i was reading several articles written by random upper-middle-class people about how Kids These Days are too anxious because their parents don't teach them to "deal with discomfort" and coddle them too much, and This Generation uses "trauma" to refer to any mild discomfort and have broadened the words "abuse" and "bullying" too much et cetera
There is a very abundant supply of such articles and a recent one especially annoyed the hell out of me because it (without actually mentioning the idea of disability) repeatedly alluded to accommodating a kid's sensory issues as example of parents being too permissive or failing to teach kids to tolerate discomfort.
That's bullshit because being in tune with your own needs and discomforts sensory wise is so fucking important for being able to adapt and function in the world.
Like, just an example, I got rid of almost every piece of clothing I own that was polyester or a polyester blend and just doing that dramatically improved my life and gave me more ability to cope with stressors, because I figured out that a lot of my sensory issues with clothes came from bad temperature regulation and the scratchy pills that polyester blends make.
"Discomfort tolerance" has never been super helpful as a concept for me. I have no problem tolerating discomfort in the sense of like, not doing anything about the thing that's hurting me. It's just that if I do it for too long, I can't think straight and process what's happening around me and I eventually become so fatigued it feels like I've got a fever, or else become uncontrollably angry.
I think "discomfort curiosity" is way better concept. You feel uncomfortable. What is the feeling like? Where in your body do you feel it? What does your body urge you to do about it? When does it start? What is it responding to? What about that thing makes you feel that way? Feel it...Experiment with it...Dabble in it...Play with it. I say curiosity because curiosity is so closely related to fear and to some extent, disgust. Curiosity is a frontier zone between repulsion and fascination.
Curiosity is an instinct that encourages us toward unfamiliar things, not away from them. It is part of a large landscape of feelings where away-instincts and toward-instincts are blended together.
I think of the difference between curiosity and fear to be like the difference between solitude and loneliness, or like excitement and apprehension. Or, think of exploring an eerie abandoned place, one of the "liminal spaces" the internet speaks of. The place is "eerie" which is closely related to fear, but the "eerieness" shades into becoming a positive stimulus that our instincts are drawn toward. Liminal spaces, for those of us that enjoy them, are "creepy," but they are also "nice" at the same time. And the "creepiness" is part of the "niceness."
And curiosity is sensitivity. It allows for openness and playfulness toward the unknown.
Many humans' relationships with their own urges and instincts are based on domination and punishment. Tyranny over the body by the mind. The goal is to absorb without shock and endure without indulging the urge to seek relief, to reduce your attunement to your body.
But the ability to be "less controlled by" your body's urges is not positive, because your body is providing information about what your needs are. I find that the ability to make reasoned decisions about how and when and why to persist through something painful requires a deeper attunement to the body's instincts, not a greater ability to ignore them.
Stop treating your bodies like they're animals in a cruel experiment to be shocked with electricity until they lay on the floor whimpering in helplessness. It doesn't help.
Also, any article that suggests people are taking bullying too seriously should be launched into the sun because we don't take it nearly seriously enough i think.
