This Week's Mindful Morsel 🍪 | April 9, 2025 — Learning in the Midst of Discomfort
Happy sweet day to you đź’ś
This past week has been a doozy (on purpose) for me and my body. I’m continuing to work on that same challenging EMDR target, and I’m working with great focus on what I’ve been storing in my left shoulder. I have a constant tightness and sense of activation there, and for these past few weeks it’s been flaring up quite a bit.
I want to be very clear about this: the tightness and activation is literally always there. No hyperbole. No exaggeration. It’s been there for actual years upon years, and I’ve learned to live with it so well that I don’t even notice it unless it’s really intense.
Sound relatable? đź‘€
Many of us have spaces in our bodies just like this. We harbor discomfort or pain, and we just learn to live with it.
But that’s not really showing our bodies that they can trust us, is it?
That’s not really showing our bodies that we’re listening and paying attention, is it?
It’s reinforcing the message that our bodies are low priority — that we’re heeding societal messages that our bodies are tools and machines to be coaxed into submission for results.
Gross.
Right now, I’m experiencing a lot of discomfort on the left side of my body because I’m digging in and excavating and really trying to be mindful of what’s happening without trying to will it away. And that’s the thing, right? Not trying to move toward immediate relief or numbness.
If there was a super quick solution for the root of the problem, I’d be all over it. But there just isn’t. It’s become very apparent to me that I squirrel away a lot in this left shoulder area of mine. Much of it is in the ways I hold back from expressing myself, trauma I’ve experienced, and the ways in which I emotionally regulate in the moment and don’t go back to move those feelings through with a healthy process.
It didn’t all accumulate in a day, so this isn’t going to be some instantaneous relief. It’s a process that I deserve to resource myself through, and that’s what I’m working on. I’m noticing that it’s uncomfortable and painful, and that there is a point to that.
Just like we’re not supposed to be happy all the time, we’re not supposed to feel good all the time. That’s not how we’re built. The hard and uncomfortable are as they are for a reason — maybe it’s so we can learn where we’ve faltered at resourcing ourselves, or maybe it’s so we can lean into our communities when we need help, or maybe it’s so we slow down and reflect on our own roles in contributing to our discomfort. Maybe it’s all of the above and then some. I don’t know. But I do know there’s a lot to learn in this space.
So I encourage you to notice in your body where you might deny discomfort, and experiment with seeing what it feels like and what it might be offering you to learn.
With immense gratitude and humble vibes,
