Turning towards what’s troubling us

A note about confronting our most challenging moments, the courage that comes from facing what’s in front of us, and the importance of turning towards instead of turning away.

Oct 16, 2023

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It’s human nature to seek comfort by avoiding the things that make us feel uncomfortable.

We turn away from hard conversations. We pull back from relationships. We stop putting effort into challenging friendships. And we avoid doing uncomfortable things, even though facing these discomforts often leads to personal growth and stronger, more meaningful connections.

Turning away often seems like the easier path because it spares us from the stress and anxiety that come with facing things head-on.

This is a note for anyone who is practicing how to lean into discomfort and resist the urge to pull away from the things that are troubling us.

In today’s dopamine-rich world, short-term pleasure is in abundance and long-term satisfaction could be considered a scarce resource. It is becoming too easy for us to avoid the things that are challenging us or are making us feel uncomfortable.

Now, as I was saying before, it is within our nature to avoid uncomfortable things. We avoid things that make us uncomfortable. Or, scientifically speaking, we avoid the things that cost us the most calories. Avoidance helps us save energy and it ensures we don’t give away our precious inner resources if we don’t need to.

Avoidance usually makes anxiety grow

Avoidance and turning away from hard things usually only makes us feel good in the short term. Avoidance usually serves as a strategy to help us delay discomfort. The discomfort is likely to come back, sometimes more stronger and more intense, the more we avoid things. Over time, if avoidance is our only strategy for dealing with stressful situations, we are made to contend not just with the growing discomfort, but with the story about our avoidance. Something that was initially hard, scary, or challenging becomes something bigger than it was when we first avoided it. When we experience the original discomforts, we now experience them alongside a mix of guilt, shame, frustration, and new anxieties.

The brain even has its own way of rationalizing our avoidance too. I mean, why would we do things that make us feel bad? Why would we intentionally put ourselves through stress and discomfort? Doesn’t everyone choose pleasure over pain?

I stress, Eustress, We stress

It turns out, putting ourselves in challenging and stressful situations by choice is incredibly healthy for us. Eustress is the positive and healthy form of stress that comes from something we choose to do. When we put ourselves into a stressful situation that we’ve chosen, like getting married, accepting a new job, or moving to a new part of town, our brain and body experiences a healthy form of stress— eustress— which may include nervousness, apprehension, fear, and worries.

Turning towards the challenges we face, especially in situations where we have a little bit of choice and control, allows us to tackle our problems head-on and confront challenging situations. When we turn towards our troubles instead of turning away from them, our brain learns that it can face, overcome, and survive hard situations. The key here is choice. While uncomfortable, it is brave and courageous to accept a challenge by making the choice to confront a hard thing head on.

One of the pitfalls we experience here, however, is that we make the opposite choice too often. We pull away rather than lean in. We ignore instead of inquire. And we turn away before we talk it out.

I know this seems big and heavy and so, I want to add some nuance to the conversation.

We don’t always choose our stressors

Sometimes it’s not as simple as previously stated. Sometimes we don’t have the choice to pull back or avoid facing our stress. In other words, sometimes we don’t experience stress by choice, but by the life circumstance we’re in, and so sometimes we don’t turn away because it’s uncomfortable, but because it’s a necessary strategy to cope in the moment. These people are experiencing something called forced resilience, which is this remarkable human capacity to persevere, adapt, and endure in the face of challenges, even when the initial desire or choice to do so may be lacking. Forced resilience arises when external pressures, hardships, or life’s twists and turns leave us no option but to confront adversity with unwavering determination.

Forced resilience

Forced resilience can be defined as the survival energy that surfaces when we’re compelled to deal with unforeseen difficulties or situations that push us beyond our comfort zone.

It’s the ability to summon our resilience and our power to push through, even when we’d rather avoid or turn away from what’s in front of us. Forced resilience often emerges in response to life events that are beyond our control, such as a sudden health scare, a personal loss, a global pandemic, or a political crisis.

Forced resilience isn’t born out of personal preference, but rather, it arises as we confront external pressures, systemic hardships, and life’s unexpected twists. The urge to turn away, therefore, is not a function of avoidance, but one of survival. For some people, turning away, pulling back, and shutting down are not just a response to something hard, but comes from our need for adaptive coping.

Adaptive coping

To navigate these challenging or distressing situations, it’s crucial to develop adaptive coping strategies. Adaptive coping involves facing adversity head-on, proactively addressing the sources of stress and hardship, and actively seeking solutions. It’s about acknowledging the pain and struggle and taking steps to overcome them constructively.

While it is easier said than done, we can learn a lot from people who have had to push through. It’s the “do it anyway,” approach to something stressful: Feeling nervous? Do it anyway. Feeling apprehensive? Do it anyway. Feeling uncomfortable? Validate that for yourself, though it may be scary, and do it anyway. In our toughest moments, it’s easy to ignore how we feel, push ourselves to our limits, and take our discomfort as evidence for why we shouldn’t do something. When in doubt, do it despite discomfort.

Perseverance without passion and desire

One aspect of forced resilience is the ability to persevere even when our initial passion or desire has dwindled. I see this with a lot of my clients experiencing depression— giving up, doing nothing, and staying stuck become enticing strategies if a challenge is too difficult to overcome. Passion and desire for change are powerful driving forces, but they can wane over time. True commitment, however, emerges when the initial enthusiasm fades and we’re forced to be resilient in the face of something extremely challenging. It’s about pressing onward even when the journey becomes a test of our endurance.

Facing our fears and turning towards our troubles isn’t a linear path covered in passion, joy, excitement, and fulfillment. It demands our full commitment. Though it is frustrating, frustration is required for resilience.

Overcoming the unwanted

A remarkable aspect of commitment and the act of turning towards, rather than away, is the choice we make to persist, even when we’d prefer to avoid the task in front of us. It’s the ability to overcome the resistance to facing something we’d rather not do. This is where we discover the strength to push past reluctance and do what is necessary. This form of reluctant resilience is a crucial part of our commitment and choice to face what’s hard instead of giving into the urge to look away or check out.

Let’s also not overlook the people who quietly persevere. They are our quiet teachers.

I can think of many people in my life, clients and members of my social community alike, who have experienced and survived extremely hard things. These individuals face hard things, make hard choices, and still find the strength to continue, despite the fact that they didn’t choose their circumstance and even when their hearts are not fully in it. Their stories may not make headlines, but they are the backbone of commitment and passion and perseverance. They exemplify the power of reluctant resilience, proving that sometimes the most profound commitment is the one that endures in the face of adversity and uncertainty.

In the end, turning towards the things that trouble us is not just about a constant pursuit of doing more but is instead about doing what needs to be done; doing what needs to be done despite the discomfort we experience. Forced resilience, therefore, teaches us that we can turn towards what’s troubling us, we can find the strength to endure, and we can emerge stronger on the other side.

It’s about facing life’s challenges with determination, even when we didn’t choose the path, and finding the resilience within ourselves to keep moving forward. After all, as humans we are built for that.

It may be frustrating, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, especially if it allows us to come out on the other end of something hard with a different perspective, a different skillset, and a different way forward.

So, if we want to move forward, we must remember to turn towards.

Take good care this week,

Jake