Being With Difficulty: The Strength of Staying

Being with difficulty doesn’t mean wallowing. It’s not passivity or resignation.
It’s the courageous act of allowing your present-moment experience to be what it is—without demanding it change for your comfort.

It’s choosing presence over avoidance.

What might this look like?

• Noticing the tightness in your chest without immediately distracting yourself

• Acknowledging frustration without needing to justify or suppress it

• Sitting with grief, even in its silence

This noticing helps build inner strength. And like any strength, it’s something we can build with practice.

Why It’s Especially Important for Neurodivergent and Sensitive Minds

For those with ADHD, anxiety, sensory sensitivity, or trauma history, discomfort can be especially overwhelming. Many of us have spent years trying to “override” our responses, believing our reactions were wrong.

But what if discomfort wasn’t the enemy?

What if the goal wasn’t to eliminate it—but to learn how to be with it, skillfully?

When we stop pathologizing our difficulty, we make space for compassion, resilience, and real transformation.

In my free Insight Timer track Being With Difficulty, I guide you through a three-part practice:

• Settle and Ground
  Find your own rhythm, maybe through breath, movement, or touch.

• Acknowledge Thoughts Without Judgment
  Thoughts will come. That’s human. We notice them and return.

• Recognize and Soften Around Discomfort
  Whether it’s physical or emotional, we don’t fight it. Instead we hold space for it.

The point isn’t to push yourself. It’s to build capacity—to stay present for your life, even when it’s messy.

Listen to Being With Difficulty, available on Insight Timer.

You don’t have to go it alone.

Building your capacity to be with difficulty is a reminder: you can be with this.
And you don’t have to do it perfectly.