Can The 'Comfort Zone' Be An Illusion

We often talk about comfort zones as if they’re places of ease and contentment. I’m also starting to think that comfort zones can also get their power from familiarity, not from actual comfort. It’s the knowing, the predictability, the mapped territory that keeps us tethered to them—not necessarily the experience of feeling good.

This idea surfaced during a therapy session, where someone asked themselves what I thought was a deeply provocative question: “How do I know if I’m accepting someone as they are, or if I’m settling for less?” It’s a question that’s rooted in the tension between acceptance and compromise. The person was talking about their romantic relationship, but I think that the frame holds true for so many aspects of life—a job that no longer inspires, a friendship that doesn’t feel as good anymore, or even family dynamics that sit uncomfortably. It’s all comfort zones, all familiarity—but not necessarily comfort.

The more I reflect on it, the more I notice how quickly we can equate leaving our comfort zones with stepping into something worse. It’s like we’ve been taught that leaving the familiar means entering the dangerous or the chaotic, not the liberating or the expansive. We brace ourselves for catastrophe rather than imagining that the unknown might be softer, kinder, or more aligned with who we are becoming.

That’s not to say that leaving a comfort zone is always easy. Actioning change can mean other people respond to us differently, sometimes not favourably. Often, standing up for something means being prepared to lose the person or place that you’re standing up to. That’s a theme that has shown up often in my groups—the realisation that if you say the thing, if you express your truth, there’s a possibility that the relationship might not survive it. But equally, it’s true that if nothing is said, nothing is likely to change. It’s a risk, and it takes a kind of quiet bravery to acknowledge that the price of speaking up might be losing the thing you care about.

I think that’s why so many of us wait until the status quo is intolerable before we take the leap. We don’t often imagine the other side as better— we can imagine it as different, and probably worse. That’s survival thinking: staying with what we know, even if it’s not working, because the unknown is assumed to be worse. But what if it isn’t worse? What if stepping outside of the familiar isn’t just a risk of discomfort but also an opportunity for greater ease? What if the new territory is more comfortable than the comfort zone? Or what if it the process of speaking up is worth whatever the cost is because we know that we have backed ourselves?

I wonder how different our lives might be if we held the possibility that change could mean more comfort, not less. If we allowed ourselves to believe that saying the thing, making the change, or leaving the room could bring us closer to ease rather than further away from it. What if we reframed the leap—not as a fall into something worse but as a step toward something freer?

Comfort zones are powerful, but maybe sometimes their strength is rooted more in habit than in actual peace. And maybe the places we land when we leave them aren’t destined to be places of discomfort —maybe they’re just unfamiliar.