Swimming in Uncomfortable Waters

I’m at the stage in my art process where I have a chaotic collection of ideas, experiments, and starts but no real notion of where it’s all going. Some days, I feel I’m a breath away from discovering a path that will propel me towards something exciting. The next day I’m met with the certainty that I’m on a long road to a dead end.

One of many small experiments piling up in my studio.

The disarray – both physical and psychological – is disquieting. It is seeping into my dreams. It is marinating my studio hours with the peculiar type of mental pain brought on by confusion and uncertainty. 

Part of me longs to flee my current cognitive discomfort. To take refuge in the familiarity of the artwork I already know how to create.

And yet, another part of me acknowledges that retreat is not a way forward.

Are we entitled to reject discomfort?

I know that I’m not alone in my desire to avoid what makes me uncomfortable. I have taken many art workshops where people respond to unfamiliar ways of working by rejecting the new in favor of what they already know. “I know you asked us to systematically break our self-portrait into a limited set of discrete shapes,” one woman told our instructor, an artist whose work we presumably all admired, “But that’s not how I work, so instead I followed my usual intuitive approach.” Why, I wondered, was she even taking the class?

The temptation to avoid mental discomfort – even when it is a part of learning and discovery – can be hard to resist.

Avoidance often comes from a place a self-preservation – why should we subject ourselves to uncomfortable feelings? It can also come from a place of love – why would we want our children to experience discomfort, particularly when we can curate their experiences to help avoid it?

I have certainly been guilty of trying to erase my children’s discomfort with new situations. My approach to teaching my first child how to swim was to enroll her in a program known for a slow and incremental approach that followed the lead – and the comfort zone – of the child. By the end of the summer, she had yet to dunk her head underwater or take an unassisted stroke. It wasn’t until the next summer, when the no-nonsense neighborhood swimming teacher literally pushed her into the deep end, that she finally learned how to swim.

Increasingly though, it seems that people’s rejection of mental discomfort comes not from a place of love but from a place of intolerance and entitlement. Book bans, erasing parts of school curricula, cancelling ideas and opinions across the political spectrum – it’s as if our desire to stay in our comfort zone equates to a right to erase anything we find uncomfortable.

What’s wrong with this?

The good pain of stretching your brain

As much as one’s habitual way of thinking is a comfort, it is also a trap. We rightly crave familiar territory because that is where we know who we are and how things work. Yet if we never venture into the often uncomfortable territory of the unknown, we limit our opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth. As Rebecca Solnit writes in her engaging book A Field Guide to Getting Lost:

“The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration – how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?”

The discomfort of confusion or uncertainty is an important signal. It tells us that we don’t know enough about this new situation. If the discomfort verges on fear, it might be a sign that we had better retreat to safer ground. But if we can invite discomfort in, we may be able to see it as an invitation to explore, discover, and expand our minds.

Piaget notes that the process of resolving mental discomfort through a search for a new equilibrium is a critical part of child development. Children have ideas about how things work, they are thrown out of balance when they encounter things that bring their understanding of the world into question, and they work to restore balance not by running away but by searching for new answers. It is through this process that a child grows their brain and creates a rich understanding of the world.

The process of questioning, searching, and adapting may be more difficult as we become accustomed to the certainty acquired with age and expertise, but it remains important.  The world is constantly changing. We are constantly changing. In order to stay current, we must allow our brains to change.

Help from our environments – guardrails in unknown territory

Facing mental discomfort with exploration rather than retreat is a lot to ask of ourselves and others. We have to admit that the world is much bigger than what we know. We have to momentarily deny ourselves the comfort of competence. We have to entertain doubt with an open mind.

This kind of thing can be much easier to face with some support from our environments.

Other people can help us out. Good parenting helps children avoid the Hansel and Gretel type of being lost while giving them the space to learn how to work through confusion and uncertainty. Good teachers meet students where they’re at – providing a tether to the familiar as they voyage into the unknown. Good leaders understand that competence is something that one builds, that failure is another form of learning, and that certainty is not always a sign of strength.

Culture – in family, workplace, or community – can help us out. A culture that encourages curiosity, that values learning, and that is tolerant of divergent views can help make the uncomfortable experience of being lost a little more palatable.  

Structure can help immensely by providing guardrails that keep us from going off the edge. The best art classes I have taken are structured so that they challenge me to work in unfamiliar ways while offering enough guidance to keep me moving forward. Structuring your time during work or leisure to allow exploration of unfamiliar ideas and other perspectives gives you practice with working through the unknown. Structured small experiments can be a way to try something new and uncertain without having to go all-in – an approach that in retrospect may have been better for my daughter when learning to swim, although thankfully she quickly got over her sudden deep plunge.

Know yourself

One of the most powerful ways that we can resist the urge to avoid situations that stretch us out of our comfort zone is simply through greater awareness. Studies have shown that when we recognize discomfort as a sign of learning we are more likely to tolerate it – or even embrace it. We reframe feeling like an idiot as feeling like a learner.

My art practice has certainly benefited from an awareness of my mental state.

Uncertainty and confusion have become such common parts of my practice that as long as I’m not too fatigued, I can recognize them for what they are – signs that I’m on a voyage of discovery. Instead of running from these feelings or succumbing to the urge to banish them by tidying up my ideas prematurely, I have become more able to sit with them as I continue to explore.

And so, despite my current state of cognitive discomfort, I find myself continuing to show up at my studio and chug away. After all, it’s all part of the process.

How do you keep yourself afloat in uncomfortable waters?

Related Posts