Confident Eaters

How to sit with discomfort when you (really, REALLY) don't want to
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Georgie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Confident Eaters Podcast, where you get proven methods to end overeating, emotional eating, and stressing about food. We are heading for harmony between your body, food and feelings, hosted by me, Georgie Fear, and my team at Confident Eaters.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Confident Eaters podcast. Today we're going to talk about sitting with discomfort. Hopefully this episode itself will not make you uncomfortable, but we'll give you some tools to handle the inevitable next time you're really feeling ill at ease. Now, For context, sitting with discomfort or just feeling it is sort of a piece of self help advice most of my clients have heard before.

They sort of hate the idea because it sounds like, well, just suffer. But as you're going to learn today, it's not as rough as it sounds. [00:01:00] Coach Christina joins me today and we are definitely not interested in making anyone suffer more than is necessary. So what we're going to do is give you some strategies to minimize the unpleasant feelings that you have to go through and get through them with as little collateral damage as possible.

Thanks for joining me today, Christina.

Christina: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here with you, Georgie.

Georgie: So let's talk about the sort of things that make us uncomfortable. I made a list here. I said physical pain, relationship conflict, you know, oh, butting heads with someone we love is one of the toughest.

Work demands, time pressure, traffic, financial worries, uncertainty, not feeling good enough. Losing someone or something we care about, you know, I've definitely felt some discomfort with plans being cancelled recently and things changing and someone I deeply care about waiting for medical tests to come back.

And I think these are pretty universal in people's lives. These are sort of the common things that can cause us to be uncomfortable.[00:02:00]

Christina: Definitely. And in any given week, we might talk to several of our clients about a range of these things. I think it's a pretty comprehensive list But not all discomfort is the same There's some things that we feel uncomfortable about that we can totally ride out and it's no big deal Maybe a paper cut or something like that. One thing I've heard you do with clients is to have them rate their distress or discomfort on a scale of 1 to 10.

1 being laying on a beach, reading your favorite book in full relaxation mode, and 10 being giving birth while on fire, and it's a silly scale, but I think it can help bring us back to the reality of the situation. Like what level of discomfort am I actually dealing with here?

Georgie: So true. Like, I know I have definitely had the experience of something that on the surface everybody looking at it would be like, that's a minor inconvenience. And I'm like, the world is ending. My flight's delayed. And to me, it feels like a total [00:03:00] conflagration, but it's just a schedule change.

Like it's not that big of a deal. And I think whenever I come back to that one to 10 scale, I'm usually not in mortal danger or like gut spilling out of my body. It's usually like. Somebody changed plans and I don't like that.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah.

Georgie: Yeah, distress definitely isn't all or nothing. And I also have recognized that it rarely comes upon us all at once.

So we're not like, you know, the zebra who's running across the Serengeti and then like a lion like slashes our throat and we're in like super high distress immediately. More commonly for us humans, the day to day discomfort that we deal with sort of creeps up on us like layers of paint. A highly distressing day is layer after layer such as I don't sleep well, and then I have this, like, little tiff with a co worker, my back aches, and then I have traffic on the way home, and I really wanted to do something by a [00:04:00] certain time.

It just builds and builds and builds. So, if we keep that perspective that distress is a continuum, then we can, one, avoid catastrophizing or quitting. When truthfully, we're really only a little uncomfortable. And two, we can realize that we have different actions available to us, depending on our level of discomfort.

So for example, if I have a headache, I might take some Advil and continue my workday. But I would choose different actions if I were coughing up blood or have a bone sticking out of my leg. This has been a very graphic episode thus far.

Christina: Yeah, so far. I've got some good imagery for you guys.

Georgie: So, like, if I have a broken bone, it's time to leave work.

It's time to seek medical attention. This is a humorous example, but we can separate emotional discomfort in the same way. You know, if something mildly inconvenienced me or gives me a little irritation or frustration, I probably don't need to change how I'm handling the rest of my day. I might need to take a few [00:05:00] breaths and roll onward.

