Your Outdated, Risk Averse Comfort Zone Is a Prison — Chuck It

Would you eat meat that had a label that said, “Best used by February 2, 2020”? I didn’t think so. That would be reckless. Not to mention gross. But the truth is, the risk aversion strategies we use are much more outdated than that. In more ways than one. And continuing to use them is reckless.

Being too risk averse is sometimes what it comes down to in therapy. Patients may simply be unwilling to take chances and go outside of their comfort zone. That’s reckless because their decision is based on very outdated strategies. These strategies were adopted by our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago, yet we still use them. And we may have adopted related strategies again in response to our early environment.

It’s also reckless to play it safe and not take chances because staying in your comfort zone leads to avoidance and lots of missed opportunities. These missed opportunities include finding a mate, writing a great novel, losing your life savings through an online scam, or skiing in an area prone to avalanches.

If that confused you, good. We’re making progress already. Risk aversion is confusing and we’ll need to sort it out.

One confusing aspect of it is that risk aversion can be either good or bad. It’s bad when we use outdated risk aversion strategies, as we often do. It could mean acting as if we were still living in the unforgiving environments we evolved in such as a savannah where taking the risk of leaving your tribe meant fairly certain death by a mob of seriously hungry hyenas. Better to stay in the comfort zone of the tribe, even if they don’t like your drumming.

It could also mean living as if you were still living with a mother and father that would severely chastise you for getting a “B” in American history. They would also forbid you to go to Marylou’s 16^th birthday party, at which, everyone knew, none of your peers would be avoiding risk. That would make you think twice about taking the risk of not studying till your eyes went batty.

Timing is a factor in whether or not those risk aversion strategies were good. Those strategies were helpful then. Now they’re about as effective as a ticket for the Titanic.

But it’s also about the purpose of avoiding risk. If it serves to protect what gives you life meaning and your passions, it’s doing just what it’s supposed to do. Too often though it has been hijacked to merely avoid uncomfortable feelings. Instead it suppresses meaning and passion.

While risk aversion can be effective in helping us to live longer, it isn’t always effective in helping us to live better. In many cases it makes life worse. It becomes a high security prison. And then it’s no longer fun to live longer.

In this post I’ll explore the manifestations, causes, consequences and solutions to the problem of outdated risk aversion strategies.

While I’m addressing this to my usual audience of people with obsessive-compulsive personality since risk aversion is a known demon of OCPD, it should also be helpful to people who don’t have OCP but do have difficulty taking chances.

I know it feels very risky, but taking the chance of wasting your time reading this post may actually pay off.

Manifestations of Risk Aversion

Just so that it’s clear what I’m talking about, here are some ways that risk aversion shows up:

• Controlling others

Your kids, your coworkers, your romantic partner

• An exaggerated sense of responsibility

As if we could and should control outcomes because the consequences are dire

• Controlling our own emotions and behavior

Not allowing yourself to feel happy, relax, let go or celebrate

• Overworking

Working long hours with unnecessary exertion to avoid criticism or failure

• Being too careful with other people

People pleasing for fear of being excluded

• Overthinking, overplanning and procrastination

Averting the risk of things not going as you hope

• A shrinking comfort zone

Both literally and psychologically—you don’t allow yourself to go places

Causes of Being Risk Averse

We wouldn’t be risk averse if we weren’t getting something out of it. Or had gotten something out of it in days of yore. Problem is, the past is way past, and that insurance policy is no longer effective. Not to mention that the premium was higher than a Hermès Birkin handbag. And that’s a lot.

Risk aversion is a strategy formed from both evolutionary roots and personal experiences. It results from a perfect storm of biological and psychological factors: our genes mix it up with our environment et voila: we’re risk averse! Together these factors form a knot which seems impossible to untie.

Part of what makes that knot so tight is that it’s self-reinforcing. Like a noose, it gets tighter when pulled. Avoidance breeds more avoidance. Coddling your anxiety breeds more anxiety. Consequences become causes.

