MORE COMFORT

Understanding Comfort

The first and most important point in understanding comfort is to understand that it is an effective response to being uncomfortable. To really comfort ourselves, we must accept our discomfort. As we accept our discomfort, we open ourselves to the blessing of being comforted. Comfort is a response to two primary emotions: fear and hurt. When we are comforting ourselves in response to fear, we experience reassurance, safety, and the encouragement and support to engage appropriately rather than to unconsciously freeze or flee (or fight, or submit, or attach). When we comfort ourselves in response to hurt, we receive affirmation and nourishment.

Sadness and anger compel comfort, too, but they are much more complex. For example, the agitation of anger is often a function of hurt and fear requiring various actions to move to safety or accomplish something. Comfort is necessary but not sufficient in many of these instances. These more complex situations likely address the anger first. In a classic scene from the movie Mona Lisa Smile, we see a young woman who is angry and inconsolable. However, when her girlfriend then reaches out to her and holds her tight, she melts into tears and sobs, releasing her hurt. In other situations, where she might be in danger, she must first use her anger to deal with the danger to restore safety. Only once the danger has lifted is comfort a priority.

Attachment and Self-Soothing

Our early attachment experiences provided the initial wiring for regulating our emotions. If your primary caregiver did not have strong emotional recognition and regulation, you will likely not have it either. Remember, regulating emotions doesn’t mean numbing them; it means amplifying our joy and sharing and soothing our hurt, fear, anger, and sadness. Self-soothing is a critical skill to develop so that we can attach to ourselves and begin to rewire the neural pathways to regulate our emotions—to experience the full range of emotions and the full range of living. Rather than trying to avoid upset and limiting our life experience, we can go toward all that life offers, engaging in life fully, following our yearnings, and living genuinely fulfilling, satisfying lives.

When we are scared or angry, we often default to our most primitive system—our reptilian brain—which is concerned primarily with survival. We get more defensive and fearful, scanning for threats, and become focused on surviving the present danger with an unconscious response—fight, flight, freeze, submit, or attach. We might freeze and shut down, disengage, or become aggressive, oppositional, and short-sighted. We might run away to avoid the situation entirely, or we might cling to someone, or yield to others’ desires or control, or mechanically follow orders. We don’t feel safe or secure and our defenses are triggered. It’s only when we can create a sense of safety that we can engage in our experience.

When you feel yourself ready to run for the hills or play dead, recruit your mammalian brain to provide a sense of safety. You can activate these circuits by reaching out and touching someone, making eye contact, taking deep breaths, making facial movements, speaking lyrically, or listening to a melodic voice through song or chant. These calm us and bring us a sense of connectedness so that we can engage in experiences. Next time you feel yourself moving into that primitive state, remember that you can take action to activate your mammalian brain and calm yourself. You won’t have to flee or freeze—you’ll be able to engage instead.

Oh, and some of the things you often do or are advised to do in those scary moments—like work out, distract yourself, do something novel? Not necessarily a good idea. Your system is looking for safety and predictability to calm you and turn off your stress responses. Workouts and distractions may have an analgesic effect and numb the upset, but they don’t tend to your fear. Choose self-soothing and calming instead. It lowers your defenses and makes you feel safer, helping you reengage in your experiences. (And, no, this is not an excuse to not work out or do novel things—we encourage that! Sometimes it's incredibly helpful to turn your fear into anger and fight for change. Just don’t use these responses to try to numb your fear!)

Hug the Monster

For many people, tending to their fear is difficult. It’s important to heed the information our fear has for us, but also to not become paralyzed by it, or to numb ourselves. Amygdala hijacks are common, and we instantly react with a fight, flight, freeze, submit, or attach response. What we are practicing instead is: naming the fear, reassuring ourselves, and providing the encouragement to deal with the situation—whether to assess the situation fully, strategize, or seek appropriate support to deal with it.

