The Case For Discomfort

Discomfort is usually treated like a warning siren: avoid it, numb it, distract from it. But what if it’s also one of the most reliable signals you have for where growth and healing are actually possible? I’m Joe Grumbine, and I’m unpacking the messy, real-world link between discomfort and health, not just physical fitness, but mental health, emotional stability, and spiritual resilience too.

We start with the kinds of discomfort that don’t leave a bruise: sadness, anxiety, anger, stress, and the fallout from loss, trauma, and relationships that go sideways. I talk through how chronic stress can kick off a cortisol-driven chain reaction that touches your heart, immune system, and digestion, and how easy “relief” choices can turn into a loop that makes everything worse. Then we flip the frame and look at why pushing through the right kinds of discomfort can build confidence, reduce fear of the unknown, and help you stop living at the mercy of avoidance.

From there, I share stories that made this personal for me: public speaking when my throat literally locked up, sweat lodge experiences where heat and panic turn into breakthroughs, and what stage four cancer taught me about pain, endurance, and gratitude on the other side. We also get into sacred medicines like peyote and ayahuasca, and why therapeutic work often includes discomfort that you can’t buy your way out of. If you’ve been stuck chasing comfort, this conversation offers a grounded way to “use” discomfort without letting it break you.

Subscribe for more honest health conversations, share this with someone who needs a nudge, and leave a review if it helps. What’s one discomfort you’re ready to face on purpose?

Intro for podcast

information about subscriptions

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Well, hello and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today I want to talk about discomfort and its relationship

Why Discomfort Belongs In Health

SPEAKER_00 0:24

to health. I think that in modern times, especially in first-world nations like the United States, we focused, we meaning human beings, focused a lot on comfort, having what we need and a little more, on feeling good, on having to do less and getting more for it, and all of those things. And as many of you know, I spent uh almost two years battling cancer and ultimately defeated it, and I'm clear now, but along the way there was a lot of discomfort, and I was able to take note of how some of that discomfort was helpful. I sit with indigenous medicines, I sit with peyote, ayahuasca, anahuasca, different different medicines, and frankly, there's a point in all of them where there's some discomfort. I sit in sweat lodge regularly, and there's discomfort, and I just want to talk about that a little bit as to you know what is discomfort, the different types of discomfort, and the different ways maybe it can help us to find health. First of all, you know, we're talking about health, mind, body, and spirit. So there's physical discomfort,

Mind Body Spirit And Discomfort Types

SPEAKER_00 2:13

mental discomfort, or psychological discomfort, I guess you could call it, emotional discomfort, or spiritual discomfort. There's a lot of different ways that we can consider discomfort and the positive and possibly negative effects of it. I think that first starting with the emotional or mental

Emotional Discomfort And Its Triggers

SPEAKER_00 2:52

discomfort, I think is important. There's a relationship between emotional and mental discomfort and health, and looking at it is kind of important. So when you're looking at emotional discomfort or mental discomfort, you're looking at like feelings of unease, you know, sadness, anxiety, anger, stress, and it comes from various reasons, you know, a relationship, life experience, personal expectation. It can deal with thoughts and and processes that uh you know can trip you up, give you some self-doubt self-doubt, unproductive thinking patterns. And it can come from things like, you know, life events, different traumas, a loss, you know. You lose a job, you lose a pet, you lose you lose your watch. I mean, whatever it is, uh any loss causes discomfort, stress. I think initially we look at discomfort mentally, losses, I could, you know, relationships, I think are a big source of uh mental discomfort, emotional discomfort. I think it can have negative effects, can lead to things like anxiety, depression, uh trauma, PTSD, you know, can turn into like a hangu. It can turn into a syndrome or whatever you want to call it. I think that what happens is you get a stress response. So something

Stress Response And Health Fallout

SPEAKER_00 5:00

comes at you and you have increased cortisol, which triggers all kinds of problems. You know, it affects your cardiovascular system, your blood pressure, your immune system. And as these problems come stack on top of each other or start stacking up, whether it's the same problem over and over or just a whole lot of problems, I think it can lead to a lot of issues, you know, hypertension, heart disease. It can influence uh diabetes, certainly IBS, any number of, you know, gastrointestinal disorders, that kind of thing. I think that these types of discomforts, traumas can cause a bad cycle of lifestyle choices. A lot of times, you know, something happens makes for an easy road to a bad choice. And that can cascade sometimes. Things like coping mechanisms. Like you get have a bad day, you have discomfort, some stress. What do you do about it? Well, you might eat a crappy meal because it feels good, you might engage in your substance of choice because it feels good. You might just lay around because you don't feel like doing anything. Just sit there and you know, what do they call it? Bed rotting or whatever. Just getting stuck. You can start reducing engagement, you know, you can start withdrawing from your social community, and then I can have a cascading problem. If you have already some issues, it can impact it. So if you've got, you know, whatever your your depression, anxiety, bipolar, ADHD, whatever your issue is, these discomforts I think can exacerbate these problems. So from a mental point of view, there's definitely a point of view that would say that discomfort can be harmful to your health. The other side of it is I think discomfort can be good for you.

