Why Avoiding Discomfort Makes Everything Worse | Week 4 Mindfulness

Today we’re talking about discomfort—and why all your strategies for avoiding it are making things worse.

This week, I’ve created a body scan meditation that teaches you to turn toward difficult sensations instead of away from them. It’s 10 minutes of practicing a skill that changes everything: sitting with discomfort without trying to fix it.

Keep reading for the link.

Last week we explored how thoughts aren’t facts. This week, we’re going deeper into something physical: the pain, tension, and discomfort you’ve been running from for years.

The Weekend Everything Caught Up With Me

Training to be a doctor is terrible at the start.

No responsibility. And then suddenly—overnight—you’re responsible for a whole hospital full of dying people.

My first year as a junior doctor, I started feeling tired. Not normal tired. Deep, bone-tired.

One particular weekend was horrendous.

People dying everywhere. The consultant support I was meant to have? Invisible. I was just running between wards, trying to keep up.

More coffee. Skipping lunch. A bleep endlessly going off.

I couldn’t think clearly anymore. My body felt like lead. My knees especially ached—this dull, persistent ache I’d never had before.

But I pushed through. That’s what you do, right?

I made it through that weekend.

But a couple of weeks later, I got a cold I couldn’t shake off. Then the nosebleeds started—something I hadn’t had since being a kid. My body was trying to tell me something.

One morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. Not “didn’t want to.” Couldn’t.

I just lay there. And I did something I never thought I’d do.

I called in sick.

I was out of action for a week.

The Pattern I Couldn’t See

Looking back, I can see exactly what I was doing.

I was avoiding. Avoiding the stress. Avoiding acknowledging I couldn’t handle it. Avoiding the feeling of being overwhelmed.

My avoidance strategies:

More caffeine to override the exhaustion
Alcohol to numb the anxiety
Skipping meals because “no time”
Pretending it would somehow get better on its own

The discomfort I was feeling—the tiredness, the aches, the foggy thinking—that was my body trying to help me. Trying to tell me to stop.

But I didn’t know how to listen. I only knew how to push through.

If I’d learned to deal with stress in a healthy way back then—to acknowledge it, to turn toward it, to actually address what was happening—I’d have stood a better chance.

But I didn’t. So the pattern repeated.

It happened again during my junior doctor years. Again during GP training. And then in a big way when I was working as a GP.

Each time, the same cycle: Discomfort shows up → I avoid it → It gets louder → I push harder → My body forces me to stop.

Eventually, I realized something fundamental: I wasn’t suited to that work in any way. (I’ve written about this in my piece on being a highly sensitive person—more on that at the end.)

But the bigger realization was this: Avoiding discomfort doesn’t make it go away. It makes it accumulate.

What We Resist Persists

Here’s the pattern most men follow:

Discomfort shows up → We push it away → It gets louder → We push harder → It becomes chronic

We’ve been taught that discomfort is weakness. That pain means something’s wrong. That the right response is to fix it, ignore it, or power through it.

So we develop strategies:

Work harder to distract from it
Caffeine to override tiredness
Alcohol to numb anxiety
Busyness to avoid feeling anything
“I’m fine” to avoid acknowledging it

Psychologists call this experiential avoidance—the struggle to avoid pain, which paradoxically creates more suffering.

The exhausting part? All that avoidance takes enormous energy. You’re not just dealing with the original discomfort—you’re dealing with the energy it takes to keep it at bay.

What I Saw in the Consulting Room

As a GP, I saw a lot of “pain.”

Abdominal pain in women. Headaches or chest pain in men.

Often—not always, but often—the pain was connected to something else going on.

Work stress. Family bereavement. Divorce. Addiction. Financial pressure.

The body holds what the mind won’t acknowledge.

Many people came in wanting a tablet. Something to make it go away.

And sometimes that was appropriate. But often, they left with something different:

A better understanding of themselves
Some time off work to recharge
A plan to start addressing the problems they were facing

The step wasn’t to push the pain away. It was to acknowledge it. To turn toward it.

To ask: “What is this trying to tell me?”

That’s not soft. That’s strategic. That’s intelligent.

Because pretending the pain isn’t there doesn’t make it disappear. It makes it louder.

The Second Arrow

There’s a concept from Buddhist psychology that modern neuroscience confirms: the second arrow.

First arrow: Pain happens. Physical discomfort. Emotional difficulty. Something unpleasant.

This is life. Everyone gets first arrows. You can’t avoid them.

Second arrow: Your reaction to the pain. The resistance. The bracing. The “this shouldn’t be happening.” The tension you add around the discomfort.

This is optional. And this is usually worse than the first arrow.

