Maybe Comfort Isn’t Always Comfortable
What horror movies, familiar rituals, and finally understanding your neurodivergent brain have in common
Every October, I willingly watch people make objectively terrible decisions while being pursued by masked murderers, and I find this comforting. I realize those words do not traditionally belong in the same sentence, but I love horror. I love spooky season, the aesthetics and traditions, the familiar movies, and the very specific nostalgia that comes from returning to something I’ve loved for years. I’ve seen all the Scream movies. I have memories of watching them with people I love. I have the sweatshirt. I’ve visited the original Michael Myers house. I am, at this point, committed to the bit.
Recently, though, I started wondering why something deliberately designed to make us uncomfortable can also feel so wonderfully familiar. There is actually a term for choosing to scare ourselves, recreational fear and researchers studying people moving through a haunted attraction found that enjoyment seemed to have a sweet spot. Too little fear wasn’t particularly exciting, while too much could become overwhelming (Andersen et al., 2020).
That makes intuitive sense to me. I don’t actually want Michael Myers standing in my kitchen. I want Michael Myers safely contained inside my television while I sit on my couch in a Scream sweatshirt. Very different.
The part I find more interesting, though, isn’t actually the fear. It’s the familiarity. Research into why we deliberately rewatch movies and television suggests that familiar media can offer comfort, nostalgia, emotional regulation, and a sense of continuity with earlier versions of ourselves (Shackleford et al., 2026). When I watch Scream again, then, I’m not only waiting for Ghostface to make another phone call I already know is coming. I’m returning to memories of watching these movies when I was younger and with my brother, my sister-in-law, and my husband. There are people, places, traditions, and earlier versions of me attached to them.
Knowing what’s coming doesn’t ruin the experience. In some ways, it’s part of the appeal. I know the rhythm. The phone rings, the music changes, and someone makes a decision that is VERY CLEARLY A TERRIBLE IDEA. There’s enough stimulation to make it interesting without the experience being entirely unknown.
That got me thinking about something that, on the surface, has absolutely nothing to do with horror movies.
What happens when you become more familiar to yourself?
I hear some version of this all the time from people who begin understanding their neurodivergence later in life. Maybe they receive an ADHD diagnosis. Maybe they discover they’re autistic. Maybe there isn’t a diagnosis at all yet, but enough pieces have started falling into place that suddenly they’re looking backward and thinking, Oh. Ohhhhhhh.
The interesting thing about receiving new information about yourself is that the information doesn’t stay in the present. It travels backward. Suddenly the report cards look different. So does the procrastination, the emotional intensity, the elaborate systems you created so nobody would know how difficult certain things were, and the truly unreasonable number of planners you have purchased over the course of your adult life.
Nothing about those experiences has changed. What changes is the context in which you understand them.
Research into adults receiving ADHD diagnoses later in life reflects this strange retrospective experience. People frequently describe finally having an explanation for things that previously felt inexplicable. That new context can bring validation and self-compassion, but it can also open the door to grief, anger, and a fairly substantial renegotiation of identity (Hansson Halleröd et al., 2015; McGill et al., 2026).
I think that complexity matters because the popular version of late diagnosis can sound a little like, Congratulations! You figured it out! Everything makes sense now! Meanwhile, you’re sitting at home wondering whether half your personality is ADHD and mentally reopening something that happened in Grade 7.
Understanding yourself differently doesn’t automatically make everything easier. It can, however, make certain experiences less mysterious. The problem that once seemed to prove you were lazy, difficult, disorganized, overly sensitive, or simply terrible at being an adult now has more context around it. And context gives us something much more useful than judgment: it gives us questions.
I went much further into that strange post-discovery period in So You Figured Out You Have ADHD. Now What? →, including what research tells us about late diagnosis, women who were missed, identity, self-compassion, and the somewhat disorienting process of figuring out what to do once the initial THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH moment wears off.
For anyone still closer to the beginning of that process, I also created YOU MAKE SENSE HERE: A Companion for Complex Brains Navigating ADHD, Autism & the Relationships That Hold Them. It’s meant for the diagnosed, questioning, self-identifying, and generally curious, especially when you’ve begun to suspect there may be a more useful explanation for your experiences than I’m just bad at this.
Take a look at YOU MAKE SENSE HERE →
Context changes the questions we ask.
This is where the horror movie rabbit hole and the neurodivergence rabbit hole unexpectedly meet for me.
When something becomes familiar, we have more information about what we’re experiencing. In a horror movie, familiarity might mean knowing when the phone is going to ring. In our actual lives, it might mean finally recognizing why a seemingly simple task routinely becomes difficult, why certain environments drain us, or why an experience we genuinely enjoy becomes unbearable under slightly different circumstances.
Consider holidays. Someone can adore Halloween, the movies, decorations, traditions, costumes, food, repetition of it all and hate the unpredictable Halloween party. The first experience may be familiar and pleasurable while the second brings sensory demands, social expectations, transitions, and uncertainty. “I love Halloween” and “I don’t want to go to that Halloween party” aren’t conflicting statements once we understand that the experiences are asking for completely different things from the person having them.
