Life can be rough. Work situations can leave you feeling wrung out. Traffic is hell. Your relationship might have land mines you don’t know how to avoid. At the end of the day, you can feel frazzled and stressed.
You’ve been battered and your soul needs some comfort. Maybe you’ve had a fight with your teenager or your boss yelled at you for no reason or you’ve gained the ten pounds that makes your swimsuit really revealing. Or all three happen on the same black day. When the world turns mean, we just want to feel better. To be soothed and consoled. Even the toughest of us can find ourselves whimpering and wanting to crawl under the covers.
Or into a tub of Hagaan Daz. Possibly a bottle of Jack Daniels. We crave comfort and sometimes oblivion seems like the closest thing.
Most of our bad habits are attempts to feel better when we don’t feel all that great. Eating too much of the wrong foods(comfort foods are almost always the wrong foods). Drinking too much. Some take prescription drugs or drugs that aren’t prescription, at all. We just want to feel better. We want comfort.
Magazines and e-zines publish articles that address this offering meditation, yoga and prioritizing to cope–all good things. But for some individuals, these methods don’t seem helpful. The trouble is, we often don’t know what is comforting to us individually.
For some people, physical touch is very soothing. Getting regular massages can be very helpful if you’re dealing with tough situations. Others almost crave movement. For them, physical activities like running or dancing can be very releasing. The real trick is figuring out your needs. When you’re very stressed–by your job or something in your home life–it’s difficult to think beyond the destructive comforts.
Many individuals grew up with their mothers offering ice cream when they had sore throats, but we are a nation of obese, sedentary individuals. Too much weight, too little action. Too tired to do anything to make it better. Then comes the guilt, the low self-esteem and heart attack risks.
We need comfort. Need to find solace in some way, but we need to figure out what works for us and what doesn’t. Do a little personal sleuthing. Think back to when you were a kid. Did you go and side and play all day? Did you dive into a stack of books from the library? Maybe you and a friend went wandering through the woods. When you were younger, you probably had more methods of comforting yourself.
This is not to say that all the methods we used as kids were healthy, but before you give up on finding any source of renewal, think about what used to work for you.