Arguing With Reality: Why Resisting Change Creates Suffering

In my last post, I wrote about how change is the only constant in life. But knowing that truth doesn’t always make change easier. This is where resistance enters…

Sometimes it feels like something terrible is happening to me.

There’s an energy that builds in my body — sharp and restless. I want to throw something, anything, just to release it. My throat tightens. My stomach turns. My shoulders creep toward my ears and I clench my jaw. My breath becomes shallow and fast. My forehead tightens.

This is what resistance feels like in my body.

I am resisting what is.
I am fighting something I cannot control.

And it feels deeply uncomfortable.

Life will always have fluctuations — moments we label as good and moments we label as bad. That part isn’t optional. But lately, I’ve noticed that the hardest moments aren’t the change itself.

It’s my resistance to it.

It almost feels like I’m arguing with reality — insisting it should look different than it does. I tell myself a story about how unfair it is, how it shouldn’t be happening, how I want it to go back to the way it was. That internal argument creates even more tension.

It’s not that I was choosing suffering before. I simply wasn’t aware that I had another way to respond.

When resistance rises, my nervous system shifts into fight mode. My body contracts. My thoughts narrow. Everything feels urgent and threatening.

But when I can pause — even briefly — and observe what is happening from a little distance, something changes. The situation may not be different. But my relationship to it is.

I’ve seen this pattern in postpartum, my divorce, and becoming a yoga teacher. In shifting identities. In endings and goodbyes. In moments when I felt like I was losing something essential. 

I forget that this moment will pass. I grip instead of allowing. And that gripping prolongs the discomfort.

I used to believe that accepting change meant approving of it. That softening meant weakness. But I’m beginning to understand that acceptance is not the same as agreement. Letting go does not mean I like what’s happening.

It simply means I stop arguing with reality.

And in that space, there is room to breathe.

Lately my divorce has taken up a lot of space in my life. It’s a high-conflict situation and requires more attention and energy than I would like.

Last week, something happened that brought a wave of emotion I wasn’t prepared for. Within seconds I was in tears — angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, and honestly a little hopeless. And, of course, it happened in public.

My mind immediately began telling a story: that situations like this would keep happening over and over again, that this conflict would never really end.

But after that initial reaction, I was able to pause. And in that small moment of space, something shifted.

I realized that what I was fighting wasn’t just the situation — it was my belief that it shouldn’t be happening at all.

I can’t control another person’s behavior, choices, or reactions. But I can choose how I respond.

So instead of continuing to spiral in the story my mind was telling, I took a breath and reminded myself: one step at a time.

Maybe the situation won’t unfold the way I hope. Life rarely does. But in that moment, when I stopped taking everything personally and allowed things to be as they were, the intensity softened.

The situation didn’t magically disappear. But the suffering eased.

And that small shift reminded me how much of our pain comes not from what is happening — but from how fiercely we resist it.

Resistance often begins with a story we tell ourselves about the future.

When I notice resistance rising, I try not to shame it. I try to meet it gently. And sometimes I return to something very simple:

• Five conscious breaths

• A hand resting over my heart

• Lying down and letting the earth hold the weight of my body

These small acts don’t erase pain. But they shift me out of battle mode. They remind my nervous system that I am safe enough to soften.

Resistance may be human, but it doesn’t have to run our lives.

Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is pause, breathe, and soften — even when everything inside us wants to fight.

The situation may not change immediately. But when we stop arguing with reality, something inside us does.

And in that space, we often discover that we are far more capable of moving through life’s challenges than we imagined.