We see this most clearly in agoraphobia and claustrophobia. The more you avoid going outside or going into an enclosed space, the harder it gets to go out or to go in. But risk aversion operates this way with all of our choices such as not trying new things, not being vulnerable, or adamantly refusing to sing karaoke.

As with an actual knot, the way to untie it is to start pulling at the loosest part and eventually it comes apart. We’ll get to that.

The Adaptive Anachronisms of Human Evolution

Risk aversion is a strategy for extending life that was adaptive in previous environments. Depending on what you want, it usually doesn’t work in our current environment.

Psychologist Steven Hertler sees risk aversion as part of a slow life‑history strategy, which is characterized by:

• Excessive caution and hypervigilance

• Future‑focus, over-preparedness, and long‑term planning

• Minimizing unnecessary risk

• Protecting resources by being loss‑averse and conservation‑driven

• Harm avoidance

• Delayed gratification

Living this way helps you live longer and makes it more likely that your genes and your kids will survive. Whoopee.

More specifically Hertler argues that this cluster of traits is characteristic of OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder). It results in parsimony, hoarding, rigid planning, and work devotion. Together they form a behavioral strategy that was optimized for environments where risk minimization ensured survival. (We’re back in that savannah again.) This means OCPD is fundamentally oriented toward avoiding danger and minimizing loss, even at the cost of flexibility, spontaneity and any satisfaction other than mere survival.

Hertler contrasts this “slow life‑history strategy,” with a “fast life-history strategy.” That strategy is typical of impulsive, risk‑seeking personality types like antisocial. These are the people that infuriate you with their sloppiness, aversion to rules, and indulgence in gratifying their every whim at the expense of others.

Hertler describes OCPD as “an Adaptive Anachronism,” which means that we revive old strategies for contemporary purposes. These traits were potentially adaptive in environments hundreds of thousands of years ago with harsh climates and survival uncertainty. This resulted in states like high conscientiousness, careful planning, risk avoidance and strict adherence to rules that helped people to survive. And it might seem like they are adaptive now, but too often they are maladaptive. If you consider quality of life.

So this means that risk aversion is hard wired—to some degree. And like tails on dogs, nipples on men, and a refusal to ride in airplanes, genes often stick around after they’re no longer needed.

And like most genes, they can get turned on or off by their environment. (This is simplifying things, but work with me here.)

Outdated Evolutionary Strategies Are Re-Enlisted in Early Environments

Environments that may turn this gene on include overcontrolling parents, undependable parents, or parents so perfect you just couldn’t tolerate disappointing them. While our grrrrrrrrrrrrrt grandparents used caution to survive physically, you may have learned to use it to survive psychically in your early environment.

While your forebearers were avoiding extinction and you were avoiding shame, the means of survival were similar. Risk aversion. Take no chances. Your early environment (including school, neighborhood, country) may have triggered you to activate ancient adaptive anachronisms to protect you against psychic suffering, disappointed parents, and bullies in your phys ed class.

I’m extrapolating just a bit here, but I suspect that what has happened over the long term is that the risk aversion strategies we used to stay alive back then become overgeneralized. We feel all too easily that we need to employ them now, as if we need to avoid any risk of psychic suffering. As if psychic suffering were dangerous rather than just uncomfortable.

It’s a thing. Psychology researchers call it Experiential Avoidance, or EA. EA describes a behavioral pattern in which we do whatever we can to avoid unpleasant internal experiences (AKA feelings). This means that we make decisions motivated by avoiding the risk of uncomfortable emotions, and our behavior is inhibited. According to a study by Wheaton people with OCPD experience greater EA than your everyday commoner.

It’s as if the caution that protected us from dangerous hyenas now gets triggered pro-actively when we fear that a colleague could criticize or even attack us for proposing a creative solution to a business problem. Better go conservative. (Don’t tell your colleague I compared them to a hyena. That would not go over well.)

