A girlfriend of mine recently told me a story. I’m paraphrasing, but it goes something like this: A girl was stuck in an all day meeting for work. Early on, she noticed that her underwear were really uncomfortable. There were many attempts to adjust, re-adjust and re-adjust again to find comfort. But with no luck, the underwear continued to distract and agitate her. With some embarrassment, she excused herself from the meeting. She ran to her desk, grabbed a pair of scissors, and with two snips, removed her underwear. Sigh -comfort.
The context of the story my girlfriend told me was after a long morning of frustrated venting about a mutual friend who was continuing to create drama and toxicity in her life. The mutual friend in this metaphor is the uncomfortable underwear. And sometimes, we have to snip, snip not just uncomfortable underwear, but uncomfortable people from our lives. I think of this story often when I complain about something over and over again. But the flip side to this is that I have the choice to continue putting myself in that situation. (Or to loop back to the original metaphor, I can choose to keep wearing those underwear).
It’s an interesting thing we do; continue to tolerate things in life that bring us nothing but discomfort. As a therapist, I don’t know that any single person has come to talk without there being relationship distress. Now the truth is, we don’t always choose our relationships – maybe our problems come from a family we were born into, or maybe our new boss got hired after we already had a job. Other times we learn that a friend we’ve aligned with, or a person we are dating isn’t all that great for us. So why do we stay? That’s a loaded question, and there are plenty of blog posts, self-help books and therapists out there to help you figure that out.
The point I hope to make is that we begin to recognize our personal role in choosing to stay uncomfortable. What can you do about the discomfort? In regards to the relationship topic: can you cut the person out? Can you learn to create space? Can you look at the person though a different lens to shift how you view and interact with them? Can you yourself build skills to improve the relationship?
It’s not always as simple as grabbing a pair of scissors and literally cutting your underwear off, but the same freedom we create for ourselves in that decision isn’t far off.
One of my favorite quotes to close: ”I suppose that since most of our hurt comes through relationships, so will our healing” – The Shack
Lindsey Arens, LPC 