When We Get Used To Suffering: What Is The Toxic “comfort Zone”?
Nowadays we hear a lot about the “comfort zone”, mentioning the importance of getting out of it and the challenges involved in leaving it aside. We tend to think of the “Comfort Zone” as a comfortable and safe space, a place where we like to be because it brings us well-being and yet, There are many occasions in which this area is far from being healthy for our psychological structure
The funny thing about comfort zones is that human beings are very capable of getting used to discomfort. We settle into mental spaces of discomfort in a very automatic and unconscious way and “toxicity” becomes a normal reality that we experience on a daily basis.
We easily settle for harmful habits, subtle addictions, destructive relationships and negative behaviors and without realizing it, the “comfort zone” ends up being anything but comfortable We prefer to cling to the known regardless of the self-destructiveness it represents, anyway, that is what we know and have been adapted to.
Every negative habit is maintained because it has value. When anger, dependency, established anxiety or isolation have been the only resource that you have learned to use to face discomfort, the mind generates the habit of putting these tools into practice to face any adversity in life. Maintaining a harmful comfort zone does not make you a “crazy” person, you are going to use the techniques you know based on your experiences and the past events you have had to face.
When your symptoms are “useful” to keep you going, you keep them because you don’t know any other way to respond to your reality. The problem is that harmful forms of coping are unsustainable over time. Our mind needs real well-being and there comes a point where it will scream to be heard in its need to obtain it The habits that previously served you are no longer enough and negative strategies become increasingly difficult to sustain.
How to get out of this toxic zone?
Many have become accustomed to suffering. They think that life cannot offer anything better than what they have already experienced and therefore, they cling with all their might to what they have already managed to achieve so far.
Leaving the known always involves a challenge. Even the most harmful habits become something we find difficult to give up, we all fear the unknown, even when we know that something much better awaits us on the other side of the road We tend to choose to stay in the comfort zone that hurts us because of the fear of the pain that change entails. We prefer to sustain “chronic” and less intense pain than face the acute impact that breaking with what we have maintained for years can have.
Letting go of your comfort zone is a process and it is very likely that you will require support to walk in this search towards your new safe space. It’s about generating new resources, finding the healthiest tools that can replace each of the coping strategies that have been hurting you for years. It’s about separating yourself from relationships and ways of thinking that, instead of building your real identity, minimize it.
The search for well-being consists of breaking completely, making flexible what you had as rigid as part of your reality to search for what really guides you towards an experience of life in fullness Letting go does not mean that now everything will be good and will work perfectly or ideally, but it does mean that you will find a more dignified and conscious way to live both positive and negative experiences.
You will be able to see the same realities of adversity or conflict from a new pedestal that is more stable than those things you previously used to cope with. Remember that you do not have to accept suffering, that sustained discomfort is not normal and that there are new alternatives within you that you can still dare to discover.
