27/07/2025
Have We Made It Too Easy? The Role of Hardship in Building Emotional Muscles
In our work as clinicians and art therapists, we often encounter young adults who are struggling — not just with mental health symptoms, but with life itself. Many appear emotionally brittle, overwhelmed by everyday relational challenges, and unpracticed in the art of sitting with discomfort. It raises a confronting question:
Have we — as a society — protected people so much from hardship that we’ve unintentionally stunted their emotional development?
Let’s be clear: we’re not talking about trauma. We’re talking about ordinary hardship — disappointment, frustration, awkwardness, failure, rejection. The very stuff that builds resilience, self-awareness, and the capacity to relate authentically with others.
And yet, somewhere along the way, these everyday difficulties have come to be seen as potentially harmful. We’ve become so attuned to protecting people’s emotional safety that we often avoid necessary truths. We tiptoe around honest feedback. We shield children from struggle. We label the uncomfortable as unsafe.
As therapists, we know that growth happens in the stretch zone, not the comfort zone. Without exposure to difficulty, without friction, without feedback — how do people learn to self-reflect, to take responsibility, or to repair relationships?
We now see young adults who avoid conflict rather than engaging in it constructively. Who interpret relational messiness as violation. Who collapse when faced with feedback. And we can’t blame them — they’ve rarely been given the chance to build the muscle for hard conversations.
Our current cultural norms — especially in parenting, education, and therapeutic circles — tend to overvalue emotional comfort and undervalue resilience-building. There’s immense pressure to validate every feeling, accommodate every boundary, and avoid anything that might feel confronting. But in doing so, we may be reinforcing fragility rather than fostering strength.
Authentic connection requires honesty. It requires emotional range. It requires discomfort. And it requires the wisdom to distinguish between harm and hardship.
So what do we do?
As clinicians, educators, and art therapists, perhaps we can:
Create therapeutic spaces where feedback is welcome, not feared.
Help clients tolerate discomfort rather than escape it.
Normalize repair after rupture, rather than idealize conflict-free relationships.
Gently challenge black-and-white thinking around safety, rights, and emotional harm.
Support parents to raise children with emotional stamina, not just emotional vocabulary.
There is real work to do — culturally and clinically — to restore the dignity of resilience and the value of emotional depth. Let’s not underestimate the role we can play in that transformation.
Let’s keep the conversation real.
Let’s teach what it means to stretch — not just soothe.
Let’s help people grow up whole — not just protected.
