Toxic Comfort

Comfort is unconditionally accepting. It’s familiar like nostalgia while equally customized by you. Your Comfort is its own size and has its own boundaries. Comfort can be your bedroom, your best friend, your childhood gerbil, or all of the above. It’s plush and it wraps itself around you after a long day. In Comfort’s boundaries, you can be completely you, be it elated or disheartened, and it won’t judge. In Comfort, we find peaceful rest. It’s where we can unwind and recharge.

However, Comfort will tell you any lie to keep you in its embrace. It will lure you back with a person, a meal, or a mindset and it will keep you there as long as you’re willing.

But you see, Comfort can also be stubborn. Its boundaries are rigid walls, and it stretches about as much as metal in winter. Comfort doesn’t like change or embarking on new territory, and it’s possessive. In fact, if you don’t give it rules to follow, it will give you anxiety, fear, and stress if pushed too hard or if you’re gone too long. Comfort will tell you any lie to keep you in its embrace. It will lure you back in with a person, a meal, or a mindset and it will keep you there as long as you’re willing. It does this out of its own insecurities because it doesn’t want you to grow and leave it behind.

Like all intangible and psychological concepts though, Comfort can be trained. The first step is to take ownership of it, like a psychological pet, if you will. Nurture its good qualities, but train the bad. Know that you’re the one in control, not it. This ownership allows you to reframe Comfort’s boundaries. It takes time and practice, but you got this. Give yourself a little grace, and surround yourself with those that will partner with you to positively challenge yourself, and Comfort will follow along just fine. You’ll find that you can stretch Comfort’s boundaries to fit a world of opportunities if you’ll let it.

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