Comfort or Avoidance?

Part 3 of 3: Comfort, Not Escape

After surgery, most people are given something for the pain. No one thinks of this as avoiding the healing — it’s simply understood that pain without any relief at all isn’t noble, it’s just harder to move through. The medication doesn’t erase the injury. It takes the edge off enough that the body can actually rest into recovering, instead of bracing against agony the whole way through.

Somehow that's a no brainer for me when I'm in physical pain, yet I wasn't taught that emotional pain deserves easing. I was taught that being "strong" meant pushing through, ignoring emotional pain, abandoning those vulnerable parts, and not needing anyone. In my 20's, I felt like a robot following the programming I had received. How about you? Does "I am woman, hear me roar" sound familiar? Nowadays, it baffles that I was praised for turning away from instead of turning toward emotional pain. 

Comfort isn’t avoidance

Somewhere along the way, a lot of us absorbed the idea that reaching for comfort in a hard moment means we’re avoiding our feelings — that the “stronger” thing to do is grit through it alone, unsoftened. But comfort and escape aren’t the same thing at all.

Escape says make this go away. Comfort says I can feel this and be held at the same time.

Comfort might look like turning your attention to the crackling and light of a fire. The steadiness of a mountain in view. The feeling of merging into the stillness of a tree, or a beloved pet settling on your lap like it somehow knows. It might be the memory of a loving grandmother, an imaginal protector, or even a fictional character who somehow seemed safer than people you actually knew — Maria from The Sound of Music, or whoever your own version of that is. It might be a sense of love and light from God, or however you understand something greater than yourself.

None of these erase what’s hurting. Over time, I got to learn that they simply take the edge off enough that the pain can become an experience I was being present to. It actually makes the experience pass through, instead of getting stuck in that Ground Hog Day loop.

Comfort doesn’t ask you to stop feeling. It just makes the feeling more bearable.

Why this matters for how we heal old wounds

This matters especially if you’ve experienced betrayal, abandonment, or someone who should have been steady and wasn’t. Early on, I tried to protect myself by not letting anyone close again. But as humans, we are drawn to connection and being part of a tribe. 

There’s another option: deliberately practicing what comfort feels like, in whatever form feels real to you, even a non-human one.

That practice matters more than it might seem. My nervous system learned what real comfort feels like, by connecting to the spirit world (even imaginal nurturing figures. This is why we use them in trauma clearing. It becomes easier to recognize that same quality later on in actual people — and to slowly let the right ones back in. Not because every person will be safe. But because you’ll know the feeling well enough to notice it when it’s real. 

A small visualization: Choosing Your Comfort

This takes about five to seven minutes.

1.          Get comfortable, and think of one source of comfort that feels true for you — a fire, a mountain, a tree, an animal, a loving grandmother, an imaginal protector, a comforting fictional figure, or a sense of light or presence greater than yourself.

2.          Close your eyes and picture it as clearly as you can. Notice its qualities in detail — color, warmth, texture, sound, the quality of stillness or movement around it.

3.          Now imagine it a little more alive than a snapshot. What is it doing, right here with you? Is the fire crackling steadily, is the animal’s breathing slow and even, does your grandmother’s face soften as she looks at you, does the light pulse gently or simply hold still? Notice how this presence seems to take you in — the way it seems to sense you’re there, the way it settles or leans closer, however that shows up for you.

4.          Imagine that comfort moving closer — the fire’s warmth reaching your skin, the mountain steady in your chest, the animal settling against you, your grandmother’s hand resting on your shoulder, the light surrounding you like a warm, blanketed hug.

5.          Let yourself receive it, without needing to do anything else. Notice what it feels like to simply be accompanied by this presence, without having to explain yourself or perform for it.

6.          Before you finish, silently say, “I can feel this pain and be comforted at the same time.”

The more familiar this feeling becomes in small, ordinary moments, the more available it will be when the harder moments arrive.

Looking back across these three

We’ve circled the same core idea from a few different angles here: that loving someone fully doesn’t require carrying their experience for them, that presence — not bypassing — is what actually moves us through pain, and that reaching for comfort in a hard moment is wisdom, not avoidance.

None of this asks us to become perfectly regulated, endlessly available, or free of guilt that directs us toward greater good. It just asks that we keep softening the edges wherever we can, and to trust that feeling something all the way through is not a step backward — even when it’s a familiar feeling that has been visited before, in a life that keeps inviting us to grow in ways we didn’t ask for and wouldn’t have chosen.

I'm still relearning that letting comfort in isn't the same as giving up or being a whimp — some days that lesson takes longer to land than others. If today is one of those days for you too, I hope you let something small hold you, even if it's just one slow breath by a candle.

With Love and Light, Deanne