Your comfort levels

As we’re healing from trauma one of the most important things, as Babette Rothschild says, is to improve the quality of our daily life as much as we can.

One way we can do that is by paying attention to how comfortable we feel in the moment: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

What do you do if you’re out walking and you get a tiny pebble in your sandal and it doesn’t feel really uncomfortable right there and then but you might feel sorer at the end of your walk if you don’t take it out, but you also think that taking off your sandal to shake the pebble out is too much hassle.

The small things become the big things so take that pebble out, make your walk as comfortable as possible. Listen to what your body is saying to you. Stop overriding its messages. This is how we show ourselves respect and take ourselves seriously. Making yourself as comfortable as you can be in any given moment is really really important.

So drink when you’re thirsty, eat when you’re hungry, rest when you’re tired. So many of us have a pattern of pushing through. We don’t trust that things will work out if we don’t struggle or fight for it. We might even think we’ll get some sort of prize for trying as hard as we can. Or maybe we have a belief that says the more we do, the more value we have. When we take it easy we feel lazy, good for nothing. It might even make us anxious to do less, never mind nothing.

Watch out for signs of discomfort and what you do to alleviate that discomfort. It might be easier to make yourself more physically comfortable initially as you usually only have yourself to answer to in this regard. But maybe emotionally you’re not comfortable saying No. Feeling comfortable in this instance in akin to feeling safe, they often go together. Remember by saying Yes when you don’t want to, is equivalent to saying No to yourself. Try saying No on the smaller things with people you feel safer with and see how it feels. Like anything, we get better with practice and dealing with whatever consequences there might be. Because there are consequences either way, it just depends on what consequences we’re comfortable with, or can become comfortable with.