Controlled Comfort

What do you reach for when you're feeling down? A stuffed animal from your childhood? A horrible movie? A show you have seen twenty times? The sudden hankering for the gym—a feeling that lay dormant for months until the very moment you need it for letting off steam, not actual gym rewards? We tend to yearn for comforts that bring us some form of control when we lose our grip on it—but what do your unique comforts say about what you need?

I would like to start by pointing out that I will most likely be a hypocrite on this post. Just this once. I pretty much have music and/or TV shows constantly playing around me as a way to fill in the quiet. Partially because my mind loves to talk when I want it to shut up sometimes. I think the few times I will only have classical music playing, or simply silence is when I am writing. But that's of course when I want my mind to have no bounds so I let it speak. I think that is also why people rewatch the same shows over and over again. It's rarely because they think the show is the greatest piece of media ever created. It's because familiarity is relaxing. Your brain already knows what's going to happen, which means for once it can stop anticipating something. No surprises (except for that joke you finally understand), no tensions, no uncertainty, just something predictable in a world that usually isn't.

Another form of controlled comfort is the item we keep and never throw away. Common items are old autographed posters, childhood stuffed animals, or an old Nintendo Wii or DS you still play. The latter, I am still extremely fond of. We tend to find comfort in these things because they remind us of times we didn't have to think so hard, or stress about the disgusting $5 gas. The objects themselves are not magical, yet they anchor you more than anything. Currently I am rereading The Land of Stories, a childhood favorite of mine that I still cherish my first copies of, and usually when I read anything, I love to dog-ear the pages when I read words that make me laugh or hit me deeply. So rereading my favorite book as a kid, and reading what made me laugh back then (even though half the time I am already laughing at the line and then look down to see the page already ear-marked), it is like giving my childhood self a hug. Off-topic but also on topic, I have a tiny bottle of lavender essential oil from my friend, and I always keep it on my desk as a way to relax when work or school gets to stressful—I realize this is another controlled comfort that leads me to notice how comforts appease the senses. The smell of sweet lavender helps me relax when I am stressed out, the constant background noise of music and/or previously watched TV shows muffles your hearing so you can't hear your overwhelming thoughts alone anymore (which btw this is not just me that does this. We will get to that in a moment). Your favorite stuffed animal or the old button-mashing Smash Bros feeling keeps you focused on somethings else while keeping your hands busy. And of course, everyone lovessss the taste of comfort food. Perhaps that is why comforts are so powerful—enough to give us back some control—they tend to soothe us through the senses first, and then the mind follows suit.

Apparently I am not alone in this, you guessed it, a poll was made and the responses were all similar in different manners. A friend of mine finds solace in the smell of her boyfriends clothing (which I can also relate to, I refuse to give him back certain hoodies until they start to smell more like me. Then I exchange), or a few friends of mine refuse to let go of their childhood stuffed animal. If it got them through rough days when they were children, who's to say the magic wears off once you're an adult? Another friend of mine tends to bottle up her emotions, and when she can feel them start to bubble, she lets the dam break with a showing of Brother Bear. It will get anyone crying, and a healthy way to allow herself to feel more than she does on a daily basis. I also got a few responses on just the change of environment. It is comforting to remember you have to ability to shut off whatever is stressing you out at the moment, and go outside, or clock out, or take a shower. Sometimes even minor physical movement prompts you to remember that you won't remain in a stressful bubble forever.

This then flows into the non-healthy comforts. To be frank, doom-scrolling for hours, days in and days out, is a non-healthy comfort. Again, hypocrite here because I also doom-scroll on my days off. Those set screen-time timers are helpful though, I have one that's set for an hour on TikTok. Fine, two hours. And I know if I have been on TikTok for two hours then okay it's time to get up. Comfort becomes avoidance when it stops helping you reset and starts helping you hide. If you tend to rewire your emotional dependence on a social media feed, then I fear some changes have to be made. Doom-scrolling, for instance, occupies the majority of your senses, so for a moment you no longer have to sit alone with whatever was bothering you in the first place. The issue begins when comfort—regardless of what it might be—no longer helps you recover from life, but instead delays you from actually participating in it again. There is a difference between decompressing with controlled comforts, and disappearing into avoidance so often that you no longer know how to sit quietly with yourself.

Comforts are not something to be embarrassed about at all. Humans were never meant to function at full speed every second of every day anyway, so naturally we reach for things that soften the edges a little. Pieces of joy, if you will (wink, wink). The important part is recognizing whether your comforts are helping you return to yourself, or helping you avoid yourself. One grounds you, while the other slowly distances you. To be honest, if rereading a childhood book, smelling lavender, or watching Brother Bear helps you through an exhausting week, then maybe that tiny bit of control is all you need.