But, emotional distress can become severe enough that we would want to cancel plans and just stay home, give ourselves that protective space. We might even want to call in a supportive person, like, I need to Just reach out to somebody or even reach out to a professional. So given that we can assess how we are feeling, then we can choose our actions accordingly.

Christina: So, why do we think that sitting with discomfort is important? And I think we realize that as humans, when we interact with people, that we're not immune to feeling uncomfortable in life. It's completely unavoidable. And if we don't know how to deal with it or sit with discomfort, then normally with clients and in my own life, I see two things happening.

One, we can sabotage our progress, or two, we give up because this is just too hard. Oh, yeah. And neither of those sound like great options, so what else can we do?

Georgie: I think I've even managed to [00:06:00] do both at the same time, like give up and light the house on fire, making the situation ten times worse. But once we know how to sit with these things and get through it, we actually suffer less because we aren't doing those self harming things we do to try and escape suffering. I also realize the more I talk with people that so many people that we work with, our clients, didn't learn this stuff. The same as, well, I don't know about you, but I did not learn this stuff with some excellent role modeling. And so I did a fair amount of quitting and self sabotaging before I learned about all these skills. That's probably why I like teaching them so much.

Christina: Yes, exactly. Flippin the script.

Georgie: Exactly. Exactly. Like, if, you think back to when you were a kid and you saw your parents or caretakers get distressed and get really uncomfortable, what did they do?

Did they cry? Did they get a pint of ice cream and disappear with it into the bedroom? Did they yell at someone? Can you remember them doing? And [00:07:00] some people will say, you know, my mom would go for a run. My dad would go to the swimming pool and swim laps and they have these like healthy coping mechanisms.

And I have some clients that will say, you know, I sit down with my son and I say, mommy's really upset right now because blah, blah, blah. And they talk to them about how they feel it. I'm like, Oh, bless your heart. That's so wonderful.

Christina: Awesome.

Georgie: To hear about. But yeah, if your role modeling was escapism then, of course, that's what you learn to do, and food is often a stand in for that.

Christina: For sure, and it's instinctual to try to feel better. So, if I don't know how to handle discomfort, then my default, or the default, is to escape or avoid those emotions. So, some of the ways I see this showing up with clients is Often through overeating, turning to food for emotional reasons, getting seconds even after they're physically satisfied because they don't want that mealtime to end, or they're avoiding whatever comes next.

Maybe they start doom scrolling and avoiding the stuff they don't want to do. Some [00:08:00] times this can come across through overworking, or avoiding self care, which Actually makes us feel worse in the long run when we do that.

Georgie: That's the thing with any of these is, we can choose a lot of responses to the situations that arise in our lives, and we want to choose the ones that provide more benefit than cost.

But the more distressed we are, the more likely we are to reach for the thing that causes us more loss than gain. Even if that gain is immediate, then we're like, oh, okay, so what if it is bad for my body, my heart, my bank account, my relationships? I'm like, just give it to me.

Christina: Right. Right. And, I don't know about you, but sitting with discomfort on its face does not sound very pleasant.

It's not something I think of doing. Or like anything anyone wants to sign up for.

Georgie: No!

Christina: But, but this helps us become actually more resilient people because if we know it's unavoidable to deal with discomfort in life, then we can learn it. We can sit with [00:09:00] discomfort as a skill and get better at it.

So if we combine that with a lot of other things, we can stay on path to reach our goals or just continue to move forward in life and, and live the life that we want. What would you add to that, Georgie?

Georgie: One of my clients once said she heard the saying, like, if you drop your cell phone, you wouldn't stomp on it.

I think that's sort of the idea. Like, if we know how to handle a disappointment when it comes our way, then we can handle things productively. Like, to use to carry forward the example of dropping your cell phone and the screen cracks, like, what do you do? You pick it up gingerly, you put it on a flat surface, and then you use somebody else's phone or your computer to figure out where you can get your phone repaired.

And then you go there and you get the phone repaired. So that's sort of what we want to do with the troubles in our lives. We wouldn't expect ourselves to not be upset, cracking a phone screen is really annoying and potentially expensive, but at the same time, we don't want to make everything worse by like stomping on it and acting out in a tantrum.

