Discomfort vs. Suffering. Self-Care is knowing which is which.

There is a yoga class I once taught at my yoga studio that people who were there still talk about.

The time Rebecca has us only do 10 poses in a 1-hour class.

We held those poses for a much longer time than is typical, and these were not the kind of poses where you sink into them to stretch or relax your muscles. The class had been designed to be purposely uncomfortable.

We did things that gave a strong sensation, were a challenge to hold for extended minutes, and were curated to have students think about one thing.

Discomfort vs. suffering.

Why? Well mainly because I have realized one fundamental truth about humans, and I wanted to illustrate the point in class.

We will choose our own suffering to avoid perceived discomfort. And that is true, nearly every time.

Want proof?

I want you to think about every time you have been excited to go into a difficult conversation. How many times have you said the sentence "yeah, I need to talk to them about that" and then avoided that conversation like the plague? Likely to the result of your own suffering. So, let's get into why we do that, and how we can help alleviate our own suffering by being willing to get a little bit uncomfortable.

Suffering vs. Discomfort.  What’s the difference?

The perfect place to unpack the difference between these two concepts is with a yoga pose.  Imagine you are in a standing yoga pose.  If you can’t imagine one, let me help.  You are standing with your legs a couple of feet apart, toes pointed in one direction on both feet, your arms are held out from your shoulders, like you were trying to make “T” with your upper body, and one knee is bent.

And you hold that position for 5 minutes.

What might you be feeling: Is it discomfort or suffering?

The discomfort might be that your legs feel wobbly, your arms are tired of being held up, they weigh more than you think, and you must stay still doing this for the same amount of time you could have fully watched at least four solidly funny TikTok videos.  In short: you are in here for what feels like a lifetime.

All those things are discomfort.  The wobbly legs that make you feel weak, the arms that ache, the attention of having to stand in the same spot for ages doing one thing.  Discomfort to the max.

But what of suffering?

What if you do this in a very warm room and you get incredibly dizzy?  That is suffering.

You might have a knee that is screaming at you.  Suffering.

You might find it so difficult to breathe in that moment that you are worried you might faint.  Also suffering. 

But you might be experiencing sharp knee pain, dizziness, and breathing challenges while also deciding that it would be incredibly embarrassing for you to stop doing something in the middle of a crowded class where everyone would know and be staring at you.  The discomfort of the public acknowledgment that you are different could far outweigh the suffering you are experiencing while staying in the position—in your head.  So, you stay.  You choose your own suffering over the discomfort of perceived public embarrassment. 

And later you pay. 

You spend all day recovering from that class, your knee kills you for three days at least, and you waste precious time by needing to go home and lie down for the afternoon. 

This is the most normal of choices that I see people make quite literally every day.  We choose our own very real suffering over our perceived discomfort.  The repercussions of these decisions are real, but we can take steps to change this behavior in ourselves.

Why are we like this?

This is a complicated question.  Likely there are a couple of factors at play, both very biological and going back to the beginnings of people. 

Firstly, consider the devil you know vs. the one that you don’t.  We save so many different colloquialisms for this concept; the fear of the unknown is worse than the known danger we can plan for and mitigate.    While yes, we may be suffering, we know deeply how we suffer, what we can endure, and how we will cope.  In essence, we have a plan.  While that plan may not be the ideal outcome, we would rather deal with the suffering with the safety and security of knowing how we will deal with that suffering ahead of time. 

This brings us to the second reason, closely related to the first.  Not only do we know how we will react to our own suffering, but we can also control ourselves and our reactions.  That illusion of control makes us feel like our decision to suffer is the right one because the repercussions of that decision involve things that we can make decisions about and control. 

We know, of course, that this control is an illusion—you have no idea how long your knee will be in pain or the lasting damage you’ve caused, but the feeling that we can control some of the outcomes is a heady one.  What we definitely know we can’t control is how everyone else in the room would react if we came out of the yoga pose because our suffering overcame us, and we couldn’t continue.  People could be nice, sure, but they could also be mean, judgey, and condescending. And that feeling of control, that is a nice feeling.  We like thinking we know what is going to happen.  So of course, we choose to suffer.

So now what?

That is the question, isn’t it?  Can we stop the cycle of choosing suffering over discomfort? I think we can, by taking small steps and getting used to the idea of choosing immediate discomfort over long-term suffering.

First, my best suggestion is that you seek out low-stakes things that cause you discomfort.  Stand up and give one idea at work, have a hard talk to someone who isn’t as important to your daily life as your sister, or go take a class on stand-up comedy.  While that isn’t the be-all-end-all solution to choosing discomfort, it does up-level your skills at getting uncomfortable when the stakes are lower.  It creates more skills for when you need them.

When the stakes get higher, then you need to be able to pause and do a mini-risk assessment.  This is something people with chronic pain and fatigue are great at.  Figuring out what they are willing to do now, and what they are willing to pay for later.  You may not be talking to your sister about all the ways she puts you down today, but you can think about how much will you pay for that tomorrow.  Maybe you don’t have “the talk” with Sis but you push back on one comment and test the waters to see how that discomfort feels.  Eventually, you will realize that your own suffering isn’t worth avoiding discomfort forever.  Nobody wants to live a life where that is true, even you.

And finally, get into a self-care habit.  This is more than all the personal care things we talk about usually (i.e.. massage and chocolate), of course, but getting into a routine to care for and nourish yourself.  This will set the stage for you to remember that you are valued and your own main priority. 

Want to know more about how you can practice skillful self-care?  Check out our full set of blogs here.