The Power of Discomfort | Lab Notes

Jamey Maniscalco (00:01.272)
Hey everybody, and welcome to Next Door Neuro Lab Notes. In this week's episode, I'm gonna be reflecting on a conversation that I had with Erica Mallory, who is a coach and the founder of Shame Over, a community that helps women rethink their relationship with alcohol without the shame and guilt that tends to be associated with this process. And one idea that has really stuck with me since our conversation is that the real problem might not be alcohol.

But it might be our inability to sit with discomfort. And what Erica has highlighted in my perspective is profound and an important shift in how we think about a relationship with something that we're not happy with. So the common belief for most of us is that we think when we have a relationship with something we're not happy with, that the problem is the behavior and the relationship itself. It's the drinking, it's the scrolling, it's the snacking. And we think

I need to stop drinking so much. I need to stop scrolling all the time. I need to stop snacking late at night. However, it might be that the behavior isn't as much the problem as it is the solution. And this mindset shift can help us really get to the root of the issue and make stopping the problem behavior a lot easier.

And so that's not to say that alcohol or snacking or phones might not be a problem in and of themselves. However, it's important to recognize that these behaviors exist because they work. The drinking, the phone scrolling, the snacking exist because they solve something in the moment. And until we recognize that, we are going to struggle to change the behavior itself. So what are these things solving for us? These things tend to solve discomfort.

whether it's stress or anxiety, boredom, emotional overload, or just the mental noise that kind of sits with us all the time. It is not random that we've grabbed for alcohol, our phones, or some tasty food. These things help us regulate in the short term. And so to understand how this really plays out, it's important to understand how our brain plays a role in all of this.

Jamey Maniscalco (02:22.37)
And so your brain is built to avoid discomfort. Our brains have evolved to seek relief and to seek reward, and then to repeat what works. So how this plays out in day-to-day is we will experience discomfort, whether it's stress or uncertainty, whether it's social discomfort or some sort of emotional pain. And what happens in our brain is a region deep within our brain called the amygdala activates in response to this discomfort.

And that leads to feelings of anxiety, of restlessness, of that, don't like this feeling, feeling. And another region of our brain that sits right up front, the furthest forward, most part of our brain, called the prefrontal cortex. It recognizes that we're having these emotions and tries to understand the context, tries to understand the causes, and tries to control and manage the emotion. The prefrontal cortex is

interpreting what's happening, and then it's going to assess a number of different paths that we can take. Okay, how do I deal with this? It's going to predict our estimated outcomes. If I do each of these, what might happen? If I do this, this might happen. If I do this, this might happen. If I do this, this might happen. And then it chooses the action that is most aligned with who we are, with our goals, and with what we want out of life. But the challenge is

When discomfort levels are really high or they are presenting chronically all the time, the stress associated with this actually decreases the ability of our prefrontal cortex to function effectively. And so what ends up happening is we start leaning on existing habits that lead to relief rather than thinking about what the best case outcome is and the best actions to take are for us in this moment.

You might see where this is going, but when we lean on something that is consistent and reliable and habitual, oftentimes we rely on alcohol or food or distraction in these moments. And let's talk about alcohol specifically in this context. So alcohol quickly gets encoded in the brain as a relief mechanism that works really effectively. Not only is it powerful, but it is consistent

Jamey Maniscalco (04:49.258)
in relieving anxiety, stress, and worry in the short term. And alongside this, and as part of this, it activates the dopamine reward pathways in our brain that not only give us feelings of pleasure and reward, but also reinforce the behavior of drinking itself. And so what does this look like? Alcohol can fuel what we consider a negative reinforcement loop. So you...

feel bad for some reason. Maybe you're anxious, you're worried, you're stressed. You take the reliable and consistent path to relief, which is alcohol, and you feel better in the short term. And that relief and the dopamine that's associated with that reinforces the behavior so that the next time you are worried, you're concerned, you're overwhelmed, you go back to the thing your brain knows is going to work, the alcohol. And this becomes your default habit loop.

And you default to this behavior during periods of high stress because it's too much for your prefrontal cortex to handle to think of all the other options you have to relieve your stress. And this applies not only with alcohol, but with other coping mechanisms as well. So we might reach for a drink because it's our habitual, consistent, powerful way to reduce stress. We might reach for our phone because it's our habitual, powerful, consistent way to reduce boredom.

We might reach for food because it's our powerful, consistent, and beneficial way to reduce emotional discomfort. And so all of a sudden we start getting down this path where these negative or deleterious behaviors, eating sweet foods late at night, grabbing for our phone every time we're bored, grabbing for a drink every time we feel stressed or at each evening to calm down after work,

These become our habitual behaviors and we default to them without even thinking.

Jamey Maniscalco (06:48.802)
And there's a modern problem that really underlies this entire thing. And the idea here is we never have to feel discomfort anymore. Evolutionarily, humans were constantly in discomfort, but we've created environments and societies in which we never have to feel that discomfort. We can grab for our phone for instant distraction from thoughts or feelings we don't want to feel. We can grab for food that is

what we'd call highly palatable, really tasty, sugary, sweet, salty. And this food gives us instant comfort when we're feeling upset. And we can grab for alcohol when we want instant relief from stress. And for most of us in this world, these coping mechanisms that are instant are ever available. They're ever present. We have our phones, our food, and for many of us, alcohol constantly in our lives.

But because these things are always there, we never learn a real critical skill for what it looks like to be an effective human in this world. We never learn how to sit with discomfort and to allow ourselves to not be comfortable all the time. And when we don't have this skill, what we do instead is we constantly escape. We drink, we scroll, we eat.