I've definitely seen clients who were driven to [00:10:00] gaming or spending money excessively because they were trying to manage discomfort. you know, countless people lose hours of sleep to television reel after reel on the internet or YouTube. The sort of bottomless source of mindless entertainment can really feel like an escape from our lives and I don't want to point to these things like they're the worst thing you could possibly do. Like, I would much rather my clients watch several hours of YouTube than, you know, go buy street drugs. So, you know, good, better, best. But, you know, they do have some sort of cost. So we would like to find things that are, you know, more fruitful and more proactive and helping people feel better sooner. I think also picking fights and aggression can come out as people's, you know, not deliberately chosen responses to pain or discomfort. And that obviously has some collateral damage in terms of our relationships and our reputation.

Christina: Definitely. Like, I can just speak for myself, newly married here, and sometimes I can pick fights when I'm [00:11:00] irritated, and it doesn't help the situation. I have to, like, go back and be like, I'm sorry, like, I was uncomfortable or upset about something, and it's not worked for me yet, so just putting that out there.

Georgie: Right? We've never heard our client be like, you know, and then I picked a fight and it fixed everything.

Christina: Yes.

Georgie: Okay, so we've talked about the problems, right? We've talked about all the things that go sideways if we are not comfortable experiencing our discomfort. We try and run away from it, or feed it, or spend over the top of it, or pick a fight with someone to distract us from it.

But we're talking about what we want people to do. So sitting with discomfort and it can sound like absolute torture, but it's not actually bad. It actually is temporarily accepting the less than ideal circumstances, but then you come out of it a whole lot faster and with less apologizing to do. Would that be a good way to say it, Christina?

Christina: I think so. Yeah.

Georgie: So what are your suggestions? If somebody was like, okay, [00:12:00] I'm ready to do it. I'm going to stop my escapism habits. How the heck do I sit with this thing I really don't want to feel?

Christina: Yeah, one of the ways that we like to help people become more resilient, become confident, sensible eaters, as we say, is to develop emotional regulation skills because our emotions are telling us something and many of us are not very good at identifying specifically what that emotion is that we're feeling. So one would just be to get better at identifying emotions, checking in with ourselves. And this allows us to tune in to what your body actually needs. If I'm embarrassed, what do I need? If I'm cold, do I need a jacket? You know, different things come to mind.

Georgie: Yeah. Definitely identifying what's going on. Is such an easy part to skip. I think a lot of times we just take whatever the causative thing is, and we think, you know, it's that horrible person at work. That's what's upsetting me, but it's so much more helpful if we can [00:13:00] analyze it to the point of like, Okay, so this horrible person at work is making me feel what, like, what is the actual experience that I'm having here?

Because that's what I can deal with. That's what I can manage. That's what I can regulate. And if I'm not able to put a word on it and I'm just like, I feel, it could be really. challenging to talk with somebody about it, but not impossible, I would say. Even if I'm confused and I don't know why I have a very unpleasant feeling that makes me want to self soothe or escape, I can at least chat with somebody that I don't know what I'm feeling, but it's really unpleasant right now.

And even that itself can be a step forward, but doing the best that we can to identify what's going on is an excellent start. It's never true that when we ask our clients what was going on, if their perception is, I just wanted to eat a lot of food. That's never it. There's always something else. There's always some emotional feeling underneath.

Because it's just not that desirable to eat an exceptionally large amount of food, if that makes sense. Like, nobody wants to eat until they have a stomachache just for kicks..

Christina: [00:14:00] Yeah, something else is going on there.

Georgie: Yeah, yeah, so I agree with you there. What else do you think we can do?

Christina: Validating that something is difficult can be a simple and effective way to acknowledge that this is hard and I don't have to do anything about it to change that. So just understanding this is a difficult thing that I'm going through. This is uncomfortable. This is whatever that emotion is that we're feeling.

And that validation can save us from self judgment, which is often an easy thing to go to. Most of the time we can say something like any normal person would be upset by this?

