An early bedtime is my number one prescription when things go awry. It’s a reliable comfort through all life seasons, especially when uncertainty is rife and sleep is disturbed.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I spend a considerable amount of time each day thinking about how nice it would be to get into bed. We’ve just passed the autumn equinox which means we’ll light the first fire soon and “hottie season” will officially commence. Yes, my partner of 20 years is handsome but it’s the hot-water bottle that gets preference when the temperature drops, the world threatens to implode and extra cosiness is required.
The psychology of comfort is worth understanding when we face a barrage of daily stress. According to the generalised unsafety theory of stress (Guts), our baseline state is one of anxiety, where we seek safety signals to feel more settled. We are designed to experience and withstand stress because it moves and motivates us but we also know that the chronic stress of modern life stems, in part, from its ambiguity; very few of us have a resilience to uncertainty.