There’s a reason distillation requires heat. You can’t separate saltwater into something drinkable by simply wishing it so, or thinking positive thoughts about it, or even understanding intellectually how the process works. You have to apply heat. You have to let the water boil. You have to endure the temperature that makes the transformation possible.

The same is true for us. Real change—the kind that actually shifts something fundamental rather than just rearranging the furniture—requires discomfort. It requires heat. And most of us will do almost anything to avoid it.

Our Culture of Comfort

We live in a world designed to eliminate discomfort as quickly as possible. Feeling anxious? There’s an app for that. Feeling sad? Here’s a medication, a meditation, a motivational quote. Feeling uncomfortable in a relationship? Swipe left, move on, find someone easier.

Don’t get me wrong—some discomfort should be eliminated. Abuse isn’t “growth.” Trauma isn’t “character building.” Systemic oppression isn’t a “learning opportunity.” There’s suffering we should absolutely fight against, escape from, refuse to tolerate.

But there’s another kind of discomfort. The kind that shows up when we’re growing. When we’re changing. When we’re becoming someone new. This discomfort isn’t the problem—it’s part of the process. And our desperate attempts to avoid it are keeping us stuck.

The Distillation Still and the Heat

Think about how distillation actually works. You take saltwater—something that will make you thirstier if you drink it—and you apply heat. The heat causes the water to evaporate, leaving the salt behind. The vapour rises, cools, and condenses into pure water. What was undrinkable becomes life-giving.

But here’s the crucial bit: without the heat, nothing transforms. The saltwater just sits there, still salty, still undrinkable. The heat isn’t optional. It’s not a design flaw in the process. It’s the engine of change.

Our discomfort is that heat. The anxiety we feel when setting a boundary we’ve never set before. The grief that surfaces when we stop numbing ourselves. The awkwardness of trying a new way of being. The fear that comes with choosing ourselves. The loneliness of outgrowing old patterns, old relationships, old versions of ourselves.

This discomfort isn’t evidence that something’s gone wrong. It’s evidence that something’s transforming.

Why We Avoid the Heat

Our avoidance of discomfort makes perfect evolutionary sense. Our nervous systems evolved to keep us safe, and discomfort signals potential danger. For most of human history, if something felt bad, it probably was bad. Run from the tiger. Avoid the poison. Stay with the tribe.

But now we’re running from feelings. Avoiding difficult conversations. Staying in situations that aren’t dangerous, just uncomfortable. Our nervous system can’t tell the difference between the discomfort of growth and the discomfort of genuine threat, so it treats both as emergencies requiring immediate escape.

The result? We develop sophisticated avoidance strategies. We scroll, we drink, we stay busy, we people-please, we start arguments, we ghost people, we move cities, we change jobs. Anything to avoid feeling the heat of transformation.

The Cost of Constant Comfort

Here’s what happens when we organise our entire lives around avoiding discomfort: we stop growing. We calcify. We stay stuck in patterns that don’t serve us because changing them would feel uncomfortable. We choose the familiar over the fulfilling because at least familiar doesn’t require us to sit with uncertainty.

Research in psychology shows that distress tolerance—the ability to sit with uncomfortable emotions—is linked to better mental health outcomes. People with higher distress tolerance have lower rates of anxiety and depression, better relationships, and greater resilience in the face of adversity.

Meanwhile, experiential avoidance—the attempt to avoid or escape uncomfortable thoughts and feelings—is linked to almost every form of psychopathology. The more we try to avoid discomfort, the more it controls our lives.

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” —Joseph Campbell

What Sitting with Discomfort Actually Means

Sitting with discomfort doesn’t mean being a masochist. It doesn’t mean seeking out pain for pain’s sake or staying in genuinely harmful situations. It means developing the capacity to feel uncomfortable without immediately needing to make the discomfort stop.

It means:

• Noticing the urge to escape, numb, or distract—and choosing to stay present instead
• Recognising that feelings, however intense, won’t actually destroy you
• Understanding that discomfort is temporary, even when it doesn’t feel that way
• Learning to distinguish between pain that signals danger and pain that signals growth
• Allowing transformation to happen at its own pace, not rushing to “fix” yourself out of the process

The Practice of Staying in the Heat

So how do you actually do this? How do you sit with discomfort when every cell in your body is screaming at you to make it stop?

First, you acknowledge what you’re feeling. Name it. “This is anxiety.” “This is grief.” “This is the discomfort of change.” Naming it creates just enough distance to remind you that you’re experiencing a feeling, not being destroyed by it.

Second, you locate it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your stomach? Your throat? Get curious about the physical sensations rather than the story your mind is spinning about them.

Third, you breathe. Not to make the discomfort go away, but to anchor yourself in the present moment. To remind yourself that you’re safe enough right now to feel this.

Finally, you stay. Just for one more breath. Then another. You don’t have to commit to sitting with it forever—just for this moment. And then the next.

The Transformation Happens in the Staying

Here’s what nobody tells you about sitting with discomfort: it changes. Not always quickly. Not always in the way you want. But when you stop fighting it, stop trying to escape it, something shifts.

Sometimes the discomfort dissolves. Sometimes it transforms into something else—grief into acceptance, anxiety into clarity, fear into courage. Sometimes it just becomes more bearable, less all-consuming, more like weather passing through rather than a permanent state of being.

And slowly, imperceptibly, you change too. You become someone who can feel difficult things without falling apart. Someone who can endure the heat of transformation. Someone who trusts that the discomfort won’t last forever, even when it feels like it will.

That’s the distillation. That’s the still at work. The heat is uncomfortable, yes. But it’s also what separates the saltwater from the pure. What makes the undrinkable nourishing. What transforms who you were into who you’re becoming.

When to Apply Heat, When to Step Away

Important caveat: not all discomfort is productive. Some situations require us to leave, not stay. Some relationships are toxic, not just uncomfortable. Some work environments are abusive, not just challenging.

The distinction matters. Growth-oriented discomfort comes from stretching beyond your comfort zone whilst still feeling fundamentally safe. Harmful discomfort comes from genuinely threatening situations that compromise your wellbeing.

Trust yourself. Your body knows the difference, even if your mind sometimes gets confused. Productive discomfort feels like expansion. Harmful discomfort feels like violation. One asks you to grow. The other demands you shrink.

Sit with the first. Leave the second.