The Urge to Flee is the Call to Stay
You know that thing you're not doing? That conversation you're not having, that boundary you're not setting, that creative risk you're not taking? What’s stopping you isn’t laziness or lack of time or bad circumstances. It’s your relationship with discomfort — specifically, your fear of feeling it.
Most of us have turned discomfort into the enemy, as if being uncomfortable were a moral failing. We've created elaborate systems of avoiding it: comfort foods that make us sick, entertainment that numbs us into forgetting what we actually want, purchasing decisions that promise to solve problems we can't even name. We scroll when we could be reading. We busy ourselves to postpone making meaning. We perform productivity instead of engaging with what's right in front of us.
But what if discomfort isn’t trying to hurt us — what if it’s trying to locate us?
I uncovered my answer in the places where I didn’t turn away.
That long hour after I sent the message I was terrified to send — when my heart thudded like I’d done something wrong, even though it was the truth. I wanted to unsend, explain, soften. Instead, I waited.
Saying no to someone I used to say yes to — then sitting in the awkward space where no one celebrated my boundaries. No justification, no quick repair. Just the rawness of not being the person who pleases. And finding out that I could live with it.
Walking away from a title, a platform, a role that once made me important — and waking up the next morning with no one asking how I am, no one needing me. Just myself and the dull throb of identity withdrawal.
The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to make unease go away and started exploring its raw edges. Here’s what happened to me: I came to see I’m more resilient than I thought, and the world is larger than I ever imagined.
But let's be precise about this. I'm not suggesting you seek out suffering for its own sake or turn discomfort into another performance of self-improvement. I'm talking about something more fundamental — the willingness to stop shrinking in the face of difficulty, to stop making every uncomfortable feeling into evidence that things are wrong.
Most people treat discomfort like a problem to solve rather than information to receive. They miss the fact that tension is often the announcement that an insight wants to emerge. The anxiety before you speak your mind isn't necessarily pathology — it might be your nervous system preparing to tell the truth. The resistance to starting that project isn't always procrastination — it might be the friction of a work that holds meaning.
The practice isn't complicated. Try this: sit with the feeling of wanting to check your phone without checking it. Eat something nourishing that doesn't taste like pleasure. Say no to someone without explaining or apologising. Feel the physical sensation of wanting to flee from a difficult conversation and stay anyway.
Notice what your mind does when resistance arises. Notice the stories it tells, the urgency it creates, the exits it offers. Notice how it tries to convince you that this particular strain is different, more serious, more worthy of avoidance than the last one. That’s your mind’s oldest trick: transforming requests to expand into evidence that you should retreat.
Then get into the space between the feeling and your reaction to the feeling. This is where choice is. This is where you remember that the urge to flee is just habit wearing the mask of self-preservation. You can feel uncomfortable and still move toward what you want. You can face uncertainty and still take the next step. You can carry fear and still show up.
The territory beyond your comfort zone isn't a place you visit occasionally when you're feeling brave. It's where life is actually happening. Everyone else is still trying to control their experience, still believing that the right combination of circumstances will finally deliver them from struggle. Meanwhile, you're learning to answer different invitations — the call to stay when everything in you wants to run.
Ask yourself:
What if the urge to flee isn't your enemy giving you bad advice, but your deeper wisdom pointing you toward exactly where you need to stay?
When you feel the pull to escape - from the conversation, the feeling, the moment of truth - what is that urge really trying to protect you from discovering about yourself?
How many times have you mistaken the call to stay for the permission to leave, interpreting your discomfort as evidence you're in the wrong place rather than the right one?
This isn't about becoming someone who enjoys difficulty. It's about becoming someone who doesn't let difficulty make decisions for them. Someone who has learned to distinguish between the voice that protects and the voice that imprisons. Someone who can feel the full texture of being human without immediately reaching for an escape hatch. Who has discovered that the opposite of comfort isn't suffering — it's the unreasonable life that refuses to negotiate with fear.