We've Learned What Not to Tolerate, But Have We Forgotten How to Tolerate Discomfort?

We've gotten better at identifying what we shouldn't have to tolerate, but we also need to spend more time teaching people what they can learn to tolerate.

Over the last several years, we've seen a significant shift in the way we talk about mental health and relationships. People have become more aware of unhealthy dynamics, more comfortable setting boundaries, and more willing to question behaviors and relationships that previous generations may have simply accepted. And overall, this has been a very good thing.

For a long time, people were encouraged to tolerate things they shouldn't have had to. They were told to keep the peace, avoid conflict, put other people's needs ahead of their own, and remain in relationships that were genuinely harmful. We needed to challenge those messages, and I'm glad we have.

But I am starting to think that, in our efforts to help people recognize what they shouldn't have to tolerate, we've neglected to talk enough about what they also need to learn how to tolerate.

Not everything that makes us uncomfortable is unhealthy. Not every difficult interaction is a sign that something is wrong. Not every disappointment is a violation of our boundaries, and not every person who frustrates us, disagrees with us, or even offends us, is someone we automatically need to distance ourselves from. The reality is that discomfort is just a part of being a human who lives in this world and has relationships with other people and learning how to manage that discomfort is an important part of our emotional health.

One of the things I find interesting about the way we talk about mental health today is how much of the conversation focuses on what other people need to stop doing to us. We constantly hear about “protecting our peace,” removing “toxic” people from our lives, setting boundaries, and recognizing “red flags.” These are all valuable conversations, especially for people who have spent years ignoring their own needs or accepting genuinely unhealthy treatment. 

But there's another side of emotional health that I think needs just as much attention: What we need to develop within ourselves. The ability to tolerate disappointment without becoming resentful. To hear feedback without immediately becoming defensive. To experience frustration without needing someone else to make it go away. To accept that people we love will sometimes misunderstand us, irritate us, disappoint us, or see things differently than we do. And to recognize that we can experience all of those things without necessarily being in an unhealthy relationship.

We need to be careful that in teaching people they don't have to tolerate mistreatment, that we don't inadvertently teach them that they shouldn't have to tolerate discomfort. Because if our expectation is that healthy relationships should not make us uncomfortable, we're going to have a very difficult time maintaining them.

Think about some of the ordinary experiences that come with being in relationships. Your spouse gives you feedback that you don't particularly want to hear. A friend makes plans without including you. A family member disagrees with a decision you've made. Someone you care about doesn't respond to you in the way you hoped they would. These experiences can bring up all kinds of feelings. Hurt, disappointment, embarrassment, insecurity, frustration, and even anger. Those feelings are real and deserve attention. But the presence of those feelings doesn't automatically mean that someone has done something wrong.

Sometimes a friend making plans without you is just a friend making plans without you. Sometimes feedback feels uncomfortable because it's difficult to hear, not because the person offering it is being critical or unkind. Sometimes someone else's needs or preferences conflict with our own, and neither person is necessarily wrong. 

Now of course, context, patterns and the way someone communicates are important. And sometimes these experiences will point to bigger problems that need to be addressed. But I think we've become so accustomed to dissecting how other people's behavior makes us feel that we can forget to think, is this something I need the other person to change, or is this something I need to learn how to manage within myself? Sometimes the answer is both. And being able to know the difference is an important part of emotional maturity.

This is especially relevant to the way we talk about boundaries.

Boundaries are very trendy these days. They are also very important. They help us recognize our limits, communicate our needs, and make decisions about what we are and aren't willing to participate in. But not every attempt to avoid an uncomfortable experience is a boundary. Sometimes what we're calling a boundary is actually our trying to avoid disappointment, vulnerability, conflict, or the possibility that someone else might not respond the way we want them to.

For example, deciding that you won't participate in conversations where someone repeatedly insults or belittles you is a reasonable boundary. But deciding that you won't engage with anyone who challenges your perspective or gives you feedback you don't like is not the same thing. One is about protecting yourself from mistreatment. The other may be about protecting yourself from discomfort.

Healthy boundaries don't eliminate the need for emotional regulation, flexibility, or difficult conversations. In fact, maintaining healthy relationships often requires all of those skills.

We need to be able to communicate when something bothers us without automatically making the other person responsible for fixing how we feel. We need to tolerate hearing things we don't agree with, and sometimes things we don't like about ourselves. We need to recognize that other people are entitled to have their own feelings, preferences, and limits, even when those conflict with ours. And we need to be able to remain engaged in relationships when things aren't going exactly the way we'd prefer.

In therapy, we often talk about something called distress tolerance, which is essentially the ability to experience difficult emotions without immediately needing to escape them, act on them, or make them disappear. It's an important skill because discomfort is unavoidable.

We will all experience rejection, disappointment, uncertainty, frustration, embarrassment, and situations that feel unfair. We will have moments when people don't understand us, when things don't work out, and when we don't get what we want.

Emotional health isn't about reaching a point where these experiences no longer bother us. It's about developing the ability to manage the feelings they bring up. 

That might mean sitting with disappointment instead of immediately blaming someone. It might mean allowing yourself to feel hurt without assuming that the person who hurt you intended to do so. It might mean hearing criticism, considering whether there's something useful in it, and resisting the urge to immediately defend yourself. It might also mean having a difficult conversation rather than avoiding it because you're worried about how the other person will respond. And sometimes it means accepting that a situation isn't ideal, but that you can still manage it.

