When teens can't tolerate discomfort, they might doomscroll or pick their skin to cope
Teens will often avoid uncomfortable feelings by doomscrolling, drinking, smoking, picking at their body, or pacing. Developing coping skills can help them grow.
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- Discomfort can lead teens to do things like scroll on their phones, pick their scabs, or even drink.
- Learning to acknowledge and sit with discomfort can help them tolerate and move past it more easily.
- This is an adapted excerpt from "The Emotionally Intelligent Teen" by Melanie McNally, a psychologist and founder of Destination You.
Discomfort is an emotional response to many situations like hard conversations with loved ones, uncertainty about the future, or making tough decisions. But discomfort is also a common physical response to a variety of emotions such as boredom, insecurity, anxiety, or loneliness. Basically, discomfort can show up as an emotion and as a physical feeling.
Many teens and young adults don't know how to tolerate discomfort and end up doing things to avoid it, like going on their phones, drinking, smoking, picking at their bodies, or pacing. But whether emotional or behavioral, discomfort is a normal part of life, and if you want to learn how to manage your feelings better, you're also going to have to learn how to tolerate discomfort.
Learning to notice how we experience discomfort is important
Do you notice when you experience discomfort? If you answered no, it's likely because you're not giving yourself a chance to even feel it. You're probably jumping on your phone or engaging in another avoidance tactic the second discomfort starts to make an appearance.
You're going to have to start paying attention to why you're picking up your phone, drinking, smoking, picking, or pacing. You'll have to pause the moment you do one of those things and ask yourself, What's making me uncomfortable right now? On the flip side, if you answered yes to noticing discomfort, what are some things that incite discomfort in you? When do you notice it? How are you currently managing it?
To learn how to tolerate discomfort, you'll need to acknowledge it, understand why you're feeling it, and sit with it. We don't avoid the feeling. Instead, we acknowledge it: I'm feeling discomfort right now.
We understand the reason: This conversation is really hard but necessary.
And we stay put: I can continue this conversation despite my discomfort.
We don't get on our phones, leave, or distract from the discomfort. We acknowledge the feeling, understand why, and we stay in the situation — if it's a safe one. Tolerating discomfort is hard. No one likes it. But we can't run from it forever.
Sitting with feelings can help make them more tolerable
I once had a client who felt discomfort whenever she was lonely. To deal with these feelings, she'd pick up her phone, get on social media, and scroll. She'd see friends hanging out without her and people engaging in fun things, which would then make her feel even lonelier. Since she was lonelier, her discomfort intensified and scrolling wasn't enough to avoid the feeling, so she'd pick at scabs, cuticles, bug bites, pimples, or whatever other imperfections she could find on her body. She'd notice the damage of her picking and feel out of control. She didn't know what to do.
What do you think we did in our work together? We worked on learning how to tolerate discomfort. She needed to learn how to tolerate the discomfort of being lonely.
She learned how to acknowledge her emotions first: I'm feeling lonely, which is really uncomfortable.
She worked to understand why: I don't have anyone to hang out with today.
And she learned how to stay in her emotions: These feelings are normal, they won't kill me. I can feel lonely and uncomfortable as I move through my day.
She didn't avoid or distract and instead, she allowed herself to feel the emotions while she did the things she needed to do that day, like showering, cleaning her room, and doing laundry. Eventually, the loneliness and discomfort decreased enough that she was able to focus on things she enjoyed and wanted to do.
Excerpted from "The Emotionally Intelligent Teen: Skills to Help You Deal with What You Feel, Build Stronger Relationships, and Boost Self-Confidence" (New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Copyright © 2023 Melanie McNally). Reprinted with permission from New Harbinger Publications.