Turning Hard Moments Into Strength

SPEAKER_00 7:44

I think in a lot of ways overcoming difficult problems with regards to relationships or losses or you know, whatever the problem is, it really doesn't matter what the discomfort is. Maybe you have to go and speak in public, or maybe you have to, you know, present yourself in some kind of a public way. Well, if you're able to step forward and do it anyways, and endure the discomfort, you get a reward. And when it comes to a relationship, it's not such an immediate reward because usually it doesn't happen right away. But as you move on, as you find yourself okay with being alone or or being okay with the loss that you've suffered, you start to get a new sense of ability, and a new confidence, a new gift where you didn't have it before. Maybe if you've never had a loss, it the fear of losing that relationship or whatever that is would keep you in a bad situation longer because you would rather have a bad situation than have a situation go bad and lose it. And after you've had a bad relationship and you've gotten over it, well the next time around, eventually we do heal up, eventually we get back to a relationship again, we get back to loving again, and the fear of that loss isn't so much. Because you can say to yourself, well, what's the worst thing that could happen in any situation, right? I could die. All right, that's the worst could happen. I'm gone. If you can handle that thought, then you go down from there. Well, what's the next worst thing? And you go, well, I I could lose my whatever, my house, my car, my relationship, my well, the things that we might find important, my health. And then you got to reckon with that. If you've never experienced a difficulty, a discomfort that you had to endure and overcome, it's different from if you have. And if you have, you go, well, I've been there, I can probably get through it. I'll be all right. And I think it makes a big difference. I know that if I look at my life, how I acted with maybe the first relationship or the first couple relationships I was in, as opposed to how I might act today, it's different. And even though I have a wife of 30 years, I also have had a divorce, and I know what it's like to be not married, and it's not that I would want that, but I know I could survive it if something happened. My wife passed, or whatever, decided she didn't love me anymore. Whatever it is, I know that as difficult as it might be, I've been there, I've done that, and I'll be all right. It affects things. There's a level of a little teeny buffer zone that says, I don't have this, you know, fear of the unknown. I think that I think that's where a lot of discomfort comes from. You know, sadness is a discomfort. But when you've been sad a few times, you realize maybe that, well, I'm just sad. It'll pass. And you realize that feelings oftentimes don't last very long unless you feed them. I think that mental discomfort, you know, like putting yourself in awkward spots, like maybe reaching out and talking to that person that you'd

Awkward Courage And Public Speaking

SPEAKER_00 12:28

really like to talk to, but you're not good at that, or getting up and and you know, doing a reading at the moth, or or having to get up in front of a city council, or whatever it is, and and and give a speech or give a presentation of some sort. I know the first time it happened to me, uh, I was a kid, I was probably 30 maybe, and they were working on the property behind us, and they were looking at drilling a bunch of wells and building a bunch of homes. And we went to the county supervisors meeting, and I wanted to express my concern about the water table and you know them pumping water out of the ground and what that's gonna do to the surrounding properties. And I tell you what, I got up to that podium and I I didn't really particularly feel all that nervous, but the second it was my turn to talk, I literally got a frog in my throat. And I was like embarrassing as hell. But I did my best and I and I and I went forward over time in my life. I found myself in a situation where I I speak publicly all the time now. And after that first time, the most difficult, the most discomfort, uncomfortable position I've been in in a long time, I realized it wasn't that big of a deal. And so the second time I cared less about what anybody thought. And I did it and I made my mistakes and moved on. And so, you know, performance anxiety, whatever you want to call it, you get better when you get through a discomfort like that, and it becomes to a point where you realize that's where you grow. I think that the fear of the unknown is a source of a lot of mental discomfort. So, like, you know, the guy that wants to talk to the girl, but he doesn't have any game, and oh, she's so intriguing, and you just want to say something to her, but you just you don't know what to say, and she's gonna shoot you down, or whatever it is. But you finally just get up there and you say, Hey, I'm Joe. I think you're really pretty, or I noticed you were doing this or that, or whatever. You you you start a conversation, and the second she responds back, maybe she says, I'm not interested. Or maybe she says smiles at you and says, Oh, yeah, I'm Sally, and this is what I'm doing. Either way, all of a sudden you feel better. And I guarantee you the next time you come into that situation, it's easier. It might might not be easy, but it's easier, and you get a little stronger, and I think it's there's something about that. Like you push yourself to endure a discomfort, and your ability to endure a discomfort gets more, and the discomfort itself gets less, and I think it helps you to accomplish more. I think that you know, fear of failure. People don't do things because they're afraid it's not gonna work, and because of that, they don't do things. You know, how many great ideas never got hatched because the person was afraid it wasn't

