The Year We Learned to Sit With Discomfort

As the year comes to a close, it’s tempting to ask what 2025 did to us. What changed. What shifted. What we’re meant to carry forward. But this wasn’t a year that announced itself loudly. It didn’t arrive with dramatic transformations or neatly packaged lessons. It arrived softly, and it stayed.

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We’re good at avoiding discomfort. We postpone difficult conversations, scroll past feelings we don’t quite know how to hold, and distract ourselves the moment something starts to ache. Even when we admit we’re struggling, the responses come quickly and predictably: You’ll be okay. Be strong. This will pass. They’re well-meaning, but they’re also efficient; designed to move us forward.

What many people wanted this year wasn’t motivation or reassurance. It was permission to pause. To sit exactly where they were, without being rushed toward resolution.

By 2025, exhaustion had settled in. Not the kind sleep can fix, but a deeper emotional fatigue. The pressure to constantly heal, evolve, explain, and perform growth became unbearable. Everything didn’t need to be processed publicly. Every feeling didn’t need a lesson attached to it. People weren’t resisting change — they were resisting the performance of it.

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This showed up in quiet decisions. Fewer explanations. Longer silences. Softer boundaries. Many people let go of relationships, not because they were toxic or dramatic, but because something subtle had shifted. They couldn’t be themselves anymore. Conversations felt edited. Laughter felt careful. And so, they chose distance, not out of anger, but out of self-preservation. It was a difficult realisation: not everyone who once belonged in your life will continue to fit. And that doesn’t make anyone the villain.

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The language around growth shifted too. Therapy-speak stopped being trendy and started becoming useful. Holding space meant listening without interrupting. Setting boundaries meant choosing rest over explanation. Sitting with discomfort meant letting feelings exist without immediately fixing them. Saying I’m not feeling good no longer needed to be followed by a solution. Sometimes, it just needed to be believed.

Across digital spaces, especially anonymous ones, a pattern emerged. People weren’t asking how to get better, they were asking to be understood. There was a quiet resistance to optimism, to being told everything would work out. Not because hope had disappeared, but because honesty felt more urgent. What if, instead of being told to stay strong, someone simply said: That sounds hard. You’re allowed to feel this.

Why did this shift happen now? The reasons feel collective. Post-pandemic emotional residue. Unstable realities. A growing distrust of performative wellness culture. Growth no longer needed to look aesthetic, productive, or shareable. It could be internal. Messy. Unfinished.

At its heart, 2025 wasn’t a year of reinvention. It was a year of emotional adulthood. Of learning that resilience doesn’t always mean pushing through, it sometimes means staying present. That progress doesn’t require erasing discomfort, just learning how to live alongside it.

As we step into a new year, maybe the question isn’t What’s your resolution? Maybe it’s What are you finally willing to sit with? Because if this year taught us anything, it’s this: some things don’t need to be fixed right away. Some things just need time, honesty, and the courage to stay.

If 2025 taught us how to sit with discomfort, perhaps 2026 can be about walking alongside it; without rushing, without judgement, and without the need to turn growth into a performance.

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