We look to numb ourselves or to avoid those feelings because we can, because they're easy, they're consistent, and they're powerful. And why this matters is if you're looking to change the behavior, drinking when you don't really want to drink or it leads to poor decisions and consequences, grabbing for your phone every time you have 30 seconds to yourself.

eating food late at night when you are tired and stressed about finishing things up for the next day, you're never going to change those behaviors effectively and quickly until you change your relationship with discomfort. And so the mistake that many people think about and make when they're looking to change this relationship is trying to replace the behavior. Instead of drinking, what should I do? Instead of grabbing my phone, what should I do? And the truth is nothing

Jamey Maniscalco (09:11.926)
is going to feel like alcohol. Nothing is going to replace what alcohol is doing for you in that moment. And that's the point. The real work we need to be thinking about doing is building our ability to sit with the discomfort of removing that behavior and not being comfortable. We're not looking to eliminate it. We're not looking to escape it. We are looking to sit with that emotion, with that feeling. And what this looks like in real life,

is starting small in my perspective is always the best way to go. Take 30 seconds, maybe a minute or two if you're feeling super brave and courageous, and just sit. Don't have a phone with you, no distractions, and just sit and notice how you're feeling and the world around you. And at first, what you'll likely notice is a lot of restlessness.

You might feel the urge to escape. I need to grab for something. I need to think about this. my gosh, my to-do list is now scrolling through my head. I have tons of mental noise. And that is okay. That is completely normal, especially for those of us who have been trained to constantly be thinking about something in our external environment. But what you're actually doing when you sit for this discomfort, even for 30 seconds or a minute, you're not doing nothing. You're actually training your nervous system during this time.

And what you're teaching your brain and your nervous system is this feeling of discomfort is safe. I don't need to escape it. Nothing catastrophic is going to happen right now. And at first, your brain's going to react strongly. Your amygdala is going to fire. You're going to feel that anxiety, that worry. You're going to feel the urge to escape. But what happens if you sit with it and when you don't act on it?

Is your prefrontal cortex that helps contextualize this emotion and think about how to act on it? Has a moment to pause and step back and say, huh, we're okay. We don't need to react. Nothing bad will happen if this emotion arises in this context. And over time, this starts changing the pattern in your brain. And the pattern goes from this emotion feels overwhelming,

Jamey Maniscalco (11:31.737)
to this emotion is tolerable, to being manageable, to something that doesn't even control your behavior anymore. And this isn't because the world changed or that you never feel these emotions, you still do. It's because your brain has changed the way it responds to them. And for those of you who are interested, this entire process is a well-known process that psychologists refer to as extinction learning.

So you're not getting better at tolerating discomfort per se. You're teaching your brain that it was never dangerous in the first place, that it doesn't need to be something we have a threat and an alarm signal in response to. And so your old behavior loop might look like discomfort, followed by escape, whether that's alcohol, phone, food, followed by relief, followed by pleasure and reinforcement. Okay, I grabbed for my phone.

I got distracted, I didn't have to think that negative thought. That has reinforced that this is a great way to get away from discomfort. Then you're in a vicious cycle. But your new loop with this training of your nervous system looks like discomfort, stay, sit in it. Your brain learns that nothing bad happens by feeling that emotion. And slowly and over time with practice, your brain rewires to make this

less of an intentional sitting in an emotion, and your default of being able to sit with discomfort. It becomes habitual. And again, you're not removing this discomfort. You are removing the need to escape the discomfort. And this bigger shift means that you don't need the coping mechanism behavior as much anymore. You don't need to be reaching for the glass of wine or the beer.

You don't need to be reaching for your phone. You don't need to be grabbing for the dessert late at night when you really know you don't want to because you don't need to cope with that negative feeling as directly anymore. You're able to sit with it and still be okay. So by recognizing how to sit with discomfort and embracing that, you're going to reduce your need naturally for these coping mechanisms.

Jamey Maniscalco (13:58.551)
And all of a sudden you're going to see through indirect action, your ability to reduce the behavior that was the apparent problem in the first place. So the big takeaway here is that the goal for us often shouldn't be to eliminate our bad habits, but to build the emotional and physiological capability to sit with the emotions, to sit with the discomfort that comes when we do not utilize that bad habit as a solution.

to some sort of problem. So what I'd like for you to consider today, and you can absolutely do this today, is in your next moment of discomfort, maybe it's you're feeling overwhelmed by what you have to do tomorrow at work. Maybe you're standing in the grocery line and it's longer than normal and you feel the need to pull out your phone to distract you in this moment. Don't do that. Instead, pause. Don't escape.

and stay in that emotion for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, maybe two minutes if you're feeling wild. And go ahead, set a timer on your phone and then put your phone away. And then after that, you can go back to whatever coping mechanism you might rely on. Grab for the food, go have the drink, pull out your phone while you're in the grocery store line, but feel what does this look like when you sit

in that emotion and you sit with that discomfort for just a minute or two and recognize that you are going to be okay and see this as your first step in training and then try to expand on that over time. But don't stress about where it's going right now. Focus on what can I do today, right now. And so my overall takeaway from this wonderful conversation with Erica was the problem often isn't our bad habits.

The problem is often what our bad habits are solving. And if you can address that, the habit becomes much easier to manage itself. So I hope this episode has been helpful to you. Thank you so much for being here. And I look forward to seeing you next time on Next Door Neuro.