Example: You have a headache (first arrow). You tense up, catastrophize about it, get frustrated it’s happening, worry it means something serious, push through work anyway while resenting it (second arrow).

The headache might last an hour. But the second arrow—the struggle with it—lasts all day.

The Neuroscience

When you resist pain, your sympathetic nervous system stays activated.

Bracing against discomfort creates additional muscular tension.

Avoidance prevents the natural resolution of emotional experiences.

What you don’t process doesn’t disappear—it accumulates.

Research from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) shows:

Experiential avoidance is linked to anxiety, depression, chronic pain
Learning to turn toward difficulty reduces suffering
Acceptance doesn’t mean giving up—it means acknowledging what’s actually here

The Alternative: Turning Toward

Here’s the radical alternative: Turn toward the discomfort.

Not to make it go away. Not to fix it. Just to be with it.

This isn’t about “toughing it out” or “being strong.” It’s the opposite of pushing through.

It’s about softening. Allowing. Breathing into it.

What this looks like:

Tight shoulders? Notice them. Breathe into them. See if you can soften slightly.
Anxious feeling in your chest? Acknowledge it’s there. Feel where it is. Stay with it.
Racing thoughts keeping you awake? Notice them without fighting them. Let them be.

The paradox: When you stop trying to make discomfort go away, it often does. Not always immediately. But it shifts.

Because most of what we call suffering isn’t the pain itself—it’s the tension we add around it.

This Week’s Practices

Primary Practice: Body Scan with Difficult Sensations (10 minutes)

This week’s meditation is a body scan specifically designed to work with discomfort.

You’ll practice:

Finding areas of tension in your body
Breathing into those areas instead of bracing against them
Softening around pain without trying to fix it
Noticing the difference between the sensation and your reaction to it

👉 Listen to your free Body Scan meditation on Insight Timer

This isn’t about making pain disappear. It’s about changing your relationship with it. When you stop fighting discomfort, you have more energy for everything else.

Bonus Practice: 3-Minute Breathing Space (Emergency Reset)

For those moments when you’re overwhelmed and need an immediate reset, I’ve also created a 3-minute breathing space practice.

Perfect for:

Before difficult meetings
When stress spikes suddenly
Middle of a busy day
When you’re about to react badly

👉 Listen to the 3-Minute Breathing Space

Micro-Practice: The RAIN Technique

Throughout the day, when discomfort arises—physical or emotional—try this:

R – Recognize: “I’m feeling anxious” or “My shoulders are tense”

A – Allow: Let it be there. Don’t try to fix it immediately.

I – Investigate: Where do I feel this in my body? What does it actually feel like?

N – Non-identification: This is a feeling I’m having. It’s not who I am.

Takes 60 seconds. Changes everything.

Change One Thing This Week

Next time you feel anxious, uncomfortable, or in pain:

Instead of reaching for your phone, coffee, or distraction—sit with it for 60 seconds.

Just notice what happens.

Where do you feel it in your body?
What does it actually feel like?
Does it change if you breathe into it?

You might find the discomfort is more tolerable than you thought.

You might find it shifts when you stop fighting it.

Or you might find it’s difficult—but that you can handle it.

That’s the practice. Building your capacity to be with difficulty.

Why This Matters Beyond Meditation

This isn’t just about physical discomfort.

Learning to sit with difficulty is a life skill.

When you can be with uncomfortable emotions, you:

Make better decisions (instead of reactive ones to avoid discomfort)
Have better relationships (instead of avoiding difficult conversations)
Handle stress better (instead of collapsing when it gets hard)
Build genuine resilience (not the “push through” kind that breaks)

The men who can sit with discomfort don’t suffer less. They just don’t add the second arrow.

They feel the first arrow—the pain, the stress, the difficulty. But they don’t spend energy fighting it, resenting it, or pretending it’s not there.

That’s freedom.

What’s Next

Next week, we’ll explore the power of the pause—the space between stimulus and response where all your choices live.

Until then, practice turning toward difficulty. Even just a little.

Be kind to yourself. You’re doing better than you think.

P.S. The discomfort you’ve been avoiding doesn’t disappear when you ignore it. It accumulates. It shows up as chronic tension, as irritability, as exhaustion, as snapping at people you love.

Turning toward it isn’t weakness. It’s the bravest thing you can do.

References

Hayes, S.C., Strosahl, K.D., & Wilson, K.G., Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change, 2011, Guilford Press

Kabat-Zinn, J., Full Catastrophe Living, 2013 revised edition, Bantam Books

Wegner, D.M., “Ironic processes of mental control,” Psychological Review, 1994, Vol. 101, pp.34-52

Levine, P.A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010, North Atlantic Books

Williams, M. & Penman, D., Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, 2011, Rodale Books