Georgie: Yeah, we say that to our clients all the time, right? Like it completely makes sense that you're frustrated by that. It completely makes sense that you're upset at that loss. Like these aren't silly feelings. And yet how often do our clients apologize for feeling certain ways or preface it with like, this is stupid, but dot, dot, dot. And I'm always like, that's not stupid. That [00:15:00] completely, I would feel the same way. Any normal person is upset when they're, I don't know, disrespected or somebody is inconsiderate or rude to you, or somebody doesn't recognize your work.

And he's very. normal reactions. I think it's helpful to validate them. And I think that also opens the door to give ourselves permission to feel that way. Right. I know a lot of people, I do think this one might weigh a little more heavily on people who identify as female, but I think there's a pressure for everybody in the world to sort of be positive and cheery and not be sad or not be angry or not. You know, have certain emotions that might be unpleasant for other people to experience. So we might feel like, oh, why, why can't I just put a smiley face on, you know, why am I not perky and happy enough? And it's really freeing. I think it takes a ton of pressure off to be like, yeah, I'm having a depressed day.

I'm allowed.

Christina: Yeah. And if, it feels good when someone else does it to us. We can practice that on ourselves too, we can validate it to ourselves, [00:16:00] but a lot of times that's not our go to because we're, like you said, trying to have that stiff upper lip and keep going and keep smiling and move forward, but just taking that moment I think can make a big difference.

Georgie: Yeah, just allow yourself to feel the way you do, acknowledge that it probably makes 100 percent logical sense. I'd like to think the next step or suggestion would be Instead of reacting or just going to the first impulsive option that our brain offers, that we can intentionally select what we want to do.

So, we often talk about effective actions, and those would be things that we choose to do to purposely help ourselves proactively manage an emotional state, for example, one of the effective actions I commonly recommend for the feeling of overwhelm is to get organized and to write things down. It's just an effective action.

You know, it's a great idea to try applying that when you feel overwhelmed. And so a lot of emotions will have those effective [00:17:00] actions that we can take. And these alternatives to food don't cost us so much in the long run. They're not maladaptive. So Exercise, engaging in a hobby, like reading or seeing other people, all of those would be effective actions that we can choose that would be less harmful than the previously mentioned examples of escaping or things that would cost us in the long run.

Now, once you've done everything that's effective or logical that you can do, sometimes you just still have feelings left over to navigate. You can do all of the air quotes, right things to promote your mental health and get over an argument. But when you get in bed that night, it's quite likely that you still have some heaviness in your chest or some tears behind your eyes that are just ready to come out.

And I think that's important to expect because, you know, we could sell these effective actions as like, fix all your problems without food, but it's just not likely that a nap or a novel is going to be able to bring us 100 percent [00:18:00] back to feeling okay. But if we have that distress scale in mind of one to 10, like maybe we were able to move ourselves down from eight or nine out of 10 distressed down to like a four by doing some of these actions or a three.

And the more that we can move down that scale, the sooner we are going to come out the other side and not feel distressed. So, what would you suggest people do? If they got like, you know, those little leftover feeling remnants that are still kind of painful, any suggestions?

Christina: Yes, doing some self inquiry and attending to ourselves can be really helpful with those leftover feelings.

This means checking in with yourself, figuring out what are your needs, and then trying to help yourself. Do I need to feel encouraged? Do I need a little mood booster? If so, I can reflect on times when I've gone through other hard stuff in life, because again, we're human. We've gone through hard stuff, you know?

And we can encourage ourselves and say, yeah, I've been through that. I can get through this and it can be [00:19:00] empowering. So empowering ourselves with the knowledge that I can do hard things. And although this feels hard, it's not impossible. So if that's something that you're needing to encourage yourself with, that's one way you can attend to yourself.

Instead, you might find that you need to calm down. So in that case, self soothing or deep breathing, guided meditation, or gentle exercise could be an effective way to downregulate that heightened state.

Georgie: Yeah, sometimes it's like we just need to like bring down this high arousal level because I'm like feeling spazzy.

Christina: Yes, and it's amazing what I've heard some one other coach Shannon Beer talk about this, like you always have your breath on you. So deep breathing is so effective because you don't need anything else. You just have that. And I don't, I don't know that we draw from that enough unless. It's been taught to us, or we practice it, or we're aware of it, but I just love that phrase.

