Not all kinds of discomfort are created equal
The power of choosing the experiences and environments we immerse ourselves in
As an autistic person, intentionally placing myself in situations that cause discomfort seems counter-intuitive.
How do I explain my pursuit of outdoor experiences like camping and hiking that necessitate a very basic standard of accommodation and expose me to the extremes of weather, or as my daughter describes it, “cosplaying a homeless person”?
As someone with late-diagnosed neurodivergence, I wrestle with the paradox of simultaneously craving and avoiding uncomfortable situations.
Discomfort is what comes from being forced to adapt to environments that are out of sync with our brains and bodies. We spend many years absorbing sensory pain in service of other people’s comfort and convenience. We learn to override our body’s warning systems and lose the ability to tune in, process and know when we’re approaching our limits.
Our sensory processing and nervous systems are less equipped for the too-muchness of modern life, yet we are expected to cope the same as everyone else. We learn coping mechanisms that provide an external illusion of coping when we’re crumbling on the inside.
I learned that discomfort is something to be tolerated, pushed through and overcome, but never complained about. I learned to internalise discomfort and doubt the validity of what I was feeling. I believed there was something wrong with me and that my job was to hide it as best I could by complying with the version of normality I saw so stridently demonstrated around me.
Absorbing sensory discomfort from our environments becomes part of the invisible labour of unidentified neurodivergence that later helps explain why life feels so relentlessly hard. Whether we know it or not, we’re absorbing discomfort into our bodies and carrying it in our nervous systems.
Even when we find the language to communicate our sensory sensitivities, we’re dismissed by people who don’t grasp the difference between annoying and debilitating. It’s not surprising that we would rail against anything that looks like disregarding our needs.
It took me a while to understand why I was drawn to experiences of discomfort. On one level, I was happy to swap the relentless sensory onslaught of the city for the discomfort inherent in nature. I tried for a while to alleviate some of the roughness of camping, but ultimately made peace with lumpy sleeping surfaces and layers of dirt and sweat on my skin. My camp-oven coffee was all the better against the backdrop of a chilly, misty early morning. It was all part of the adventure package.
But what I couldn’t deal with was the jarring noise of other campers that only replicated what I had left the city to get away from. Instead of the relaxing reprieve I had promised my nervous system, the unpredictable presence of unfamiliar people kept it in a state of hypervigilance.
It was a sifting-through of the kinds of discomfort I was and wasn’t willing to accept. What crystallised was the difference between choosing discomfort and having it forced on me. It was only the second one that I was railing against.
Sensory discomfort is highly contextual. Although my particular sensory profile makes me extremely sensitive to sound, it’s not a given that every loud or repetitive noise will cause me discomfort. The same sensory input can feel very different at different times.
Sensory input has a cumulative effect that you mightn’t even be aware is happening until a single sound tips you into sensory overload - especially if you’re well-practiced in ignoring your bodily signals and pushing through.
Sensory overload happens when you don’t have control over your environment or the ability to advocate for yourself. It’s when you suffer in silence because you don’t know there’s an alternative.
Few sounds are inherently uncomfortable but made so by the circumstances in which I’m forced to endure them. Discomfort is heightened by knowing I have no way out.
By contrast, in choosing to go camping, I was operating from a place of autonomy and self-determination. I was choosing to trade off short-term discomfort for something more enduring: an expansion in my sense of who I was and what I was capable of. After that first camping trip I was buzzing with new-found resourcefulness and self-sufficiency.
The discomfort of surrendering to the elements is a completely different kind of discomfort to that which comes from a loud, harsh and modern world pressing in on me with its incessant demands. There is a big difference between resisting discomfort because I’ve been conditioned to ignore it and refusing to let it limit me after experiencing it in its fullness.
It’s not unusual to willingly subject ourselves to some measure of discomfort to achieve a sought-after end - whenever I haul myself to the swimming pool to thrash out laps for example. Sometimes I detest it but I’m always glad I’ve done it, even when I feel like I’m pushing through everything in me telling me to stop.
But it’s a different kind of pushing through. It’s not about absorbing or ignoring discomfort but creating a situation where I can co-exist with it.
The intentionality of choosing to have an uncomfortable experience for what it will bring me is completely different to enduring discomfort to serve someone else’s imperatives.
It’s surprisingly easy to reframe discomfort as a positive experience, as I found when I recently got caught in a storm only a couple of blocks from home. Just as I felt the creeping edge of panic and fear, I found shelter under an awning. I stayed and marvelled at the lightning show and sheets of rain. When it eased, I ran home, not out of panic but exhilaration. At home, I felt euphoric. I felt truly alive.
