When Discomfort Becomes Your Compass: Distinguishing Discomfort from Danger in the Work of Resistance

We’ve been talking about dismantling systems and building new ones. About how the current administration is inadvertently giving us the freedom to create what we’ve always envisioned. About how we learn our neighbors’ names and needs as the first acts of resistance.

But there’s something deeper we need to address: the internal work that makes the external work possible.

The Gap Between Perceived and Actual Danger

I need to get personal for a moment.

As someone who has experienced homelessness – who knows what it means to sleep outside, to be truly vulnerable – I understand danger. I know what it feels like when your physical safety is threatened, when survival itself cannot be taken for granted.

I also know what it’s like to evolve into spaces of relative security, where suddenly the line between discomfort and danger becomes blurred. Where a difficult conversation feels threatening. Where potential criticism registers as risk.

And it’s wild to me that I can intellectually recognize the difference while emotionally experiencing discomfort as danger. That’s the power of how we’ve been conditioned to avoid anything that feels uncomfortable.

But here’s the truth: Many of us with certain kinds of privilege have confused discomfort with danger because we’ve never actually experienced the latter.

The Discomfort We’ve Been Taught to Avoid

“I’d like to help, but I might lose my job.”

“I want to speak up, but what if people get angry?”

“I believe in the cause, but I don’t want to make waves.”

I hear these concerns daily—from friends, colleagues, even in my own thoughts. And they reveal something critical about how we’ve been conditioned to relate to discomfort: we’ve been taught that it’s something to avoid rather than a compass pointing us toward necessary action.

Let’s get real about something: We don’t have systems problems. We have people problems.

Systems aren’t abstract entities floating in space. Systems are people making decisions. Systems are people setting agendas. Systems are people taking notes that emphasize some voices and minimize others. Systems are people deciding which rules to enforce and which to ignore.

When we talk about “the system” as if it’s separate from us, we’re using language designed to absolve ourselves of responsibility. We’re creating distance between ourselves and our own power.

My friend Preston once said something that transformed my understanding of power. During a power-mapping exercise from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, when asked what power he held in his role, he simply said: “I set the agendas.”

Think about that. The person who decides what gets discussed literally shapes reality. The note-taker interprets what was “important” through their lens. The facilitator determines whose voice gets prioritized.

We all have power. The question isn’t whether we have it, but how we’re using it—and what discomfort we’re willing to endure to use it differently.

Resistance Is a Million Little Things

Let’s be clear: The work in the streets has to happen. Direct action matters. But if we’re not doing the work in our daily lives, in our workplaces, in our communities, then what we’re doing in the streets misses the point.

Resistance isn’t just direct action. Resistance is a million little things:

• It’s knowing your unhoused neighbor’s name and what medication they need
• It’s speaking up in a meeting when someone is ignored or talked over
• It’s documenting successful practices so others can replicate them without institutional approval
• It’s redirecting resources to those who have been historically excluded
• It’s building relationships across difference so when crises occur, networks already exist

And yes, sometimes resistance is accepting that you might “have to live tight for a little while” because you took a stand that jeopardized your job. But that calculation depends entirely on your specific situation and the actual (not perceived) risks you face.

Intersections of Power and Vulnerability

When Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality, she was focusing on how different forms of discrimination overlap and interact. But the same framework helps us understand how we each sit at intersections of both power and vulnerability.

We ALL have both power and vulnerability. Recognizing this isn’t about guilt or competition—it’s about honest assessment of what risks we can realistically take.

Here’s the difficult question we must ask ourselves: What level of discomfort am I willing to experience in order to ensure dignity for other people?

And we need to ask it specifically:

• Am I scared of something that will put me in danger of starvation?
• Or am I scared because someone might not like me anymore?
• Am I afraid of genuine harm, or afraid of having a difficult conversation?

Building Relationships Across Difference

Here’s something that might feel counter-intuitive: Sometimes resistance means building relationships with people whose views you find problematic.

If you’re in a position where you work alongside people with proximity to power who hold harmful views, completely shutting them down at every turn might feel righteous—but it might not create change.

Building a relationship that allows them to hear you when you make a suggestion about how they’re treating young people, or how resources are being allocated, or whose voices are being heard—that can be a form of resistance too.

This isn’t about compromising your values. It’s about being strategic about how change actually happens. It’s about recognizing that changing hearts and minds requires some level of connection.

But you can’t do this work effectively if you don’t have relationships with the people most impacted. If you want to leverage your privilege in the boardroom, you need to know your colleagues of color well enough to understand: Do they want you to speak up when they’re interrupted? Or would they prefer to handle it differently?

