The Five Dangers Of Emotional Conformity

Conformity can be dangerous because it doesn’t allow you to see beyond the simplicity, how much you feel comfortable and what is familiar to you. In doing so, you step into pitfalls dug for you by the illusion of well-being in which you choose to live. Below we discuss five ways we trap and suffocate ourselves when we surrender ourselves to emotional conformity.

1. The couch hangers

Comfort and emotional conformity in love are both great enemies for a couple. Often in a relationship, people strive to create a big bubble of emotional stability that gives them the opportunity to settle in and look at life in a way as if they’ve already gone half the journey.

You have someone you love and who also loves you by your side; at the end of the day, even if everything went wrong that day, you’ll always have a place to hide. However, people tend to get a little confused. That bell is not a couch you can snuggle on because everything is allowed anyway. It’s a breath of fresh air. When you’ve been in a relationship for a while, and it doesn’t even have to be very long, it is often the case that you put your own goals and aspirations on the back burner.

You are no longer the person you were before and you are changing. This in combination with your relationship causes you to degenerate. You leave yourself physically and emotionally in an emotional frenzy that causes you, subconsciously, to say to yourself, “I’ll take care of myself later.”

You think it doesn’t matter anyway, but what about you? If your partner were to disappear from your life right now, would you feel good about yourself? Will you still love yourself the same way or have you neglected yourself too much?

2. Avoiding Negative Emotions

Let’s not kid ourselves: people who are uncomfortable in their own skin have a reason why they are not happy with themselves. Sadness, anger, uncertainty, worry, pain, disappointment, regret, etc. We can learn something from all these things.

However, what we usually do is run away from these things. We rush in the other direction and don’t give these emotions a chance to explain themselves at all. As a result, they can turn into terrifying monsters, such as depression, rage, guilt, and fear.

It’s pretty cowardly to run, but it can also be pretty uncomfortable to have to listen to what others have to say and so we don’t want to listen. We have to let the appropriate emotions come through; the emotions that do not interfere with the completion of our goals, but rather raise those goals even higher.

3. Lack of Critical Thinking

Our thoughts may be divided, distorted, or biased. We choose for ourselves what we are attracted to so that it will not become uncomfortable for us and not to cross the boundaries that provide such satisfying results. And so there will come a point in everyone’s life where we will somehow surrender ourselves to comfort.

Similarly, we take in everything that social media, our friends, our family or acquaintances tell us. We adapt to the social norm without first feeling the water and no longer think for ourselves.

We become mentally sluggish and lazy; this hinders our reason, honesty and open-mindedness,  characteristics we could enjoy if we forced ourselves to question ourselves and what others say to us.

4. Relinquish our autonomy

One of the greatest dangers of emotional conformity is giving others the opportunity to determine things for us. As we mentioned earlier, it is perfectly normal and even natural to let other people make their own choices.

However, since we don’t want to face our own discomfort or our interests and beliefs, we eventually allow other people to make us conform to the norm. As a result, our current and future ability to make our own choices is lost, as well as our physical and emotional freedom.

5. Emotional Neglect

Another danger of emotional comfort is when it causes us to let our emotional wounds fester. It’s a common assumption that we should leave our past in the past when we still feel the pain. By doing this, however, we will never be able to get over the things that burden and hurt us.

By leaving unresolved things and emotions from the past in the past, we allow our past to determine our present and future situation. Because by doing this we allow all the dirt to keep piling up and contaminate our daily lives. We stop meeting our emotional needs and we allow the problem to eventually explode and drown us. This feeling, both for our soul and our feet, is similar to wearing shoes that are too small.