Latest / Style Room: Fashion, beauty & personal style / The Art of Sitting With Discomfort: Why You Need To Stop Distracting Yourself | Style Room
Transcript
- You know that specific, tight feeling in your chest when you realize you’ve been scrolling for forty minutes just to avoid hearing the silence? That isn’t boredom, darling. It’s a signal. Let’s unpack that for a second, because I think we’ve all been running from it our entire lives. We live in an era that treats discomfort like a glitch in the system. If you feel a twinge of anxiety, you check your phone. If you feel a moment of sadness, you put on a podcast. If you feel uncertain about who you are right now, you buy something new. We have built this incredible infrastructure of distraction, and I am here to tell you that it is not serving you. Not really. I noticed it most clearly last week, actually. I was fitting a client, a lovely woman named Elena, into a vintage silk blouse she’d found at a estate sale. It was beautiful, but it didn’t fit quite right across the shoulders. She kept shifting, pulling at the fabric, trying to make it sit better. And I realized she wasn’t just adjusting her clothes; she was adjusting her tolerance for being uncomfortable in her own skin. She wanted everything to be perfect, smooth, seamless. But life rarely offers us that kind of seamlessness. So, why do we demand it of ourselves? It’s about how it sits on your soul, remember? When we talk about style, we usually talk about aesthetics. The cut, the color, the trend. But style is also a record of our internal state. When you are running from yourself, you often dress for the distraction rather than the person. You might throw on a loud print to shout over your thoughts, or you might hide in oversized layers because you don’t want to be seen, let alone felt. I see this constantly in my consultancy. Women come in wanting to ‘fix’ their wardrobe to fix their mood. They want a magic bullet outfit that will erase their doubt. But here is the truth: if you cannot sit with the quiet, a designer bag won’t fill the space. In fact, it might just add another layer of noise. We need to learn to sit with the discomfort of not knowing what to say next. Of standing still without checking your reflection. Of letting the awkwardness exist until it passes, like a wave. Because it does pass. But only if you stop paddling against it.