This is about respecting autonomy while offering solidarity. And that requires actual relationships, not just theoretical allyship.

Distinguishing Discomfort from Danger

Let’s be clear: Some people ARE in genuine danger. Trans youth in states criminalizing their healthcare. Undocumented people facing deportation. Unhoused people confronting both state violence and environmental threats.

I am not suggesting everyone should take the same risks. What I am suggesting is that many of us have confused discomfort with danger.

• Being criticized is discomfort, not danger
• Having difficult conversations is discomfort, not danger
• Losing social capital with the powerful is discomfort, not danger
• Having to explain yourself repeatedly is discomfort, not danger
• Being misunderstood is discomfort, not danger

For those with proximity to power (which to some degree is all of us, in different contexts), the question isn’t whether we’ll experience discomfort in working toward justice—it’s whether we’re willing to embrace that discomfort as necessary.

Your Discomfort Creates Others’ Danger

Here’s what’s rarely acknowledged: Your avoidance of discomfort often creates actual danger for others.

When you remain silent in that meeting because speaking up feels uncomfortable, the person being talked over experiences real harm to their career, their wellbeing, their sense of belonging.

When you don’t challenge harmful policies because confrontation makes you uncomfortable, those policies continue to devastate communities more vulnerable than yours.

When you avoid accountability because it feels threatening to your self-image, you deny others the justice of having their experiences recognized and addressed.

This is the water we swim in—a system built on white supremacy that affects every one of us daily. As the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond teaches in their Undoing Racism training, we all carry internalized racial oppression. For people of color, this often manifests as feeling small or doubting their own worth. For white people, it often manifests as assuming their perspective is normal, neutral, and universal.

Power looks different in different contexts, but it always creates responsibility. Ask yourself:

• Who listens when you speak?
• Whose ideas do you amplify or ignore?
• What resources can you direct or withhold?
• Whose comfort do you prioritize over whose safety?

We often avoid claiming our power because we fear the accountability that comes with it. But accountability isn’t punishment—it’s an opportunity to do something different next time, to build deeper relationships when we’ve caused harm.

In times when people’s lives are literally at risk, we cannot afford to keep avoiding accountability because it makes us uncomfortable. The stakes are too high.

From Theory to Practice

We’ve spent years reimagining. Theorizing. Planning. And those activities matter. But we’ve reached the moment of implementation. The work now is to bridge the gap between theory and practice, between what we know and what we do.

This isn’t just about marching in the streets, though direct action matters deeply. It’s about the thousand small decisions we make daily that either uphold or challenge the status quo.

The Global Community of Care

“But my community is small,” some say. “I have limited influence.”

Let’s be honest: In the interconnected world we inhabit, our community is global. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the technology we use—all connect us to people we’ll never meet but whose dignity is bound with ours.

This doesn’t mean we can’t start locally. In fact, we must. But it does mean recognizing that the ripples of our actions—and inactions—extend far beyond what we can see.

Your Discomfort as Compass

What if we reframed discomfort not as something to avoid but as a compass pointing us toward our most meaningful work?

If talking about race makes you uncomfortable, perhaps that’s exactly where your growth edge lies.

If challenging authority figures makes your stomach clench, perhaps that’s precisely where your voice is needed.

Discomfort isn’t the enemy of justice work—it’s often a necessary companion. The places where we feel most resistant, most uncomfortable, are often the exact places where we have the most power to create change.

The Practical Work Ahead

So what does this mean for you, right now?

1. Map your power: What decisions do you influence? What resources do you control? What information do you have access to?
2. Assess your risk realistically: Not your perceived risk, but your actual risk. What’s the worst that could happen? How likely is it? What resources would you have to recover?
3. Build authentic relationships: Especially with people most impacted by the issues you care about. How can you offer solidarity in ways they actually want?
4. Find your edge: Where do you feel uncomfortable but not truly endangered? That’s your growth zone.
5. Take one concrete action: Not a statement. Not a post. An action that uses your specific power to create space for dignity.

This isn’t about heroics or martyrdom. It’s about each of us recognizing that systems change when the people who comprise them change how they use their power.

We don’t need permission to build what we know is necessary. We don’t need institutional approval to create communities of care. What we need is the willingness to be uncomfortable in service of something greater than our comfort.

The dismantling is happening whether we participate or not. The building is our choice.

What discomfort are you willing to embrace today to build the world we need tomorrow?

Share in the comments a moment when discomfort led you to important action. What did you learn? How did it change you?