Many of us, especially people with OCPD, often overestimate potential negative outcomes. We feel a responsibility to prevent errors and avoid losing control. These tactics lead to risk‑avoidant behavior.

So, you live longer but not better. This is typical of the OCP strategy of honoring quantitative preferences over qualitative ones. You’re in a prison of your own making.

Avoiding the Wrath of the Inner Dictator

Interestingly, one of the strongest motivators of risk aversion is avoiding the self-condemnation that will occur if they take a chance and get it wrong. They would lambaste themselves and never trust themselves again to take a chance.

Notice the terms I used, “lambaste themselves,” and “never trust themselves.” Who’s lambasting who? And who’s not trusting who? You can call it the manager, the dictator, the judge or whoever gives you grief for not getting your decisions just right. Many people with strong risk aversion believe that they would not be able to escape the judgment of this part, and would not only be miserable, they would also become even more limited because they would trust themselves even less. The result is that their life gets smaller.

Witness Wibur. Wilbur has been working on a screen play for 8 years now. He’s afraid that if he shops it around to agents before it’s ready and it gets rejected, he will never forgive himself. The self-criticism would be excruciating. And he would never be able to trust himself to submit a piece of writing ever again.

It’s the judgmental dictator that says “It’s not ready,” and Wilbur fears it would attack him if he did get rejected. It’s the judgmental dictator that says severe judgment is the only way to make his writing good and get it sold. But it’s bringing about the very thing it says it is trying to prevent: failure. It’s hard to write with a gun to your head. And an unsubmitted screen play is a failing screen play.

This is exactly what dictators do: they cause a problem and then tell you that they are the only one who can solve it.

Results: The Risks of Being Risk Averse

The results of risk aversion are worse than you thought. It’s not just that you miss out on the greatest show of all time because you thought the traffic would be epic, it’s also that you start to lose interest in any shows. In fact, over time, this strategy becomes a deeply ingrained habit. It leads you to lose interest in desire itself and put safety in its place.

This strategy is not just BORing. Sticking with it means that eventually you have no idea what you want. Instead you rely on the opinions of others, quantitative measures, and rationalizations as your North Star, rather than a deep conviction about where you want to go.

And the cost of these old strategies is high anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty, and discomfort with spontaneity.

Missed Opportunities

This one is obvious. To your head. Not to your heart. Your head can see that isolating might keep you from meeting Mr. or Ms. Right. But all your heart can feel is the fear that you’ll get hurt. Again. Sometimes past painful experiences have more weight than possible future good ones. On the one hand this is understandable, on the other it is a sad reminder of how we can maintain risk aversion strategies from the past that hold us back.

A different approach to the issue of missed opportunities comes from the subject of regret. In a landmark study about regret, two psychologists found that while we may regret some actions taken in the short term, in the long term we regret not taking action much more. What do you want written on your tombstone?

Loss of Desire

Missed opportunities are serious consequences of risk aversion. But a deeper and more systemic consequence is that we slowly destroy our connection with desire, so much so that we no longer know what we want. That makes it easier to avoid the risk of failing, being disappointed, or try any new activities that have risk in them. But the truth is that loss of desire ensures failure to live a fulfilling life.

Priorities shift from passion to safety. Motivation fades, and life becomes flat.

The technical term for loss of desire is anhedonia and it’s often a symptom of depression. When people have anhedonia they have at least some of the following symptoms:

• They can’t enjoy things they used to enjoy.

• They can’t feel good about what they accomplish.

• They feel numb or emotionally flat.

• They lose interest in relationships.

• They don’t enjoy food as much.

• Their sex drive goes down.

What I’m describing as loss of desire may not be as extreme as anhedonia, but it is similar. It’s an absence of motivation except for getting things done, which is not a balanced psychological diet.

