I Know I Should Embrace Discomfort (So Why Am I Still Running?)

On the maddening gap between understanding something intellectually and actually living it, and being ridiculously hard on myself about the whole thing

Look, I know what I'm supposed to do when things get uncomfortable. I've read the books. I've done the therapy. I've saved all the damn Instagram quotes about growth and comfort zones.

And yet.

Here I am, still running at the first sign of emotional discomfort like my ass is on fire. Still abandoning my own needs the second someone frowns. Still swallowing words that need saying because god forbid there's a moment of tension in the room.

It's MADDENING.

I understand all this stuff intellectually. I could give a TED talk about the value of sitting with difficult feelings. I could write a whole book about how "it's not my job to manage other people's emotions."

But then someone looks disappointed in me and WHOOSH – there goes all that wisdom, right out the window. My body moves faster than my brain. I'm apologizing, accommodating, shape-shifting before I even realize what's happening.

And then I'm SO. HARD. ON. MYSELF.

"You know better, Melissa. You LITERALLY just talked about this in therapy last week. Why are you still doing this? What is wrong with you? Everyone else seems to figure this stuff out. You're failing at the most basic emotional skills."

It's this absurd spiral where I feel bad, then feel bad about feeling bad, then feel bad about feeling bad about feeling bad until I'm so many layers deep in self-criticism that I can't even remember what started it all.

No one talks enough about this part – this stupid, frustrating middle where you KNOW what would be healthier but still find yourself doing the exact opposite. Where you can see your patterns with perfect clarity and still feel completely powerless to stop them.

They don't mention how long this stage lasts. How many times you'll try and fail and try again before anything changes. How progress isn't some neat upward line but more like... I don't know, a drunk person trying to walk home. Lots of stumbling and wrong turns, occasional sitting on the curb to cry.

My therapist keeps gently reminding me that this is normal. That changing deeply ingrained patterns takes time. That healing isn't linear. That self-compassion is essential.

All things I also know intellectually and struggle to actually do when I'm in the middle of failing YET AGAIN to stay present with difficult feelings.

The irony isn't lost on me – that I'm desperate for more self-compassion while simultaneously berating myself for not being more self-compassionate. That I'm trying to stop managing others' emotions while obsessively managing my own emotions about managing others' emotions.

It's exhausting. And ridiculous. And so deeply human that sometimes I have to laugh at myself.

Some days I manage to be gentle with myself about this whole mess. Other days I'm impossibly harsh, creating elaborate theories about how I should be further along by now, how everyone else is doing better at this, how there must be something fundamentally wrong with me.

But maybe this awareness itself is something. This ability to see the gap between what I know and what I do without immediately turning it into proof that I'm broken. This willingness to keep trying despite how frustrating the process is.

I don't have neat answers or five easy steps. Just this ongoing practice of showing up again and again, noticing when I'm running and trying to turn back toward what I'm avoiding, catching myself in moments of excessive self-criticism and attempting to extend the same compassion I would offer a friend.

And on my best days, I can see that even this messy reflection – this honest acknowledgment that I'm struggling with the very things I understand intellectually – is itself a form of growth. Of choosing truth over performance. Of being willing to say "this is really hard and I'm not doing it perfectly and I'm only human after all."