Comfortable Suffering: On Resistance, Change and the Courage to Begin

Themes emerge often in my experience working as a therapist. It’s always a fascinating and humbling experience to be writing my notes and realizing that several people on my calendar in a week were experiencing similar things in life. We truly are more connected than we realize. The theme that I want to ponder with you is resistance to change. Seeing this makes me wonder about many things. What is making us feel so powerless or incapable? What function does resisting change serve for people? What are people doing in therapy if not to change? What fears lie behind engaging with the self? Why is comfortable suffering more interesting than liberation from suffering? 

My next thoughts lead me to define what therapy is and what it is not. Is therapy a relationship where you can expect to receive validation, safety to be your most vulnerable and authentic self? Yes absolutely. Your pain, your past, your intricacies, your contradictions can all be expressed and received by your therapist with an eager willingness to understand you. If this is missing from your therapeutic experience, consider bringing this up in your next session. 

Validation alone will not create change. It will open the door, but it will not walk you through it. A safe place to land is not all that therapy is meant to be. It’s meant to be soil for which you can turn your pain into growth. It is meant to provide you the opportunity and resources to reduce your suffering. This might mean that your therapist disagrees with the way that you are thinking or behaving. That is okay. This might also mean that therapy requires you to try hard things, new things and to go outside of your comfort zone. This is also okay. It’s excellent, even. I will go as far as saying that your therapist challenging you is evidence for how much they care for you. It is evidence of how well they’re doing their job. They are trained to know the kind of interventions, and philosophies that will liberate you from suffering if you apply them. Please trust them to provide that and trust yourself enough to engage with it. 

Your self-efficacy (belief in your ability to change) is far more important than protecting you from failure, hardship or accountability. If you are not receiving accountability, feedback, and resources from your therapist, consider bringing it up in your next session. I promise you that being free from the illusion that you can’t change, or do hard things, or that you’re always right, or perfect (and needing your therapist to affirm that) will feel SO good. 

Please contemplate a few of these questions (go wild and journal about them to take it an extra step) 

-Is my self-improvement rooted in a desire to reduce my suffering, or is there another motive? (achievement based, people pleasing, attention seeking etc.)

-What am I willing to do to feel better? (be honest)

-If I’m honest with myself and not willing to change right now, where does that leave me?

-What role do I play in my own pain?

-What would have to happen first in order for me to feel comfortable taking my suffering into my own hands?

-Why do I tolerate feeling stuck? 

-How much do I trust my therapist to help me? 

-What would give me courage to face my struggles?

If you took the time to consider any of these questions, give it up for yourself. That is where the good stuff is! There is so much waiting for you on the other side of discomfort. Meaningful conversations with yourself lead to true confidence and courage. 

Finally, some parting thoughts and a poem if you don’t mind. Feedback is a gift. Find openness to it. Don’t be afraid to take it in bits and pieces. You can still think for yourself, while finding truth in feedback, it's actually encouraged that you do. The journey of finding a path out of your pain with someone you trust is a breathtakingly beautiful one. You will find pain again. However, leaning into the process of finding the path out slowly and carefully over and over again, is the point. The point is not to justify staying in one spot because it’s comfortable. The point is not to wait until the path is perfectly clear and beautifully landscaped before you’ll set foot on it. Committing to the practice of transforming your pain will create courage, capacity, resilience, perspective, and relief. Those things are far sweeter than comfort, illusion and avoidance.

For A New Beginning 

John O’Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire, 

Feeling the emptiness grow inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on, 

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled, 

And you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream, 

A plath of plentitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Wishing you Wellness,

Janessa Cole MA LPC