The Question Nobody Asks
We all say we need to get out of our comfort zone. We rarely ask what comfort actually is.
In 2015, a researcher named Sheena Culley wrote a PhD thesis at Kingston University called Comfort: bodies and their boundaries. Her answer is very different from the usual one, and it explains why chasing comfort might be exactly what keeps us stuck.
Comfort as a Wall
Today we think of the body as a closed box. Separate from the world, something that needs protection from everything outside. If you see the body that way, comfort has only one job: protect you, make you sit still. That’s how most of us live comfort. Avoid everything. Not too hot, not too cold, not too loud, not too hard. Nothing wrong, but nothing feels alive either.
My Own Loop
My life is like that, honestly. I have a routine I could recite in my sleep: wake up, go to the office, work the morning, take a break, then I have to take a power nap. Non negotiable. I’ve thought more than once that if I changed jobs, I wouldn’t miss the salary or the team, I’d miss that nap. Afternoon shift, home, dinner, sleep, repeat. I used to think this meant my life was organized. Later I realized it was just a loop. No space for anything to go wrong. Or right.
The only day the loop breaks is the last day of the week. I notice it breaking as it happens.. no nap, I work straight through the afternoon, and it feels fine because the weekend’s coming. It’s the only day my routine bends without me feeling bad about it.
The Gap Where the World Stops Touching You
There’s a definition by historian John Crowley I like: comfort is a “self-conscious satisfaction between one’s body and its immediate physical environment.” The word between is doing the real work there. Comfort became the gap where the world stops touching you. Sitting comfortably. Comfortably numb. Safe, but you don’t care about anything.
Culley’s point is that this idea of comfort comes from old assumptions nobody questioned: nature vs culture, body vs mind, inside vs outside, comfort vs discomfort. Once you see yourself as a closed body that needs defending, your comfort zone becomes a wall. The thicker the wall, the safer you feel. The safer you feel, the less of the world can reach you.
That’s the quiet safety that ruins a life. Not one big crisis, just a slow drift into being harder to reach. And harder to change.
Doors, Not Walls
Here’s the interesting part. Drawing on Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze, Culley suggests something different: what if bodies were never closed boxes at all? What if they’re just loose, shifting groups of forces, forming and breaking apart through contact with the world?
If that’s true, boundaries aren’t walls. They’re doors. Places you cross, not places you hide behind. And comfort isn’t about feeling nothing, it’s about really meeting something different.
What This Actually Changes
That changes a few things. Comfort is not passive, you feel it through contact, not by avoiding feeling. The comfort zone is not a place to sit, it’s a place you pass through to become a slightly different person. Discomfort is not the opposite of comfort, it’s part of it.. no contact, no change.
More Like a Muscle Than a Bunker
Somewhere along the way, comfort became a small prize for surviving the day. When we say “I just want to be comfortable,” what we often mean is “I want stress, risk, and uncertainty to stop touching me.” But if comfort is a door and not a wall, it needs contact. It’s more like a muscle than a bunker. A muscle isn’t comfortable because it’s never used, it’s comfortable because it can stretch, take some stress, and come back stronger.
The mind works the same way. Not comfortable because it has all the answers, but because it can meet something new without panicking.
The Shift
So the shift is this: stop building a life where nothing can touch you. Start building one that can be bothered, moved, shaken a little, and come out better for it.
My power nap isn’t going anywhere. Except Fridays, when I don’t seem to need it. Worth asking sometimes: is my routine holding me up, or just holding me still?