There’s a fine line between “pushing yourself out of your comfort zone” and “pushing yourself into a mental breakdown” and we need to fucking find it and stop encouraging people to do the second in an attempt at making them do the first.
A German pedagogue named Tom Senninger developed this model called the “Learning Zone Model.” Senninger talks about three zones: comfort, learning (or growth), and panic. I think that’s really important because some people do talk like anything “outside your comfort zone” is automatically good and brings growth.
But Senninger knows that you can only stretch so far before you’ve stretched too far. Both experience, personal work, and therapy can help expand the first two zones and shrink the third, but we’ll always have that place where panic and/or pain sets in, and our goal should be to recognize and respect that in ourselves and others, rather than force ourselves or someone else to “push through it.” There is no “through it.” The only thing on the other side of the panic zone is more panic.
Yeah, from experience, “pushing through it” in the panic/pain zone instead of nope-ing back down to one of the other zones just leads to damage either mentally or physically (or both at once).
It’s ok to have limits. It’s GOOD to have limits.
Feeling uncomfortable is one thing. Feeling IN PAIN or TERRIFIED is quite another.
…and also there’s nothing wrong with doing things that are in your comfort zone. It’s not healthy to stay out of it constantly. It’s good to GET out of it sometimes, but if you go do a thing to push yourself and then take a break and hang out comfortably for a while that’s called ‘resting’ and is a good idea.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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