Uncomfortable Can Be Good*

When you stop using the crutch that helped you to feel comfortable in social situations you have to find new ways to be social, to fit in.  A crutch might be status, money, title, job, physical appearance, drugs and alcohol to name a few.  Without your crutch you feel uncomfortable walking into a social occasion or group.  My fall back position to feel OK, or comfortable, less afraid, is to isolate.  I go stay off by myself though I am in a group.  I don’t sit next to anyone or introduce myself, much less ask how someone else is doing.  That would be way too social.  Isolation is my comfort zone at times.  So I have learned that in order to become a more adult person in a social situation I need to do something new.  This makes me uncomfortable at first.  But here, being uncomfortable is the path to growth.  I sit down next to someone I don’t even know.  Or I walk up to someone and say hello.  I introduce myself.  I never assume that people might remember me from some other occasion.  At first, this is way uncomfortable, but in a moment or two, I feel part of the room or group or occasion that I am attending.  I move from discomfort to comfortably fitting in.  I feel a part of, rather than apart from.  And it might help the uncomfortable person I just sat next to, or met, to feel more comfortable too...after they get over the fear that I might be a crazy person.