Like, you [00:20:00] always have your breath on you.

Georgie: Yeah, totally. I always say, like, the nutrition habits travel well. Take them with you where you go. You don't need a scale, or macronutrients, or an app, or food labels on everything at the buffet.

Christina: Thank goodness for that.

Georgie: I know. So the description you gave, I think, really describes self compassion, which is another sort of term. But You know, validating that what we're going through is in fact difficult and that maybe there are some small steps we can take to help comfort ourselves. And I often find music is really helpful. It's one of the things I say quite commonly. You've probably heard it on half a dozen episodes by now, but if I'm really sad and I need something to give me a little hope and energy and remind me that.

Yes, the world can be ugly, but can also be incredibly beautiful. I've got a playlist for that. And if I'm feeling really jazzed up in an unpleasant sense, like I'm overstimulated, anxious, hurried, I also have music that helps [00:21:00] me wind down. So putting that music on is one way that I can attend to myself, like getting yourself a blanket if you're cold.

The little ways that we would attend to somebody else. We can care for ourselves in exactly the same ways. So I also find when I think about like, how do we sit in those moments of discomfort, sometimes reminding ourselves that this is finite is really how we get through it, like, okay, I have the flu, it's going to be a matter of days of really high level discomfort, not able to sleep, coughing, headache, fever.

But it's not going to last forever. I've gotten through the flu before. It's going to be a matter of days. And I will get back to feeling like I normally do. So if I just survive this, I don't have to look pretty or put on a cheery face. Just got to survive it. Cause I'm going to get to the other side.

Christina: That kind of goes back to the scale, the discomfort scale. It's an opportunity to zoom out a little bit. Like how, how long is this going to last me? How temporary is this? And just like it is to say how uncomfortable [00:22:00] is this on a scale of 1 to 10? If we can take those moments to just do that inventory, I think that can make a difference.

Georgie: I also recognize that even the most intense, painful, emotional, and physical experiences have moments where they abate even slightly.

If you have pain that's spiking, that means you also have pain that has valleys. So when somebody's grieving a loss, for example, they're usually not feeling the same steady level of emotional pain 24 hours a day. They sort of may think of their loved one and miss them and they feel a more acute loss and maybe they shed some tears, but then the microwave goes off and they take their cup of tea out and it's off of their mind for a moment.

And so it's moments of feeling more pain and then we get breaths between. you know, having gone through some very painful experiences in my own life, I've learned and been guided by some really great people to look for the breaths that you get. Between the pains and that can really help just get to the other side.

Christina: That's [00:23:00] beautiful. I love that.

Georgie: I can't take credit. I got some good people helping me out sometimes.

Christina: But now you're sharing it with the rest of the world.

Georgie: Yeah, yeah. Another one that I can say I got I inherited from somebody else who gave me the gift of this advice was when you are feeling at a complete loss and you just don't know how to help yourself, help someone else.

And I got this piece of advice from my therapist at the time, and I was very depressed. And I sent a text saying like, you know, something rock bottom ish. And they replied, is there someone you can go help right now? And I remember looking at my phone and thinking, What the F? Like, did you not hear what I said?

Like, I need help!

Christina: Feel bad for me!

Georgie: Exactly! Like, no, no, no! Me, me, me! I need the help here! Waving white flag, but it was absolutely the wisest thing to do. Because sometimes, like, that is the perfect thing. It's like, get out of your own head. Go help somebody else. You know plenty of people that you could call and offer a favor to, or a ride, or, [00:24:00] you know, clients that you could check on.

Like, do that. And sure enough, that's been some of, like, the most effective thing at my hardest moments, was like, just try and find somebody else to help for a second. Surprisingly effective.

Christina: Yeah. I read that in a book recently, too. They were talking about building Self confidence or in an area that it's sometimes if you're teaching somebody else in that it helps you to build that self confidence or learn something faster or better.

Georgie: Yeah,

Christina: maybe it is that just getting out of your own head and being other focused.

