I see it in most Western culture.

Granted, that’s where I spend the most time, but I see it in nearly all the cultures I’ve experienced. I’ve seen it in Ireland, Italy, and Iceland, Estonia and other parts of Europe too.

We avoid. Everything, all the time. We stop to glance for a second, but right away we’re off the the next thing to avoid.

We seem to fixate more so on the negatives. But that’s human nature, right?

I’d rather be terrified of safe berries than start blissfully comping away at the poisonous ones.

Loss aversion keeps us alive. It keeps us out of the quicksand and away from the saber tooth tigers.

But it also keeps us from enjoying our lives.

Naturally we want to avoid the negative stuff, right? We dislike stress. We hate not being in control. He don’t like anger, or sadness, or having our hearts broken.

Those all suck.

We do whatever we can to avoid them. We do our best to pick the right partners, to enjoy our time together.

We try to find a good job so that we won’t stress too much and can still pay the bills.

We avoid things that make us uncomfortable because…well, they’re uncomfortable.

We avoid large falls, big drops, steep cliffs and scary looking bugs. It keeps us alive.

It keeps us safe.

But it also ruins our damn minds.

Same damn thing over and over

We do this same type of avoidance with actions that are good for us.

We avoid confrontation and difficult discussions. Tough decisions are easier left unmade and breakups left undone. We avoid the hard parts of life. We avoid the uncomfortable.

Maybe we think these things just float off in to the distance, but life has a funny way of bringing them back to bite us. The insecurities. The embarrassing stories. The awkward date.

We want to avoid them and so we block them out of our minds.

But instead of actually confronting the problem, we stack these bad emotions back in to the Deck of Cards of Feelings. When all is well and good, everything is well and good. But the more and more we avoid these negative feelings, the more shitty cards we put back in the deck. (Weird analogy, I know, but it makes sense, so screw you)

Every time we stress, we take a card from the deck. If the situation is mild or the right conditions are in our favor, we might be able to hold it together. But the closer and closer we are to our breaking point, the more likely we are to snap…. eventually, we’re going to draw the one card we didn’t want to draw.

If we haven’t conditioned ourselves to put better cards in the deck before we put them back, we’re just going to keep drawing shit cards.

Every time we ignore a difficult situation, we put a shitty card back in the deck.

We might get lucky for awhile, but eventually the demons are coming out. At some point all the emotions will flood back. They come bubbling to the surface and we yell at our significant other or flip off a driver or freak out under duress.

Alternate Solutions

We avoid confrontation and forget to set boundaries.

We distract our minds with Netflix shows.

We take antidepressants.

We avoid all the things that bring us negative feelings. We block it out. Push it out and push it away. Farther and farther.

Just GO AWAY!

And who can blame us?

Who would have taught us any different?

Certainly not our parents, that’s for damn sure.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have to keep running from our selves. We don’t have to stay scared of our lives and our responsibilities.

We exercise to take care of our bodies why the hell aren’t we doing the same for our minds?

We have to deliberate on the pain and figure out what’s causing it. You don’t eliminate the pain without first figuring out where it is. And you can’t figure out where it is without stopping and thinking about it.

And stopping to think about the pain is hard… it friggin sucks.

It means sitting with the heartbreak instead of distracting ourselves with work.

But if we were to get a splinter we wouldn’t get ignore it and hope for the best, would we? We would dig that shit out if meant ripping off our fingers! Get that shit OUT. Short term pain for longer term peace.

So why would we do anything different with our minds?

We have an awkward encounter with a coworker but ignore it hoping it’ll resolve itself.

We’re upset by the way our boss treats us but don’t have the conversation and instead wallow in our resentment.

We’re upset our significant other crossed the line, but snap at them the next time instead of designing boundaries.

These are difficult things. They suck in the moment. It’s like ripping off a BandAid made with super glue. But holy smokes have they been useful for me. Every time I try to avoid the uncomfortable, I find it coming back to bite me in the ass months if not years later.

Our minds don’t go away. And even if they don’t remember, oh they remember.

But as long as we keep avoiding the inevitable, we’re going to keep paying the consequences later on down the road.

Here’s to seeking discomfort…in the mind. Cheers.

P.S. For what it’s worth, I’ve found meditation to be a great way to focus on the discomfort – Eventually your brain gets so tired of being told what to do, it starts to just sit with the pain.