Comfort Without Consumption
Written by Aliya Banks | Category: Self-Growth, Mental Health, Mindset | 3 Min. Read
Dim lights just before bed. The smell of your favorite cologne. The softness of your favorite blanket. The taste of a homecooked meal.
All these things and more have the ability to bring a person comfort. On a daily basis in one way or another, we all seek comfort and relief from the grind of the day. Our humanness causes us to seek community and shared experiences that feel safe. A warm plus environment also falls under the heading of comfort means.
However, what if comfort isn't at all what you thought?
In the age of burnout and the continuing increase of people working from home, what is comfort really, and are we using it in the right ways?
Let's explore.
Comfort Without Consumption
🤔What happens when comfort isn't something you buy or ingest?
These days, most comfort solutions are external. We seek comfort in material things, often feeling anxious when we don't possess the object of our desire.
In the pursuit of relief, we can often seek comfort in habits that don't serve our greater good and prevent personal growth. We're bombarded by fast food commercials, we doom-scroll for hours, consume media headlines by the mouthful, or shop for the next trending gadget to bring us joy.
None of these things in themselves is wrong, but maybe it's just the easier way to self-soothe.
Non-consumptive ways to find relief from heavy feelings take intention. Connecting with a truer and deeper sense of relief also takes a level of awareness that perhaps most of us aren't willing to admit. Consumerism makes the decision for comfort easier to choose.
But is that what we need in times of stress?
When Comfort Becomes Identity
Our comfort-zone is more important than ever. Familiarity starts to feel like authenticity.
Being comfortable in all situations at all times seems to be the new unachievable standard. The need to be content overrules most other emotions. We've become intertwined with comfort, making it a lifestyle of its own. Words like soft-life, cozy, and hygge (a Danish concept of creating comfort in your daily life) have become commonplace.
Nearing six years post-pandemic we're hyper-sensitive to burnout. Working from the comfort of our home feels safe and predictable. It's the ultimate career goal and dare I say the new American Dream.
Cozy culture, born from our mandated time indoors has followed us right up until today. Content creators advertise working in your pjs. Courses promise you can work from the beach, reclaiming your time and sense of wellbeing.
The gaming industry has even created a new genre called cozy gaming. It invites players to enjoy easy-going, low-pressure entertainment that skips the violence.
Comfort has permeated our consciousness.
There is a flip side to comfort. It has a direct effect on our behavior.
An overabundance of this state of mind leaves crucial qualities at bay. Our innate nature for growth is at risk. Desires for new connections and a natural curiosity for life can fade, along with challenging ourselves beyond our current state. Too much comfort can feed the fear of the unknown. It can bring on overthinking and making excuses causing stagnation.
“We've become intertwined with comfort, making it a lifestyle of its own.”
Comfort As Regulation, Not Reward
Comfort is a nervous system regulator. It's a response to stress in its many forms.
Most people unconsciously seek comfort as a reward, such as food, scrolling, and spending. But psychologically, comfort’s primary role is the regulation of bringing the body and mind back to its baseline. From this view, healthy comfort isn’t about pleasure escalation but more about downshifting, reducing our input, not adding to it.
Healthy comfort is less about adding something pleasant and more about removing what overwhelms.
It’s quieter than we expected. Less stimulating. Less performative. Often unnoticed because it doesn’t spike emotion, it settles it.
This is where modern definitions of comfort become slightly misaligned. When comfort is framed as a reward, it encourages escalation: more content, more treats, more distraction.
But regulation doesn’t ask for more. It asks for space, for times to pause. Effective comfort signals to the body that it no longer needs to be on high alert.
In this sense, comfort is not the opposite of discomfort. It’s what allows us to tolerate discomfort. When comfort functions as regulation, it supports resilience. It helps restore curiosity rather than suppress it. It allows challenges to feel approachable instead of threatening.
And importantly, it doesn’t require identity shifts or lifestyle branding to be effective. It operates beneath aesthetics and outside consumer cycles.
Reframing Comfort
This reframing also complicates the way we talk about comfort zones. The issue is not that people seek comfort. It's that comfort has become a destination rather than a resource. When comfort is used only to avoid uncertainty, it narrows life. When it’s used to recover from effort, it expands capacity.
Seen this way, the question isn’t whether comfort is good or bad. It’s whether it’s helping us return to ourselves or distracting us from what we’re avoiding.
In an age shaped by burnout, overstimulation, and decision fatigue, comfort will continue to matter.
But perhaps the most sustaining forms won’t be the ones that promise escape. They’ll be the ones that restore enough internal safety to re-engage with life as it is, which can be complex, uncertain, yet still worth participating in.
Comfort, after all, was never meant to replace living. Only to make it possible.
