Permission Granted to Acknowledge Your Discomfort
Because some of us keep silencing ourselves.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but your discomfort about something is okay. That means that your being uncomfortable is a legitimate feeling that has as much value as every other. You’re not a bad/rude/difficult/too sensitive/needy (or whatever else you’ve called yourself) person; your discomfort alerts you to where you need to pay attention, to what doesn’t feel good and right for you and, ultimately, your boundaries—emotional, mental, physical, spiritual and financial.
Your discomfort isn’t trying to inconvenience, show you up, or pee on your chips. The fact someone else might not feel discomfort about the same thing (or is unaware of it) doesn’t make your experience any less legit.
Whoever (or whatever) taught you to feel bad for recognising when something is happening that doesn’t quite chime with you and to then suppress and repress your feelings along with your needs, desires, expectations and opinions wasn’t ‘correct’. Those experiences and lessons taught you to become disassociated from your authentic yes and no; to become disassociated from yourself.
If it was someone who taught you to ignore, dismiss and override your discomfort, they operated from their socialisation and conditioning. If it was something or a series of things that taught you, the message you took away is off base and no longer serves you.
Continuing to silence your discomfort isn’t doing you any favours; it’s doing you, your choices and relationships a disservice. No boundaries, no intimacy. And how are you going to feel truly connected to yourself and others or move towards the relationships, things, and opportunities that matter if you're always going to be silencing yourself in some way?
Who might you get to be, and what choices might you get to make, if you permit yourself to acknowledge all your feelings, including discomfort?
Show me someone who’s been in an unavailable or shady relationship, who’s found themselves knee-deep in a situation that feels patently wrong to them, or who’s burnt out, shut down or melted down, and you’re seeing someone who ignored, dismissed and overrode their discomfort about something.
Discomfort, however it shows itself for you (because you know you have your own personal signals if you pay attention) is a cue to get more grounded. Stop, look, listen—notice what’s going on internally and externally. What might your discomfort be trying to show you?
No one else is you with your personality, characteristics, circumstances, resources and backstory of lived experience, so they can’t legislate for your discomfort, and, yes, that includes your family. Even if you lived through the same experience(s), how you process, what does or doesn’t emotionally disrupt you, and what does and doesn’t work for you (your values and boundaries) is personal.
No feeling is ‘wrong’; they’re all information—clues about your inner state, what might be happening externally, and what you need.
If you keep building stories around your feelings, including reasons to silence them and make them wrong and impermissible, you will not feel as if you can trust yourself. You won’t be a safe and secure person to yourself because you won’t get to utilise the guidance and get a truer picture of yourself and life that supports you.
What is your discomfort showing you?
Keep in mind that while discomfort sometimes signals something about what someone else is doing or the situation, it can also signal where you’re out of alignment with your values and not taking care of yourself. It might be that you’re over your bandwidth due to saying yes to too many of the wrong things. You might be asking too much or too little of yourself (or someone else is).
Maybe your discomfort reveals a nugget of info you need to file away. Or perhaps it’s validating a previous discomfort.
All things will become clear if you’re prepared to be connected to yourself and be open to internal and external feedback about what does and doesn’t feel good and right for you.
You’re worthy of your own attention. What you ignore, dismiss and override always, always, always comes back to bite. Rather than kick yourself further down the line, give yourself permission to feel and to have yeses and nos in your life.
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