describing it to yourself. Yes, I’m suggesting you talk to yourself. Describe how your mouth feels when you chew a carrot. Describe how your stomach feels after you eat. Describe each sensation you become aware of.

Once you’re familiar with the sensations, see if any of them are attached to a specific emotion. Add the emotion to your description.

Reframing. Becoming familiar with physical sensations and their attached emotions will put you in a position to experiment. See if you can reframe the emotion attached to a certain sensation. If not, it’s okay.

If you can, practice attaching a different meaning to a familiar sensation. That pain I feel in my solar plexus is the same pain I felt yesterday when I wondered if this was what they mean by chest pains that precede a heart attack. I felt really scared. Now I wonder whether I will feel it every time I eat in a hurry like I did both days?

These steps are not the only ones you can take to begin to disentangle fear and hunger (or other sensations and emotions). Anything that works for you is fine. You get to make the rules of the game. You also get to change them as you go to make them more effective.

As you slowly explore, experience, and reframe, you will gain more and more ability to make and stick to choices that improve your eating and your life. Bye-bye fear and hunger!

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