How to Come out of your Comfort Zone

Windy Dryden

• Publisher: Sheldon Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781847091369
• eBook ISBN: 9781847092854
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Mental Health & Wellbeing

We all love comfort - but, psychologically, it can be a real trap, holding you back and keeping you stuck in dead-end situations. Using the principles of Rational Emotive Therapy, this book helps people deal with discomfort in life, with advice on how to get things done, achieve goals and overcome inertia. The book covers the problems of those who take a masochistic approach to life's frustrations, and those who use "quick fixes" such as alcohol and drugs. It discusses how to overcome emotional problems which can result when things don't go to plan, such as anger, depression and self-pity. Topics include: The many faces of the comfort trap dealing with urges and feelings of deprivation tolerating unpleasant feelings dealing with impatience and boredom overcoming procrastination developing persistence dealing with the discomfort of change.

1

 

What is a comfort zone?

Introduction

In this book, I am going to show you how you can come out and stay out of your comfort zone when it is healthy for you to do so. Traditionally, the term ‘comfort zone’ means a notional area of comfort which defines a part of your life where you play safe. Thus, when someone says that she (in this case) is afraid to come out of her comfort zone she probably means the following:

 

1  She is currently in a life-space where she is comfortable, but somewhat unfulfilled.

2  She would like to effect change in this area and do something different and potentially more fulfilling.

3  She is afraid to effect change so she remains within her ‘comfort zone’.

 

People who want to come out of their comfort zone but are afraid to do so often say that they are in a rut. If you are in a rut and afraid to come out of and stay out of this comfort zone, then I will help you to do so. I discuss ruts and how to come out and stay out of them in Chapter 6 and refer throughout this book to the case of Geraldine, who has precisely this problem.

While ‘comfort zone’ has this precise meaning in the public psyche, I am going to use it more broadly in this book. Specifically, I will discuss two different types of comfort zone situations. In the first, you are in a comfort zone, but you need to come out of it in order to do something that you find difficult or uncomfortable so that you can achieve your goals. However, you don’t do so. In this type of comfort zone you experience the following problems:

 

•  procrastination;

•  being in a rut;

•  lack of persistence.

 

This type of self-defeating comfort zone is outlined as follows:

 

Comfort zone → activity that is uncomfortable which will help you to achieve your goals → which you don’t do → remain in comfort zone

 

In the second type of comfort zone, you are in an uncomfortable state which it is in your best interests to tolerate so that you can achieve your goals. However, instead you act to get rid of this discomfort and seek to go into your comfort zone. In this type of comfort zone you experience the following problems:

 

•  difficulty dealing with urges;

•  difficulty tolerating unpleasant feelings and thoughts;

•  impatience.

 

This type of self-defeating comfort zone is outlined as follows:

 

Discomfort (staying with this discomfort will help you to achieve your goals) → you seek comfort (in your comfort zone)

 

Comfort is not intrinsically problematic

As you will have read, I am only interested in helping you to come out of and stay out of a comfort zone that is unhelpful to you in the longer term. You may be in a comfort zone that is not unhealthy for you and, indeed, you may be in a comfort zone that works for you. That is why when I refer to a comfort zone that is self-defeating for you, I will use the abbreviation ‘SDCZ’, which stands for ‘self-defeating comfort zone’.

Following on from this, let me be quite clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with comfort. Indeed, being comforted by a loving caregiver when you were distressed as a baby or as a child (or even as an adult) is very therapeutic. Such comfort may be expressed verbally or non-verbally (or both) and it helps to soothe and heal.

Also, when you come home having had a hard day at work and you sit down with a refreshing cup of tea in your favourite armchair, listening to some soothing music, then such comfort can have great restorative powers. No, far from viewing comfort as being negative, it can be positive across a lot of situations.

However, as I will show in this book, seeking comfort can also be problematic. Thus, if it is healthy for you to be uncomfortable in the sense that doing so helps you to achieve your goals and you decide to seek comfort instead, then your comfort-seeking is problematic. So seeking comfort is not a problem per se, but if it prevents you from achieving your healthy goals then it is problematic and needs attention.

Let me now provide you with an outline of the chapters that follow. In the next chapter, I am going to outline some of the key ideas that inform this book. These ideas stem from a therapy known as Rational-Emotive Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (RECBT), an approach to counselling and psychotherapy that was originated by Dr Albert Ellis (1913–2007), one of the grandfathers of the therapeutic tradition known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). I will present and discuss the ‘ABC’ model of RECBT which will help you to understand the factors involved that keep people in general in their SDCZs.

In Chapter 3, I will show you how you can use the ‘ABC’ model to understand why you are in your SDCZ and then set goals to come out of it.

In Chapter 4, I will show you what you need to do to come out and stay out of your SDCZ when it is healthy for you to do so, without experiencing disturbed emotions, behaviour and thinking.

In Chapter 5, I will identify and discuss ten of the major obstacles that you might encounter along the path of coming out of and staying out of your SDCZ, and I will then show you how you can deal with them if you encounter them.

In Chapters 6 and 7, I draw upon the material that I presented in Chapters 2–5 and discuss in general terms the problems that people experience in the two different types of self-defeating comfort zones that I outlined earlier: (a) where you do not move out of your comfort zone in order to engage in activities that you find uncomfortable, but that will help you achieve your goals, and (b) where you get rid of discomfort when it is in your interest to tolerate it in order to achieve your goals.

Finally, in Chapter 8, I provide some advice on how to get the most from this book.

2

The ‘ABCs’ of Rational-Emotive Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

The approach that I will be taking to help you to come out and stay out of your comfort zone is known as Rational-Emotive Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (RECBT). The term ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy’ (or CBT) defines the therapeutic tradition where it is generally accepted that people’s problems are largely determined by the way they think about the adversities that they face in life and how they act in the face of these adversities.

There are quite a few specific approaches within the CBT tradition, and the one on which this book is based is known as ‘Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy’, which was established in 1955 by the famous American clinical psychologist Dr Albert Ellis. I call this approach ‘Rational-Emotive Cognitive Behavioural Therapy’ (RECBT) to show both that it falls within the CBT tradition and that its distinctive features owe a great deal to Dr Ellis.

In this chapter, I will outline the major principles of RECBT that are particularly relevant to helping you understand how people remain within their comfort zone when it is not healthy for them to do so and how they can come out of their comfort zone.

The ‘ABCs’ of RECBT

RECBT proposes what is known as the ‘...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author information
• Overcoming Common Problems Series
• Title page
• Copyright
• Table of contents
• 1. What is a comfort zone?
• 2. The ‘ABCs’ of Rational-Emotive Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• 3. Understanding why you are in your self-defeating comfort zone and setting goals to come out and stay out of it
• 4. How to stay out of your self-defeating comfort zone in the face of adversity without disturbing yourself
• 5. Identifying and dealing with obstacles to continued progress
• 6. Dealing with problems associated with maintaining comfort
• 7. Dealing with problems associated with eliminating discomfort
• 8. Self-help books and comfort zones
• Appendix 1: Rigid beliefs and flexible beliefs
• Appendix 2: Awfulizing beliefs and non-awfulizing beliefs
• Appendix 3: Discomfort intolerance beliefs and discomfort tolerance beliefs
• Appendix 4: Depreciation beliefs and acceptance beliefs
• Search items