1 gen 2018 anni - Psychological factors in denial: the grip of the comfort zone

Descrizione:

A comfort zone can be described as “a psychological state in which things feel familiar to a person and they are at ease and in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress.”

New, challenging situations or information force us out of our comfort zones, and raise anxiety and generate stress. Adapting to these new situations or information may be vital to our well-being, but the comfort zone and its fear reflex cause us to resist change and reject factual and important information.

Information, by itself, isn’t enough to get people to change. The reason is that information works on the level of rational thinking. But the part of us that avoids pain is irrational. It lives in a primitive, unconscious world where all pain—even pain that would be good for us—triggers fear and avoidance.

Over a century ago, in 1907, noted psychologist Robert Yerkes told of a behavioral space in which, in order to maximize performance, humans must reach stress levels that are slightly higher than normal. He called this space “Optimal Anxiety” and it’s just outside of our zone of comfort.

However, as we all learned in ninth grade psychology, the feeling of safety is second only to physiological requirements in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There’s a reason most humans want to stay in an area of relative comfort and safety—it keeps us alive. The same Robert Yerkes that presented the idea of “Optimal Anxiety” reported that, “anxiety improves performance until a certain optimum level of arousal has been reached. Beyond that point, performance deteriorates as higher levels of anxiety are attained.”

According to Psychology Today,

One's "comfort zone" refers to the things a person sticks to that are safe and familiar.
People remain in their comfort zone in order to avoid pain, but it eventually keeps them from fully living.
Rational thinking is too weak to override one's preference for their comfort zone.

"It’s important that patients understand the terrible cost of the Comfort Zone. But as a psychotherapist, I’ve found that this information, by itself, isn’t enough to get people to change. The reason is that information works on the level of rational thinking. But the part of us that avoids pain is completely irrational. It lives in a primitive, unconscious world where all pain—even pain that would be good for us—triggers the same fear: “I’m going to die!” It clings to the Comfort Zone as if its life depended on it.

You can’t fight such a strong, irrational fear with rational thinking—it’s too weak. Instead, you need a force. In this case, it’s called the “Force of Forward Motion” and we’ll talk about it in the next post."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-tools/201205/the-comfort-zone

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