Can We Talk About This? Discomfort Tolerance as a Spiritual Practice
Blog post written by: Colette G.
Most of us were taught to think of spiritual practice in terms of scripture study, prayer, or service. These are good and meaningful traditions—but what if one of the most overlooked spiritual practices is learning how to practice discomfort tolerance?
In faith communities especially, there’s a tendency to avoid hard conversations. Questions about power, gender, sexuality, history, or personal faith transitions can feel too destabilizing. And so, instead of engaging, we often sidestep. We stay quiet. We bury the tension under platitudes about unity and peace.
But avoiding discomfort doesn’t actually create peace—it creates distance. Real peace, the kind rooted in honesty and belonging, requires us to stretch into discomfort with open hearts.
Why Discomfort Tolerance Matters
When tough topics come up in spiritual spaces, the nervous system reacts quickly. Hearts race, faces flush, the urge to shut down or fight back surfaces. We’ve been conditioned to equate this sensation with danger. But discomfort is not danger—it’s growth in progress.
Learning to tolerate discomfort is essential for:
- Building deeper relationships: We can only truly connect if we allow room for honesty, even when it’s awkward or painful.
- Fostering authentic faith: A faith that can’t withstand hard questions isn’t strong—it’s fragile.
- Creating inclusive communities: Marginalized voices are silenced when others refuse to sit with discomfort. Real inclusion means making space for stories that unsettle us.
Tools for Growing Discomfort Tolerance
Just like prayer or meditation, discomfort tolerance is a practice. It doesn’t come naturally—but with intention, we can grow this capacity. Here are some tools to begin:
- Notice your body
When discomfort arises, pay attention to your physical response. Where do you feel it? Can you take a breath and soften into the moment rather than shutting it down? - Reframe the story
Instead of thinking, “This is dangerous” or “This means we’re divided,” try: “This is growth” or “This is what honest connection looks like.” - Practice curiosity over control
Ask questions instead of making declarations. Discomfort often softens when we shift from defending our point to exploring someone else’s perspective. - Set boundaries, not walls
You can stay in hard conversations without abandoning your values. Boundaries help you stay grounded, while walls shut others out completely. - Take it in doses
Like exercise, you don’t need to lift the heaviest weight on the first day. Begin with smaller moments of discomfort and build your capacity gradually.
What Happens When We Avoid
When communities refuse to engage in discomfort, important conversations stall. Silence becomes complicity. Those carrying deep pain—whether related to gender, race, sexuality, or faith questions—are left isolated.
As one podcast guest put it: “The thing that hurt the most wasn’t just the rejection—it was the refusal to even talk about it.”
Avoidance sends the message that some topics—and by extension, some people—are unworthy of being acknowledged. But faith without room for discomfort becomes brittle, unable to stretch into new understanding.
The Power of Questions: How Reading and Faith Shaped My Journey
One of my favorite things to do is read. There is power in words. They can transport you to faraway places you’ve only dreamed of, or place you inside another person’s mind to feel their joy, sorrow, and struggle. Reading expands your perspective, helping you understand people who are different from you—and that’s a gift.
A Love for Learning
Reading helps me learn, and I love to learn. I ask questions—lots of them. Because when you ask questions about what you’re reading or experiencing, you stretch your mind and deepen your understanding. Curiosity is the spark that ignites growth.
Faith and the Boundaries of Inquiry
Attending church meetings—Sacrament, Sunday School, Relief Society, Young Women’s—invites us to learn. But in what capacity? We’re encouraged to study, pray, and ask hard questions. Yet there’s a caveat: the answers must align with Church teachings. You’re not supposed to go beyond the box.
But every reformer, every pioneer of change, started by asking questions that led them outside the box. Those answers led to more questions, and eventually to truths that hadn’t been heard before.
Teaching Grace in a Room Full of Resistance
I once taught a Relief Society lesson on “The Grace of Jesus Christ” while living in Texas, surrounded by evangelical Christian beliefs. Their teachings on grace intrigued me, so I studied, asked questions, and sought answers. What I came to believe was that the LDS Church’s doctrine on grace was backwards.
Instead of giving Jesus Christ full power to save us in our sins, the Church taught that His grace wasn’t enough—we had to earn salvation through covenants, worthiness, temple attendance, and doing all we could do. But I came to see that we are already saved. Jesus has already satisfied justice with His life. Our role is not to save ourselves, but to become more like Him. That shift in belief changed everything.
The Cost of Speaking Truth
I shared this with the women in my ward. Two raised their hands and said they didn’t believe me. I encouraged them to study the New Testament with fresh eyes and see what Jesus Himself taught.
They were uncomfortable. They wanted to leave the room. They were upset—and I was heartbroken.
After that, I became someone to avoid. People stopped talking to me, stopped saying hello. I felt invisible. I no longer wanted to be around those women. They were stuck, and that was fine for them. But I couldn’t stay stuck too.
Discomfort as a Spiritual Path
What if we reframed discomfort itself as holy? The prophets of old disrupted comfort zones. Jesus disrupted purity laws, power structures, and traditions in the name of love. Discomfort has always been the birthplace of transformation.
When we engage discomfort with courage, humility, and love, we are practicing one of the deepest spiritual disciplines: the discipline of truth.
An Invitation
The next time discomfort arises in your spiritual community—or in your own heart—pause before you shut it down. Take a breath. Ask yourself: What if this discomfort is not a threat, but an invitation?
By staying with discomfort, we open ourselves to growth, connection, and the possibility of a faith strong enough to hold all of us.
Because real belonging doesn’t happen when everything feels easy. It happens when we can look each other in the eye—even through the awkwardness, even through the fear—and say, “Yes, we can talk about this.”
