Discomfort Tolerance. ‘Is it really that bad?’
Often we find ourselves confronted with a situation that gives us The Fear.
It can be something physical or emotional but the stress response is equally paralysing. However more often than not, The Fear sensation we experience derives from what we ‘perceive’ might happen and the unpleasant feelings associated with it.
Why does it matter?
You’ve heard all the cliches “Step out of your comfort zone”, “This is where the magic happens” and so on. Growth and achievement only arise when we challenge the status quo. If we constantly stay hidden behind the safety curtain, the show will never go on.
Constantly being fearful of unpleasant feelings can cause great anxiety and stress.
Physical Discomfort Tolerance
This is not just an intangible concept, there is some physiology to back it up which is more easily measured through physical tolerance thresholds. By exposing our bodies to increasing physical discomfort, we can push the boundary of what we know we can sustain. And from there instigate growth.
Take the theory invented by Wim Hof, the Dutch guru known as The Ice Man. [* See The Wim Hof Method]. His method of combining breathing techniques with extreme cold therapy put the body and mind into such states of total discomfort, that you can’t imagine ever being able to achieve the desired goal. And yet with committed practice Hof proves that the human body can withstand extreme conditions resulting in seemingly positive effects on our physiology including increased immunity, decreased inflammation and disease control. His theory is that if you let your mind control the learned feelings around physical discomfort, then the actual sensation is “not that bad”.
Our emotions can be trained in this way too, by testing how much emotional discomfort we can put up with, and observing how we can sustain more than we think.
The Stress Response
In stressful situations, our brains release the hormones cortisol and adrenaline via the sympathetic nervous system. These are extremely useful substances as they prepare our bodies for “fight or flight”, meaning we are primed ready for whatever consequent action we need to take. However the relative level of stress that we experience and therefore what equates to the need for this response, varies from person to person.
The body needs to get rid of these hormones once their immediate use has passed, otherwise they can become damaging to our health (weight gain, poor sleep, anxiety and so forth) and it does so by activating the opposing parasympathetic nervous system.
Your ‘discomfort tolerance’ determines what level of emotional or physical distress you must be under for these systems to be activated.
Lowering Your Base Stress Levels
Everyone experiences periods of stress throughout our levels. Often for very obvious life-changing moments such as divorce, or the death of a loved one. But sometimes stress levels can be overactivated and coupled with anxiety, leave behind a sense of constant low lying distress.
This is when it can be helpful to attempt to increase your discomfort tolerance, so that your hormonal response threshold is higher, negating the need for an unnecessary stress response.
4 Techniques To Train Your Tolerance
Use your breath, the greatest tool in the box. Slowing down and controlling our breathing calms our nervous system and alleviates stress allowing us to think and act more rationally.
Reframe how you see discomfort. Make friends with it, use it as an ally not an enemy. Humans have sustained discomfort for thousands of years, and survived. If you befriend it, you may find your anxiety and stress levels decrease.
Tackle the discomfort head on rather than allowing it to simmer and build up to a mythical monster. Quite often once we’ve faced our challenges, they are never as fearsome as we thought.
Ask yourself the question, is it really that bad? Are you really in a situation that you cannot bear for a minute longer? If you can, just test the water and see if you can tolerate a bit more. You might just find that you are indeed more resilient than you thought.
I wish you all the best,
Beata