Finding Comfort in Discomfort

One of the main reasons people go to therapy is to make changes in their life: to change their pattern of relationships, to change a pattern of behavior, or to change the way they cope with stress. For example, a young female comes in to therapy complaining of loneliness and social isolation. She hates the fact that she only has a few friends and that she spends most of her weekends alone. After a closer examination, it becomes clear that although she hates the loneliness, she has also become very comfortable in her loneliness. When offered opportunities to hang out with friends or go to a party, she tends to make excuses and stay home. At home, in her comfort zone, she does not have to face the anxiety provoked by her fear of rejection, which gives her a feeling of relief. In a sense, she also loves her loneliness. This is a complicated love/hate relationship. We regularly use our feeling of comfort as a barometer as to whether or not we should do something. Many times this can be a good index to inform our behavior. For example, a colleague asks us to make a minor ethical violation in order to help the company. We feel a sense of discomfort within us which helps inform us that we don't want to follow through with the behavior. Here the comfort barometer works in our benefit. However, when it comes to areas of personal growth, the comfort barometer is essentially reversed; feeling discomfort is a sign of progress and growth while feeling comfort indicates we are reverting to our old ways and reinforcing the problem. In order to make changes in the right direction we need to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, and this means acknowledging but then ignoring our instincts telling us to stay in the comfort zone. If we don't, we might just spend the rest of our lives feeling comfortable but miserable.