An instant pivot made the difference between being engulfed and immersed. The surprise storm cut through and disrupted my usual response mechanisms to give me a rare, in-the-moment and embodied experience. Instead of fighting the inevitable, I accidentally discovered the power in choosing surrender.
Proponents of rewilding attest to the centrality of discomfort in living fully and authentically. Surviving the extremes of nature can be transformative.
The temporary discomfort that comes from nature creates the kind of healthy short-term stress that helps us grow as humans. Appearing in Podcast, Mid, Gina Chick, winner of Australia’s first season of Alone, says discomfort is necessary for building resilience and skills that enable us to respond to challenges.
As Gina explains, it’s very hard to have a fully embodied experience of living in the moment when the moment is often uncomfortable - unless we find ways to co-exist with the discomfort. But we live in a society that pathologises discomfort and insists on eliminating negative emotional experiences that are a normal part of the human condition. Instead of sitting with discomfort, we reach for ways to numb it or distract ourselves.
We wouldn’t be so inclined to avoid discomfort if we had learned safe, healthy ways to process and respond to it. Instead, I learned that my feelings were too big, too complicated or messy and evidence there was something wrong with me. I learned to contain them for everyone else’s benefit. I wasn’t afraid of my feelings; I was afraid of other people’s response to them.
Without permission to feel my emotions in their fullness, I couldn’t process the difficult experiences that led to them. When those experiences carry trauma, the result is an accumulation of unprocessed emotions, an overburdened nervous system and an ever-present fear of life.
Acknowledging and validating my feelings as they arise has been a big shift from my default of pushing them down and dissociating. My impromptu rainstorm adventure was a powerful way to reconnect with my inner reality and be grounded in the present.
Dealing with the discomfort that life serves up is one thing, but deliberately seeking it out is quite another. Going against the grain and acting in ways that directly challenge the stories we tell ourselves can feel disorienting and unsettling before the neural pathways re-wire themselves. But sometimes we owe it to ourselves to reject the limitations we’ve been labouring under.
I needed to push past immediate discomfort to address a bigger discomfort: my growing awareness that I was letting entrenched beliefs and fear restrict me. At some point, what felt comforting became stifling.
For me, craving adventure and experiences that took me out of my comfort zone signposted a point in my healing process. A feeling of restlessness and the need to cut loose signalled that I was ready to test my limits.
Author and rewilding advocate Claire Dunn describes the urge to step out of her comfort zone:
“My inner adventurer lets me know very loudly if she’s starving — starts clawing at the walls and getting grumpy with everything that represents modern’s life’s manufactured order and routine. She wants, no needs to be let loose in an unfamiliar landscape that includes uncertainty, effort, challenge and the smallest hint of danger.”
She explains how being open to opportunities to “scratch the itch” with mini-adventures close to home increases our tolerance for uncertainty.
Finding my internal core of safety meant I could build a buffer against an uncertain world. Measured doses of discomfort have helped me feel safe in my body; to teach my nervous system that the world isn’t always a threat. Slowly and gently, I am expanding my window of tolerance.
I know that sounds like exposure therapy, but it couldn’t be further from it. Exposure therapy is rooted in coercion, in feeling compelled to acclimatise to a particular experience because it’s expected of us; someone telling us what is normal to feel and dictating the terms of our experience.
Having the autonomy to make choices about how we experience our sensory environments doesn’t mean a life free of discomfort. But it does mean being free to make choices about our sensory environments according to our own imperatives rather than being trapped by someone else’s. It lets us choose discomfort on our own terms.
I now see that trying to eliminate discomfort from my life was as misguided as trying to fix myself. It is only in sitting with the messiness of our feelings that truths can emerge and we can begin to make sense of things. And that is a process without an end point because it stubbornly defies resolution.
Uncomfortable feelings are a healthy response to an imperfect world and the more we’re aware, the more complex our feelings about it are likely to be. We need to be able to hold space for uncertainty, ambivalence, restlessness and frustration. It is entirely possible to simultaneously experience discomfort and joy; to find glimmers of light in the darkest hours.
This was an interesting read. Thank you! I've also been wrestling with safeguarding my environment etc but that can just create undue anxiety and fear. Our sensory world can change somewhat, so we shouldn't be so guarded that we don't make space for those slight shifts. (Even though I still won't go camping 😝) I do kayak and for me that's just the right amount if exposure!)