Fear Of Failure And Failing Forward

SPEAKER_00 17:14

gonna work? You know, it's like, what is it, Maxwell's idea of failing forward? I totally agree with that. You know, I think you're gonna do so much better in life if you give it a whirl, go out there and flop, and then look at what happened and go, oh, okay, I can see what I did wrong. Maybe I'll try it again, maybe it won't flop so much. Or you realize it was just a terrible idea, and next time around you'll not consider that thing. Either way, out of that failure comes some value, you grow from it. So I think emotionally, if you are willing and able to endure and get through it, I think you're gonna benefit. I think it's gonna be good for your health, your mental health, and your emotional health, and your spiritual health. I don't know that there's any example of a time where a discomfort is terminal unless you let it again. The difference might be that you have physiological issues, some kind of a mental imbalance or a brain chemistry issue that you just don't have the capacity to get through a certain thing. You get triggered so bad by a thing, maybe because something happened to you when you were a child or whatever the trauma was, doesn't matter. Maybe there's just you find it difficult or impossible to to get through, and it locks you up and just blows you apart every time. But I think most of us, most of the time, have the ability to get better because of the discomfort. I go into sweat lodge regularly, and in the sweat lodge, it's a dark place, and sometimes it's very crowded. I've had people that wouldn't go in because they're claustrophobic.

Sweat Lodge Discomfort And Breakthroughs

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Sometimes it can be very uncomfortable, even just getting there. Like my knees sometimes gives me grief, and it's hard for me to, you know, sit cross-legged or or sit, you know, you're sitting on the dirt in a in a sort of small low dome, and it gets completely dark, and then these red-hot lava stones get brought in, and the water gets poured over them, and you're in the dark, and it all of a sudden the steams in there, and it's hard to breathe. It gets hot. Sometimes it gets really hot, and it you start sweating real hard, and you find yourself rubbing up against somebody on accident, you don't mean to, but we're all squished together, and there's a discomfort there, and you start tapping into emotions, and sometimes you think you're not gonna make it, you can't breathe, you're gonna, and you the person that's running it usually will tell you you know, you're gonna run into a time where you think you can't go on, but just slow down and just breathe through it and go, you know, I'm just gonna go a little longer, I'm just gonna make it a little longer. Put your head down a little lower to the ground, the air's a little cooler down there. You'll be okay. Just relax, breathe slow, breathe steady, but breathe, keep going. And every once in a while, somebody will go, oh, I can't do it, and they got they they leave in the middle of the thing. Many times somebody will find themselves, you know, panicked. Oh my god, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this. And somebody will go, okay, well, just slow down, you know, maybe pour a little cool water on them for a second. Just go, you know, just take a second, just breathe. You're okay, you're gonna be all right. And try laying down and just see if you can be okay and just lay down. But more often than not, the people will find their way through it and and continue on to the next cycle. And you know, there's usually four cycles, four doors. And I have seen so many breakthroughs happen out of that discomfort, and all of a sudden you'll be sitting there with all these people in there, and somebody'll start weeping, and then they'll start talking about you know, their addiction or their loss of a loved one, or the relationship that went south, or what happened to them as a child, or whatever it is, and they'll open up a box and they'll sit square with that thing that was haunting them, and they'll work through it, and they'll cry and they'll weep and and and that they'll come out better. And even if none of that happens, when you get yourself in a spot where you're like, wow, this is tough, you know, I've done it many, many times, and each time there's always a point where I'm like, Whew, I don't know if I want to stay in here, but you do, and you get your little break. Between rounds, and all of a sudden you're like, all right, I can do this. I gotta just go one more, and it's just continuing on taking that one next step. And I think it makes a gigantic difference. You come out feeling so good, and part of why you feel good is because you overcame a difficulty, you did something that you didn't want to do. I mean, while it was happening, and I really think it makes us stronger, it makes us better, it makes us healthier, makes us more capable. And I think that's important. When I was going through my cancer, uh I had stage four squamous cell carcinoma, I had a giant tumor sticking out of my neck, and it was not only discomfort, but it was painful, and it was hideous, and I had to go and

