Önd Healing and Coaching

Tara Moorman, PhD, LPC, CPC

Discomfort

Getting Off The Cycle of Discomfort: Mindfulness

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You made it! You learned about Trait and State Discomfort, journeyed through the Cycle of Discomfort, and learned how Cognitive Distortions and Subjectivity can make everything feel worse. You’ve come a long way, Baby!

I hope you’ll forgive me for subjecting you to all the painful stuff first.  I teach this stuff in public classes, and I am completely aware that it can feel exhausting to focus so hard on discomfort.  I often hear, “Ok, but how do I stop this thing?” I empathize, I do.  But remember, I operate under the belief that awareness and acceptance of the current reality are key to change.  That means, I feel obligated to tell you ALL ABOUT how we get to where we are before I offer the solution – even though the solution is also about recognizing all the signs that tell us where we are.

That’s a mouthful.

At any rate.  You’re here now.

And here’s the solution: Mindfulness. [Read more…] about Getting Off The Cycle of Discomfort: Mindfulness

Oh, Discomfort! How Do We Get Ourselves There Part III

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I think if you’re still reading, you are at least partially on board with the idea that we cause the majority of our own state and trait discomfort. Yes?

Yes.

The notion that our thoughts impact our feelings and our actions is easy to understand, and the fact that thought distortions like shoulding and minimization(among others) can make everything worse is clear.  Today, I want to add one more piece to the puzzle.  This one is called subjectification.  If you look up websites that talk about cognitive distortions, you’ll find one referred to as personalization, and Subjectification is closely related.  I like to treat it as it’s own beast. [Read more…] about Oh, Discomfort! How Do We Get Ourselves There Part III

Oh, Discomfort: How Do We Get Ourselves There? Part II

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Today we’re continuing our exploration of Cognitive Behavioral ideas and how they relate to our internal trait and state discomfort.  We talked yesterday about the yummy gem, the Cycle of Discomfort (CoD) and discovered that we are largely responsible for our internal environment; our thoughts impact how we feel and how we behave.  If you’ve forgotten what the Cycle looks like, you may want to review it HERE, because I’m adding to it today.  That’s right.  We’re not really moving on to something totally new.  We’re adding a new little detail that can make the Cycle spin faster and harder, thereby bringing on MORE uncomfortable energy. [Read more…] about Oh, Discomfort: How Do We Get Ourselves There? Part II

Oh, Discomfort. How Do We Get Ourselves There? Part I

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Ok, so we talked about the 2 types of discomfort: state and trait.  (You can review that HERE if you need to.) I promised that we’d talk about how we make ourselves uncomfortable and also how mindfulness can help us change our internal state.  Let’s get started.

First up – The Cycle of Discomfort (CoD).  This little gift comes out of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and it’s a real gem!  Sometimes we can feel like we have no say in how we feel, and the CoD can really help us see just how much agency we have. [Read more…] about Oh, Discomfort. How Do We Get Ourselves There? Part I

Trait and State Discomfort

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Oh.  Discomfort.  It can look like anxiety, depression, sadness, anger, stress, tension, pain, loneliness, or any number of other words.  You name it.  For some folks, even happiness reads as discomfort.  Go figure.

There are 2 basic types of discomfort: Trait and State.

Trait Discomfort: The level of discomfort that you walk around in most of the time.    Folks with Generalized Anxiety Disorder tend to know a lot about trait discomfort, but they’re not the only ones.  Some people feel irritable a lot of the time or struggle with chronic physical pain.  There are endless kinds of discomfort and all of them can start to seem almost fixed.

State Discomfort: What happens when a trigger gets hit.  When you walk into a room and see something you don’t like and feel angry, that’s state discomfort.

Make sense?

Can you see how the level of trait discomfort impacts the level of state discomfort?  Easy right?  If you feel really frustrated most of the time, it’s likely that you’ll feel more angry if a trigger is hit.  It’s also likely that if you feel frustrated most of the time, you will experience more state periods of anger than someone who doesn’t feel frustrated most of the time.

Right.

Two questions arise for me here.  First – how do we contribute to our levels of trait and state Discomfort, and second, how do we lower both?

Those are the 2 questions I’m going to try to answer over the next several days.  You can look forward to reading about:

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