Sitting With It
The radical act of tolerating discomfort in a world that wants to "fix" women (but also not really fix...)
A woman feels something uncomfortable in her body and almost instantly the world rushes in with solutions (well except when it comes to actual women’s health …. but more on that later).
As women we’re constantly sold a “fix it” solution from an industry making money off of our discomfort.:
Feeling bloated?
Drink this tea.
Feeling tired?
Take this supplement.
Feeling anxious?
Try this routine.
Feeling heavy?
Start this program.
Feeling older?
Buy this cream.
Feeling hungry?
Ignore it, it will go away.
Feeling full?
Burn it off.
Feeling sad?
Optimize your mindset.
Feeling anything at all?
Fix it.
Women are offered an endless menu of ways to escape their bodies. But rarely are we offered permission to simply be in them.
I was struck by this the other day when I was talking with a friend about her feelings of being stressed. We both went home and our Instagram algorithms (who are always listening) started advertising specific products to deal with the particular stress we were discussing.
We’re constantly fed products to avoid discomfort. And yet the human body is, by nature, uncomfortable sometimes.
Bodies get hungry. Bodies feel full. Bodies fluctuate. Bodies age. Bodies swell, sweat, stretch, ache, and soften. Bodies change after birth, after grief, after illness, after joy.
Discomfort is not a malfunction of the body. It’s an act of being alive.
But when you are a woman living inside a culture that has commodified your body for centuries, discomfort becomes something else entirely. It becomes a problem to solve. A flaw to correct. A signal that you are doing something wrong. The moment discomfort appears, the machine starts humming. Industries worth billions depend on it.
The beauty industry whispers that discomfort means you need a product. The wellness industry tells you it means you need a protocol. Diet culture insists it means you need discipline. Productivity culture says you need optimization.
And we can see it, right? Every feeling becomes an opportunity to sell you something. Not a language for actually caring for you through the feelings, but instead a “solution” for the low cost of $49.99.
And the result is that many women lose the ability to tolerate the ordinary, human experience of being in a body. A stomach that feels stretched after a meal can spiral into panic. A day of low energy can feel like personal failure. A shift in weight can feel catastrophic. Not because the sensations themselves are unbearable — but because we have been taught that they are unacceptable.
Instead we are taught that they must be fixed immediately. That any “chink in the armor” is a sign of weakness.
I call BS and so should you. Bodies were never designed to be comfortable all the time. In fact, some of the most meaningful experiences of being human live right inside discomfort.
As a therapist I can attest to just how positive (although hard) the act of being uncomfortable can be. Grief aches because love existed. Nervousness shows up when something matters. Fullness comes after nourishment.
Even emotional safety sometimes asks us to sit through feelings we would rather escape. Instead of thinking of it as negative, maybe we can start to see discomfort as information. And when every uncomfortable sensation becomes something to eradicate, we lose access to one of the most powerful capacities we have: the ability to stay with ourselves.
Staying within ourself means that we notice. We breathe. We ride the wave of a sensation instead of trying to outrun it. Body trust is not built through constant comfort. It is built through connection.
It’s built through moments like:
“I feel full right now, and that’s okay.”
“My body feels different today, and I can still move through the day.”
“I feel anxious, and I don’t have to silence it immediately.”
“I can be uncomfortable without abandoning myself.”
However, in our culture this is absolutely not the message that sells. Instead the message that sells is urgency. Buy now. Fix now. Change now.
Do you know what would happen if women ever truly believed that they were allowed to exist in their bodies without constant improvement? The entire system would collapse. We would burn it all down. And it would be FABULOUS.
What I also want to name here is a painful irony: women are constantly offered solutions for normal bodily discomfort, while often being denied real solutions for legitimate health issues.
Women are told how to shrink their stomachs, tighten their skin, optimize their hormones, flatten their bloating, quiet their hunger, and smooth their wrinkles. The marketplace is overflowing with fixes for bodies that are simply existing.
But when women show up with real pain? Real symptoms? Real disruption in their bodies?
The response can look very different.
Take endometriosis, for example. So many women describe going to doctors year after year with severe pain, debilitating periods, and symptoms that interrupt their daily lives. And what they often receive is not investigation, validation, or meaningful treatment—but instructions on how to manage the pain. Birth control. Pain medication. A suggestion to “wait and see.” Sometimes even the implication that the pain is exaggerated or simply part of being a woman.
Story after story follows this same pattern.
Women are told to tolerate pain that deserves medical attention, while simultaneously being told to fix discomfort that is completely normal.
In other words, we are pushed to override our bodies in both directions.
We’re taught to distrust the signals that say something is wrong, and we’re also taught to panic at sensations that are simply part of being alive.
Neither of these responses builds body trust.
Real body trust requires something different: listening to our bodies seriously when something is wrong—and allowing our bodies to exist without constant correction when nothing is.
Both things matter.
And women deserve both validation and autonomy in their bodies.