Cancer Pain And The Gift After

SPEAKER_00 23:58

be out in public. I was still teaching, I was still, you know, running programs here in the Gardens of Hope. I had people come, I look at videos of me, and I'm like, wow, you I just kept going, even though I had this gigantic lump sticking out of my neck, and it was hideous and horrible and foul and ugly. I just did it. And I look back and I go, wow, I'm better because of that. The pain was so bad at one point I couldn't sleep. And I was only getting maybe an hour, hour and a half of sleep at night, and it was it was just miserable. But you know what? I got through it, I lived. And today, every day, every minute of every day, I'm just like, yeah, I'm here, I'm alive, and I've got a little bit of side, you know, residual from the chemo I took, a little neuropathy, a little sore shoulders, a little this, a little that. So what? I sleep like a baby, I'm able to get out there and work again. I don't hurt, I don't have a giant lump sticking out of me, my hair's growing back. All of the things that I went through that were uncomfortable now are a joy. And I wouldn't trade them for the world. I do would never want to go through that again. I hope to God I never do. But in a lot of ways, I got something from that experience that I don't think I could have got any other way. And I would certainly wouldn't have got if it wasn't uncomfortable and scary as hell. And so yeah, there's something something about discomfort that has got a value to it. When I I sit with sacred medicines, I sit with peyotes sometimes, a lot, quite a bit, actually. I've sat with combo, buffo, you know, anahuasca. All of these medicines,

Sacred Medicines And Therapeutic Nausea

SPEAKER_00 26:15

they put you in a place where you're uncomfortable. Usually it's nausea, and you might throw up. I I know recently I I sat with Peyote and I I was horribly nauseous the whole night and I couldn't throw up. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I didn't. And it was just so uncomfortable. But this medicine has helped me so much in so many ways. I thought to myself, what is it giving me? You know, how am I benefiting? Well, I'm in the middle of it and I'm under the influence of it, and I was taking care of the fire and having to focus on that. Meanwhile, I was just really, oh, just didn't, I just wanted to lay down and go to sleep, but I couldn't do that. And all of a sudden, I started laughing. I said, Well, this medicine's just got a hell of a sense of humor. And even though the nausea didn't really go away, it stopped bothering me. Once I could laugh at myself and and and realize that it's pretty frigging hilarious that I'm enduring this right now, kind of on my own volition. I I put the medicine into me on my own. And I think that without the discomfort that each of these medicines brings, I don't think they would be as effective, as powerful. I think if all it did was like heroin or or maybe even alcohol or pot. Generally, there's not a negative part to it. You just feel good, right? You take a couple drinks, next thing you know, you're feeling good. Take a couple hits of weed, feel good right away. You ingest opiate, you fuel fired, cocaine, amphetamines, whatever the drugs that theoretically are harmful to you, have no discomfort whatsoever. Whereas the medicines or the drugs, if you will, that do bring you discomfort have incredible therapeutic curative value. I don't know what the correlation is entirely, I don't know how it works or why, but I'm sharing my observations of it all. I just think that anytime you find yourself in a state of discomfort, that you have some value coming to it. And so, what's actually happened in my life, I kind of live in the discomfort physically. Let's just get into that before we go too long. You work out, it hurts. You're sore afterward. That's how you know you got stronger. If you work out and it doesn't hurt, and you don't get sore afterward, you probably didn't do

Workouts Injury Pain And Useful Signals

SPEAKER_00 29:36

anything for yourself. It seems like the most obvious solution. Get yourself a good workout. Afterward, you can hardly move because you're just sore as hell, and you know that you leveled up, you got stronger than you were. Now, the counterpoint to that is if you're injured, but once again, the discomfort helps you. Pain, your nervous system's response to injury or or damage, you get burnt, you hurt your muscle, you get get a blunt force trauma, you get laceration, you get whatever the injury is, it hurts. It lets you know you got a problem. And if you hurt in a place, it's probably a good idea not to hurt that place again. And what happens? You know, you get you twist your ankle, your ankle hurts when you put pressure on it. So it encourages you to keep pressure off of it. Hello, so that discomfort helps you by keeping you from bringing more trauma to an already traumatized situation. So either side of it, it seems that the discomfort is a friend. So I am going to say to you, as my parting thought here, consider embracing discomfort, consider minding it, managing it, being

Embracing Discomfort As A Practice

SPEAKER_00 31:28

mindful of it, and using it to your advantage health-wise. And whether it's telling you to keep away from something or don't do something again, or don't do it anymore. Just be aware. Be aware of the lesson. And I guarantee you, if you keep yourself somewhat in a state of discomfort, you will keep yourself moving forward in a in a meaningful, irregular way. That's my thoughts on discomfort today. This has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I want to thank you all for joining us, and we will see you next time.