Georgie: Yeah, right after you feel like a hypocrite, then you start to learn. Yeah.

Christina: Yeah, right after the imposter syndrome is really strong. I'll go.

Georgie: It's great after you get through that phase. For one of my famous similes. When I talk about sitting with discomfort, it's like sitting on the couch with a cat.

And what I mean by that is if I asked you to sit on the couch with a cat, you wouldn't sit on the couch and like stare at the cat and sit there minute after minute, hour after hour, [00:25:00] staring at the cat. So if you imagine your pain is the cat, you can sit on a couch with a cat and read the newspaper, open a book.

Crochet a scarf, watch television. And I think a lot of times that's what it's like sitting with our pain or sitting with our discomfort. And it sounds so much worse if you think, Oh, I have to sit here and focus on this pain and nothing else, because that's what the self help people tell me to do. And it's not helpful to focus on it exclusively.

It's more helpful to say, yep, there's room for me and the cat on this couch. What else can I do to entertain myself and keep myself occupied? So. When you're in a moment of pain and you're thinking, you know, what the hell were they talking about? Like sitting with your pain. We're not saying hyper focus on it.

Just make room for it to be there. Don't obsess yourself with running away from the cat and see if you can like grab your knitting or a cup of tea to get through the moment.

Christina: Yeah, that's really great. So another tool that you can use along these lines is reframing. A lot of times the lousy [00:26:00] episodes in our lives do make us stronger. They make us more resilient, like we've already said, more compassionate, and I actually have a client who I just spoke with this week, and she's constantly impressing me with her ability to do this, because if she's dealing with the setback, she uses curiosity, like we talked about in our last episode, to use it as an opportunity to learn and grow, and she often reframes It's the difficulty that she's experiencing as, hey, this is a chance for me to become better at showing myself compassion, becoming more resilient and getting more skilled at these techniques that we're talking about, which I think is such a powerful way to view the situation because if we don't go through these things, we don't need to learn these skills, but as we've said, we will go through difficulties. We might as well become skilled practitioners in the meantime.

Georgie: Yeah, discomfort's coming, sooner or later. So, yeah. [00:27:00] Get your kit ready. Safe to say, yeah, discomfort is coming, like it or not, it's going to find its way into all our lives unless we just barricade ourselves inside and don't try anything or interact with anybody. And that's, that's no life. That is no life. Reaching out to another person is another suggestion I really, really like to make to people.

When you're in discomfort, it strengthens your relationships to open up and let somebody know, Hey, I could really use a hug. Or I could use some encouragement or one of my favorites. Can you send me a funny meme? Sometimes the stuff I get shared with me on Instagram is. That's the exact medicine that I need to get through a really rough afternoon.

And I know that it's very tempting to not do that because we can have this idea in our minds that we're bothering people or that we don't want to bring them down talking about our problems. I used to think, well, if they can't do anything to help me, what is the point? Like if I have pericarditis like last winter and I'm lying in the hospital [00:28:00] and I'm as low as low can be, I don't want to call somebody and like cry into the phone because now I'm having a bad day and they're having a bad day.

Like I've just increased the amount of distress in the world. No, thank you. But the point is that it usually doesn't bring the other person down. It actually makes them feel needed and wanted and appreciate that you feel close enough to them to let them in. It tends to make relationships stronger.

Whereas if you go through a hard time and you don't reach out, you may actually be distancing yourself from that person or isolating yourself from all of the people who want to be there and support you. I also realized that just because someone can't cure my medical condition or bring back the pet that passed away, or they can't wave a magic wand and undo the disappointing news that I got, doesn't mean that there's no point or that they can't help.

Actually, just having the same situation with company is a hundred times more bearable than going through something all [00:29:00] on your own. So. I think for everybody who's listening, Christina and I both hope you don't need to use these skills all that often. But like a first aid kit, this is probably going to come in handy at some point.

So remember, suffering is part of living a full life. Trying to avoid it will only make things more painful. So bring company with you, bring all of the supportive self talk you can muster, and watch how tough and resilient you are, even through your most painful moments. We'll see you in the next episode.

We believe in you and we've always got your back.