When we don’t know what we want, we end up rationalizing. I mean that in the worst sense. We like to think we’re being rational when really we’re just making excuses for what we want to do but aren’t aware of. We fill in the blank with so-called logic.

Another result of operating from risk aversion is that the fear of retribution from the inner dictator becomes a major motivator. Even the things you used to desire are held captive by risk aversion. Desires turn into shoulds, and next thing you know the dictator has taken them over. Going to the zoo to enjoy the orangutans becomes a mandatory assignment, based not on desire but on avoidance.

The Prison of Comfort Zones

The last result of outdated risk aversion is that we live in a comfort zone. This is an ironic term since we die psychically there. These function more like prisons than true comfort zones. But it’s as if we’re under a spell and we can’t see that the small life we’ve limited ourselves to is the price we pay for not taking chances.

Solutions

You’re Not Alone: The Heroic Struggle

If getting out of your comfort zone feels daunting, don’t worry. You’re not alone, and many have done it. Virtually all heroes have struggled with risk aversion. They might appear to be cool and calm, but the first chapter of their journey is often about them refusing the call to their heroic task. The would-be hero sees the risk involved and says, “No thanks. I’m staying in my comfort zone.” But then they end up in the belly of the whale or some other equally distressing place.

The next step is always leaving their known world. They change their mind and decide to accept the calling. They have to leave home and they aren’t allowed to take a path anyone has taken before.

Recall Harry Potter. He didn’t think he was up to being a Wizard and it took Hagrid convincing him that he could. This was all about taking back what belonged him, his heritage and his authenticity. His true self. What do you need to take back from being risk averse? What in you has been suppressed for safety?

The temptation in life and in therapy is to talk endlessly about why it’s hard to take certain risks. It might seem like you’re working on the issue, but the analysis may serve as an avoidance.

It’s the comfort zone that becomes a prison.

Here are steps you can take to approach a world that feels dangerous. As is usually the case with growth, these steps take insight, emotional engagement and action.

Note:  While I recommend psychotherapy for anyone who wants to lower their risk aversion, it is especially important for those with trauma in their background.

Develop Insight:

Write out:

• Where does your risk aversion come from?

• Is it outdated?

• What purpose did it serve for you?

• Does it still help?

• Name 3 opportunities you’ve missed.

• Name 3 desires risk aversion has suppressed.

• What are the priorities in your life that deserve the protection of your risk aversion?

Engage Emotionally

            Write all of these out as well but also take the time to feel into each of them. Notice what happens in your body as you do.

• Learn relaxation techniques you can call to mind when you are approaching your fears.

• Don’t expect to completely banish your fear before trying. Accept that you can’t predict how you will feel.

• Start small.

• Practice sitting with anxious feelings rather than trying to achieve safety.

• What are the particular feelings you’ve wanted to avoid?

• Identify the figure in your head that would attack you for not getting it right.

• Face down the worst-case scenario and see that you would survive.

Take Action

• Use meditation, progressive muscle relaxation or exercise as if they were medication to lower your baseline of anxiety. They can be just as effective.

• Draw a circle of your comfort zone, include the things you are comfortable with.

• Draw a larger circle around it and name three places, things or people you want to include that you’ve left out of your life so far.

• Name three steps you will take to incrementally approach each of those.

• Use risk aversion to protect the things that are most important to you.

• Getting it right is less important than gradually taking the chance.

• Give yourself credit for each time you take a chance.

Remember, it’s the trying that reduces fear, not the planning. Courage is made, not found.

 *    *   *

This is just an introduction. For more suggestions, read the following posts:

Keys to Facing OCPD Anxiety and Fear [Podcast Episode 28]

This is Not a Test: 3 Steps to Winning the Battle Against Insecurity [Podcast Episode 85]

Chronic Urgency Stress Syndrome (CUSS) and That Monster Hiding Under Your Bed [Podcast Episode 54]

Self-Compassion: The Evidenced-Based Antidote to Maladaptive Perfectionism [Podcast Episode 29]