This doesn't mean suppressing emotions, pretending things don't bother us, or forcing ourselves to remain in situations that are genuinely harmful. It does recognizing that we can experience uncomfortable feelings without always needing to eliminate the circumstances that created them.

That's a very different way of approaching emotional well-being than expecting our environment and the people around us to consistently accommodate our emotional needs.

I think this conversation is particularly important when it comes to parenting.

Most parents don't want to see their children struggle. When our children are disappointed, excluded, frustrated, or upset, our instinct is often to step in and make things better. And there are times when we absolutely should. But there are also times when our children need us to help them manage an uncomfortable experience rather than remove it.

A child doesn't get invited to a birthday party. A friend chooses to play with someone else at recess. A teacher gives feedback they don't like. A sibling gets something they wanted. A classmate doesn't agree to play the game they suggested. These experiences can be genuinely upsetting, especially for children who are still developing the emotional skills needed to navigate them. But they are also ordinary parts of childhood.

If our response is always to intervene, correct the situation, or identify someone else as responsible for our child's distress, we may unintentionally teach them that uncomfortable feelings are evidence that something has gone wrong and that someone else needs to fix it. 

Instead, we can acknowledge how they feel while helping them recognize their ability to handle it.

"I know that was disappointing."

"I understand why that hurt your feelings."

"It's hard when someone doesn't want to do what you want to do."

And then, instead of immediately moving to solve the problem, we can help them figure out what comes next.

What can they do with those feelings? Is there something they want to say? Is this a situation they need help navigating? Or is this one of those moments when they need to learn that they can be disappointed and still be okay?

Of course, there's an important difference between a child experiencing ordinary social disappointment and a child being repeatedly excluded, bullied, or mistreated. We need to pay attention to that and intervene when necessary. But our goal shouldn't be to create a childhood free from discomfort. It should be to help children develop the confidence and skills to navigate discomfort. Because eventually, they become adults who need those same skills.

One of the places I think this conversation will matter the most practically is in our closest relationships.

Intimacy requires a certain amount of emotional flexibility. When we allow people to become important to us, we also become vulnerable to being disappointed by them. They won't always understand what we need. They won't always communicate perfectly. They may have habits that irritate us, perspectives that differ from ours, and emotional reactions that we don't particularly appreciate. And we will do the same to them.

This doesn't mean that we should accept repeated disrespect, emotional neglect, cruelty, or a relationship where one person is consistently expected to accommodate the other. But it does mean recognizing that even healthy relationships involve frustration, misunderstandings, and unmet expectations.

Sometimes we need to address those things and ask for change. Sometimes we need to acknowledge that something isn't working and figure out how to make it better. And many times we need to recognize that the person we love is a separate human being who isn't always going to think, feel, or behave the way we would prefer.

There's an important difference between asking someone to treat us with respect and expecting them to never upset us. There's a difference between communicating our needs and expecting those needs to always take priority. And there's a difference between recognizing a genuinely unhealthy dynamic and struggling to tolerate the ordinary imperfections that come with being close to another person.

I worry that when we focus exclusively on whether our needs are being met and whether other people's behavior is making us uncomfortable, we risk losing sight of the mutual responsibility involved in relationships.

Healthy relationships require consideration, accountability, and care from both people. But they also require patience, generosity, flexibility, and the willingness to work through things that aren't always easy. We can't expect to experience the benefits of closeness without also accepting some of the discomfort that comes with it.

With all this, I want to be very clear about something else. The ability to tolerate discomfort should never be confused with an obligation to tolerate mistreatment.

There are situations where our discomfort is telling us something important. Where our needs are consistently dismissed, our boundaries are repeatedly ignored, or our emotional or physical safety is compromised. There are relationships where the healthiest decision is to create distance or leave.

Sometimes people who have spent years tolerating too much need help learning that they don't have to keep doing so. But there's also a difference between being capable of tolerating something and deciding that it's something we should continue to accept.

We can develop the ability to sit with discomfort while still recognizing when a situation needs to change.

In fact, sometimes tolerating discomfort is exactly what allows us to make those changes.

It takes distress tolerance to have a difficult conversation. To tell someone that they've hurt us. To acknowledge that we've hurt someone else. To apologize without becoming defensive. To hear a perspective that challenges our own. To set a boundary knowing that the other person may be disappointed.

These are not always comfortable experiences, but they are often necessary ones. So the goal isn't to teach people to simply put up with more.

It's to help them develop the judgment to recognize what is harmful, what is uncomfortable, what needs to change, and what they can learn to navigate.

We've made meaningful progress in helping people understand that they have a right to be treated with dignity and respect. That they can advocate for themselves, communicate their needs, and make decisions about the relationships they want to maintain. I wouldn't want us to lose any of that.

But I also don't want us to overlook the other skills that are essential to emotional health like the ability to manage disappointment, regulate our reactions, tolerate differences, accept that other people have limitations, navigate conflict without immediately seeing it as evidence that a relationship is unhealthy, and recognize when our feelings are asking us to pay attention to something within ourselves, rather than demanding that someone else change.

We cannot build our emotional well-being entirely around other people behaving in ways that never upset, disappoint, or frustrate us. And we can't teach people to be emotionally healthy if we only teach them how to protect themselves from difficult experiences, without also helping them develop the capacity to navigate those experiences.

Emotional health isn't just about knowing what you shouldn't be putting up with. It's also about being able to say, "This is uncomfortable, and I can handle it.

We need to be teaching both.