The Practice of Feeling and Meeting Discomfort

Recently, I found myself in new and uncomfortable emotional terrain.

I had never been here before. And it was confusing in the way that only truly new experiences can be.

The kind of confusion that doesn't have a map yet, where your nervous system is scanning for something familiar to hold onto and finding nothing.

My first impulse was to reach for distraction.

For comfort. For anything that might fix it, explain it, or fast-forward through it.

I wanted out.

But I knew there was no out.

No answers yet. No shortcut through the middle of it.

Nothing to do but stay with what was here.

So I stayed.

I sat in the discomfort.

I regulated, the best I could. I cared for myself the way I would care for someone I love deeply. I fed myself. I hydrated. I moved my body, even when it felt heavy. I let myself feel. I cried.

And then I cried some more. And in between the crying, I just breathed and let myself be a human having a human experience.

And yes, I did go shopping.

I ate a few sweet treats.

I reached for some of the old comforts, the ones that don't really fix anything but soften the edges a little.

And I gave myself grace for that too.

Because I am not here to be a perfect griever, or a perfect feeler, or a perfectly regulated therapist who never reaches for chocolate when things get hard.

I'm a human.

I am here to be real.

Meeting discomfort doesn't mean doing it flawlessly. It means showing up for it, imperfectly, again and again.

In a world sold on numbing out and scrolling past, choosing to feel is rebellious.

In this experience what I kept coming back to was this.

There were no current answers.

There was no resolution waiting around the corner if I could just think hard enough or feel my way through fast enough.

This situation, this feeling, was simply here.

It actually was well placed.

Uncomfortable, yes. a little disorienting, yes.

And also, totally valid and okay.

The human experience was never designed to be all comfort.

We were not built for permanent ease.

We were built for depth, for range, for the full spectrum of what it means to be alive and in relationship with ourselves and others.

The uncomfortable moments are not the interruption to the good life.

They are woven into it.

They are, often, where the most meaningful growth quietly takes root.

I am a feeling human.

I choose to feel.

To stay open even when open feels tender and exposed.

To meet whatever arrives, as fully as I am able, in that moment, with what I have available.

Over and over again.

That is the practice.

Not a destination you arrive at.

A practice you return to, imperfectly, faithfully, with love.

If you are in something uncomfortable right now, I want you to know you don't have to fix it today. You don't have to understand it yet. You just have to stay with yourself through it. Feed yourself. Hydrate. Move if you can. Cry if you need to. Let it be messy.

Please feel.

The world needs you.

With love,

Narla.

www.narladean.com