OK. We’re done some serious review in the last few posts about what happens when we turn a problem into a crisis in our thinking. The last stop in this joyride I call the Chronic Anxiety Cycle is the Comfort Zone.

The first real traceable source I have for this term comes from Peter McWilliams, and it is essentially his model of the Comfort Zone that drives my thinking here. (For further reading see his excellent book “Do It – Let’s Get Off Our Buts.”)

Here’s the bottom-line: Flight or Fight will continue to activate in us every time (EVERY time) we think about a particular issue or problem that scares us. We eventually reach a place where we are SICK and TIRED of being afraid, so we wall it off from our thinking to the best of our ability. We finally create a way to get away from the tiger in our minds…

And that wall is the metaphoric Comfort Zone. Think of it as a yard with a fence around it. If you’re inside the fence you’re golden. But you KNOW that just over the fence is a really scary dog that barks at you if you get up on the fence. So you DON’T. You stay on your side of the fence, and that way you don’t feel fear/risk getting hurt -

The Origins of the Comfort Zone

This fence in your head, however, is different from the fence in your yard. This fence is electric! OK, it isn’t really electric. But it will attempt to shock you if you try to get over it -

Let’s go back to the natural world for a minute. Let’s imagine that you are Erik the Zebra. You’re hangin’ with the other zebras, doing that eating-grass-on-the-plains thing, and you decide you’re thirsty. You head for the water hole, and suddenly you smell that unmistakable odor of lions.

This is a classic example of what the Flight or Fight Response evolved to do. You are going to remember that experience! You’ll, in the future, find yourself a little more wary as you approach watering holes (assuming you lived through the first encounter.) In other words, you’ve developed a Comfort Zone boundary around the subject of water holes – and good thing too, right?

You’ll be smarter and more careful the next time you get next to water holes! A great evolved mechanism to keep you safe, in the natural world…

You Ain’t Natural Marge!

The challenge for us humans and our Comfort Zones is that we can do this exact creating of safety boundaries around stuff that scares us IN OUR THINKING. And this is when the Comfort Zone, so useful in the natural world, gets us in trouble instead. We wall away our fears from our thinking, and that’s where they can fester and grow and mess with our lives.

When I was a kid I touched a hot stove. I remember it VERY clearly. I really came to understand how much pain was possible that wonderful morning… I learned that Comfort Zone lesson so strongly that for years I wouldn’t even touch a COLD burner.

That’s not necessarily bad, when it comes to hot stoves. But it can really get in the way when we have problems we need to address, fears to unplug, anxiety to shut down, but we are afraid to face them, because we’ve trained ourselves (and, by extension, our Comfort Zones) to keep us as far from those fears/anxieties as possible.

Fences That Move

The Comfort Zone has some very specific qualities that make this work just a tad more challenging as well. Unlike those fences we have in our backyards, our Comfort Zone boundaries are mobile. What I mean is those boundaries are always striving to keep us safe – and you really can’t be too safe, right?

So, in the reasoning of the Comfort Zone, if 10 feet from danger is good, 20 feet is better – and 30 feet is better still. The Comfort Zone winds up, as a result, being constrictive. It tends to shrink inwards towards YOU and away from the thinking that scares us.

Safety is a great thing in the natural world. Better to be safe than sorry – seriously. But that isn’t the case when it comes to facing problems! No, to solve problems we need to face problems and start experimenting with solutions. More accurately, we need to convert things we’re afraid of in our thinking BACK to problems, and then start experimenting with solutions.

The Comfort Zone however isn’t having any of this conversation. NOT interested. Here’s the thing: you decide you’re afraid of something, and that’s all the Comfort Zone needs to know. It has one mission – to keep you SAFE.

Safety IS Job One, For the Comfort Zone

Remember that quote from Ford Motor Company? (OK, if you’re under 30 then you probably don’t.) Might as well have been written by our Comfort Zones.

Can’t overstate this, and if you get this you’re a long ways towards having a real handle on how fear and anxiety work in the human brain and body. If you have any conviction that something could hurt you then you are telling your Comfort Zone that this issue or problem is BAD, and you need to stay away from it. End of story!

So as far as your Comfort Zone is concerned, you need to STAY AWAY from this scary thought or problem. It is the classic story of falling off the horse or the bike. We get thrown and we get hurt, and when it happened, for most of us, it was scary as well.

We know that the only way to get back on the horse or bike is to get up on it and face through our fear about what MIGHT happen if we ride again. But instead if getting up on a horse or bike we have to face through our fears, face through the Comfort Zone warnings that this didn’t work so well last time – really, you shouldn’t do this horse or bike thing.

SO – What to DO?

Since I am addressing the various qualities of the Comfort Zone across several posts I will be addressing each quality with one or two recommendations per post, then review them all in the last of this group. For now keep in mind one thing: your fear isn’t going anyplace until you take the risk of getting up on that fence.

More specifically, you have to PUSH BACK on the Comfort Zone. Given that your Comfort Zone is always working to keep you safe, and as a result is trying to make you step back, you will have to push back on your Comfort Zone for the rest of your life.

And that’s a GOOD thing, because in that direction lies our freedom. I’ve outlined in other posts (including the most recent video post) that a small collection of practiced skills is what will break us loose from chronic anxiety and fear. The very first thing on that list is the knowledge and practice of NOT running from our fears, but instead facing into them.

That takes practice, patience and a little skill. Anyone – ANYONE – can do it.

Next up – more on the Comfort Zone. Keep those comments and feedback coming folks – really helps as I continue this work!

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