So, rather than just fight, flight, freeze, attach, or submit, take a tip from the U.S. Air Force and learn to Hug the Monster! Soldiers know it is impossible to not be scared in combat. They need to learn to face their fear by naming it, examining it, accurately assessing what is really going on (because fear distorts perception), and then taking appropriate action.

Scientific studies show that when people respond actively, rather than passively, to fear, alternative brain pathways are utilized, and a passive fear response is replaced with an active coping strategy.

Fear is inevitable; it cannot be avoided, nor is it good for us to avoid. Practice naming your fear and hug the monster by talking to yourself: “Unpleasantness is unavoidable… this may be uncomfortable, but I need not be paralyzed.” Or ask yourself: “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” And if it doesn’t mean horrific consequences, then cop the attitude from the classic film, Risky Business: “Sometimes you gotta say, ‘What the F*%k’ and make your move!”

Self-Soothing ≠ Soft Addictions!

Remember, providing comfort is very different from numbing discomfort. Reaching for that big bowl of ice cream, numbing out while web or channel surfing, binging on social media, or going shopping, etc., are not activities that truly comfort you, reassure you, or tend to your emotions. These activities—your soft addictions—do not meet your deeper yearnings, nor do they provide the much-needed solace you deserve. In fact, they block you from true self-care by numbing your consciousness, muting your feelings, putting you in a trance, making you foggy, forgetful, buzzed, high, or agitated.

Self-Compassion

As you are increasingly naming and facing your emotions and turning on your mammalian brain more and more, practicing self-compassion—a form of self-soothing and comfort—will help you as you rematrix for full emotional engagement. Self-compassion is no different than having compassion for others. When you experience compassion, you notice that another is suffering or struggling and feel moved by their emotions, causing you to feel warmth and caring towards the person. The same is true for self-compassion, except that instead of feeling warmth and caring for another, you are turning that attitude inward, toward yourself.

As you acknowledge your feelings—and allow yourself to feel those emotions—you practice self-compassion. Rather than judge yourself or criticize yourself for having feelings, you recognize that it is part of the human experience. All human beings feel fear, hurt, anger, sadness, and joy. You become more mindful and accepting of your feelings, treating yourself with more affection and understanding.

When you are kind to yourself, you recruit your mammalian caregiving system, which provides a sense of safety and security. You’re able to focus more clearly, make better decisions, and be more resilient. Research shows that practicing self-compassion increases your sense of altruism, both towards others and to yourself. Self-compassion causes you to have greater understanding for yourself and your journey as well as increased kindness to yourself. You realize that your emotional journey is part of the shared human experience, which helps you to have a growth mindset and live more authentically.

Recognize Your Window of Tolerance

In the other lessons, you have been mapping your Window of Tolerance. This has helped you recognize when you are inside that sweet spot in the middle—between the banks of chaos and rigidity, when your frontal lobe has the capacity for higher-level function, and when you have access to both thoughts and feelings. This assignment on discovering and generating more comfort is meant to help you increase your level of skill to shift from a state of hypo- or hyper-arousal and soothe whatever strong feeling you are unconsciously reacting to, so that you can come back into your Window of Tolerance.

It might seem counter-intuitive to seek comfort when you are hypo-aroused. You might think, I can’t feel anything; why would I need any comfort? Even when you are hypo-aroused, these skills of self-soothing can help you bring your conscious mind online, out of automatic responses. You might be displaying behavior of being numb or frozen, ie being incapable of making a decision—but it might be in response to a strong fear, for instance. Or maybe you have internalized lessons to shut down strong hurt or anger, so you don’t express them.

Use the skills you have been practicing with sensing and naming your primary emotions (labeling your affect), and then try taking your emotional temperature—gauge how strong the feeling is. When your emotional temperature is very high, try soothing yourself to bring the emotion to a level that is inside your Window of Tolerance, where the emotion is allowed to exist, but isn’t triggering your survival mechanisms to run the show.

As you learn to comfort yourself and expand your window of tolerance, you’ll increasingly “flow in the river of life between the banks of chaos and rigidity.”