Embracing unease - how sitting with discomfort is helping me build resilience

Plus: a fascinating conversation on matrescence and motherhood with Zoe Blaskey

Hi everyone,

I hope you’re doing really well and having a great week 🌼

I write this newsletter having just spent the best part of a lovely week in Italy with family, a trip readers of this Substack will know I had mixed feelings about. 

Being away from home and out of my routine can be a major trigger for my OCD, eating disorder and exercise addiction, and I wasn’t sure how the week was going to go. I knew my mind would be in overdrive, and that I’d be battling constantly the urge to start a punishing new regime, to set my alarm early and be productive, to indulge my compulsions and their alluring, fake promise that afterwards, I will feel better. Safer. 

But it really hit home for me while I was away that every time I manage to resist these urges, no matter how uncomfortable it is in the moment, I successfully avoid a bigger, more all-encompassing discomfort down the line: that I will look back full of regret and disappointment that I didn’t do the hard, uncomfortable work necessary to moving forward.

Scratching the itch feels like it is dispelling discomfort in the moment, but really, it is only clearing the way for a bigger, more devastating discomfort later down the line, and I’m so proud to have returned from a week so far out of my comfort zone not having slipped into old habits. 

When so far out of our comfort zone it can be even more tempting to reach for the things we know will, in the moment, make us temporarily feel better, will “comfort” us (even though, really, they do nothing of the sort, long-term). That is the lie of OCD.  Instead, every time I resist, as uncomfortable as it is, I become – slowly, slowly – more resilient. I know it will become ever so slightly easier to resist next time. 

In Puglia, for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t set an alarm every morning. And, with my foot still healing, exercise had to be kept to a minimum. I did go swimming in the ocean, but never for longer than 30 minutes – and regular readers of this Substack will know how huge that is for me. I once swam in the freezing cold sea for so many hours that I collapsed on the beach with hypothermia afterwards. The difference between then and now is night and day. Sure, the OCD noise in my head, the relentless negotiating – just five minutes longer, just five more minutes – was loud, and resisting it is always exhausting, but despite the fact I did notice myself falling into a pattern as the days of my holiday went on (20 minutes for the first couple of days, then 25…) I managed to catch that and never let myself exceed 30 minutes. I'm so proud of that. 

It was uncomfortable to stop when I did, but I recognise it as a necessary discomfort. The discomfort of growth; of taking back control of my life. I know I won’t win against my OCD every time, but each time I do, it’s getting me a step closer to where I want to be. 

This weeks glimmer 

A moment of joy and healing; a weekly win 

Speaking of overcoming discomfort, what better glimmer this week than a glimmer involving gelato? One night in Italy me and my family all shared some ice cream, and when it came up I initially thought, actually, I could do without this. I’m not really hungry. But therapists and dietitians have previously encouraged me, with those sorts of trigger foods, to try and have some even when I’m not hungry, because I then show my brain: look, it’s okay, I can have them. I don’t have to be hungry to be “allowed” them. 

I knew if I didn’t join in, I’d store up the “I denied myself ice-cream yesterday” thought and get a huge ice-cream by myself the next day, to scratch the itch, and then I’d binge by myself and end up feeling terrible afterwards, and like I’d spiralled. So in just joining in with everyone else, even though I didn't particularly feel like it, I felt like I wasn't depriving myself. And I got to enjoy the communal, “in-the-moment” experience I otherwise wouldn’t have been a part of, and to stop a potential spiral in its tracks. 

Reflections: Motherkind founder Zoe Blaskey on why ‘motherhood is meant to change you’ 

This week I was joined by the brilliant Zoe Blaskey, founder of Womankind, on the podcast, exploring “the huge mental health challenge that becoming a mother is” and unpicking societal expectations on mothers and why that leads so many to feel like they’re failing. 

Zoe discussed her transformative discovery of the concept of “matrescence”,  which acknowledges that the identity shift that happens when a woman becomes a mother is, in Zoe’s words, “a change as big as adolescence.” 

“At a societal level we get told to bounce back - into our jeans, social lives, sex lives - and because that is the prevailing message, most women, just like me, think that they’re doing something wrong,” she told me. “Or that they’re not cut out for it, or are failing in some way.”

“But it is meant to be a time of unravelling and putting back together again. Your body changes, your friendships change, how you want to spend your time changes, your values change. The moment I realised that, my shoulders dropped. It is meant to be a time when you question yourself a lot.” 

Over the course of our conversation we touched on burnout, the inner critic, and why self-kindness is so vitally important when navigating parenthood. Whether you're a mother or not, I’d highly recommend this conversation about compassion, identity, and healing that resonates far beyond motherhood. And don’t forget to join us on Thursday for our weekly Healing 101 episode. This week I’m joined by Jean Campbell—writer, speaker, and host of the podcast I’m Fine—for a conversation about living with chronic pain. 

Lots of Love, 

Pandora x