Research into autism-friendly environments has examined the importance of factors such as sensory conditions, predictability, and how easily an environment can be understood and navigated (Tola et al., 2021). Qualitative ADHD research similarly demonstrates how inadequate the old shorthand of “difficulty paying attention” really is. Adults describe experiences involving executive functioning, emotional regulation, relationships, daily-life management, and the considerable effort involved in adapting to those challenges (Ginapp et al., 2022).
That doesn’t mean every preference needs a diagnosis attached to it. Sometimes you like the movie because you like the movie. Sometimes you don’t want to attend the party because the party sounds terrible. We don’t need to clinically investigate every decision we make.
What becomes useful is noticing when we’ve replaced curiosity with a moral judgment about ourselves. I’m lazy. I’m high-maintenance. I’m antisocial. I should be able to handle this. Everyone else can do it. Why can’t I just be normal about this?
Those conclusions don’t tell us much about what’s actually happening.
What is making this difficult? is a much more interesting question.
It leaves room for the answer to be executive function or sensory overload. It also leaves room for exhaustion, anxiety, preference, an unreasonable expectation, a terrible system, or the simple fact that you don’t particularly want to do the thing.
This kind of conversation is a large part of why The SAME TEAM Society exists. It gives us somewhere to explore the ordinary, complicated places where neurodivergence actually shows up, relationships, capacity, communication, executive functioning, identity, and all those oddly specific Okay, but what do I actually do with this? questions that rarely fit neatly into an Instagram post.
Come see what we’re exploring inside The SAME TEAM Society →
Maybe the weird little thing is helping.
The more I thought about horror and comfort, the more I realized that we have a surprisingly narrow picture of what comfort is supposed to look like. Comfort is tea, blankets, candles, books, soft lighting, perhaps a rainy window if we’re feeling especially cinematic.
Nobody is usually holding a knife in the background.
Perhaps comfort doesn’t need to look objectively comforting. A familiar routine can be comforting because it removes decisions. Bringing the same object everywhere might create continuity between environments. A particular movie can reconnect us with people, places, and earlier versions of ourselves. Something that looks unnecessary from the outside may be quietly making an experience easier from the inside.
I’m not suggesting we turn every quirk into an accommodation or every preference into evidence of neurodivergence. I am suggesting that before we decide something is ridiculous, excessive, childish, high-maintenance, or something we shouldn’t need, it might be worth asking what purpose it serves.
That’s also why I keep collections of things I genuinely use, like, create, or recommend in my Amazon favourites → and Etsy shop →. They aren’t prescriptions for becoming a Better Neurodivergent Person™. They’re simply things I’ve found useful, interesting, comforting, or worth sharing. Sometimes support is a big conversation about identity and relationships. Sometimes it is an object that removes one tiny irritation from your day. Both are allowed to count.
Of course, understanding why something happens doesn’t necessarily tell us what to do when it’s affecting our relationships, work, capacity, or quality of life. There are questions that an article, book, or useful Amazon purchase cannot answer for you. If you’re starting to recognize patterns in your own neurodivergence and want individualized support figuring out what they mean in the context of your actual life, you can book a call with me here →.
If you came here because you wanted me to explain why the hell I find horror movies comforting, I will go much further down that particular rabbit hole on my Substack this month. We will get into recreational fear, nostalgia, predictability, familiar media, neurodivergence, and my apparently enduring relationship with Ghostface.
The thing I keep coming back to, though, is that understanding changes an experience.
Sometimes knowing the movie well enough to anticipate the scary part makes it enjoyable instead of overwhelming. Sometimes learning how your brain works allows you to revisit an old struggle without immediately turning it into evidence that there’s something wrong with you.
Neither requires pretending that the scary thing isn’t scary or that the difficult thing isn’t difficult. You just know a little more about what you’re looking at.
Sometimes that is enough to replace What is wrong with me? with a much better question:
What makes sense here? As for Ghostface? At least he’s consistent.
References
Andersen, M. M., Schjoedt, U., Price, H., Rosas, F. E., Scrivner, C., & Clasen, M. (2020). Playing with fear: A field study in recreational horror. Psychological Science, 31(12), 1497–1510. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620972116
Ginapp, C. M., Macdonald-Gagnon, G., Angarita, G. A., Bold, K. W., & Potenza, M. N. (2022). The lived experiences of adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A rapid review of qualitative evidence. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 949321. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.949321
Hansson Halleröd, S. L., Anckarsäter, H., Råstam, M., & Hansson Scherman, M. (2015). Experienced consequences of being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult: A qualitative study. BMC Psychiatry, 15, 31. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-015-0410-4
McGill, L., Jardim-Lalor, I., & O’Connor, C. (2026). A systematic review of lived experiences of receiving a diagnosis of ADHD in adulthood. Journal of Attention Disorders, 30(10), 1274–1289. https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547261455946
Shackleford, K. E., Whiteman, A., Cohen, J. D., Buttafuoco, J. L., & Reed, P. A. (2026). Choosing to re-experience movies and TV episodes: Popularity, motivations and benefits of volitional reconsumption of entertainment media. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 20(1), e70119. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.70119
Tola, G., Talu, V., Congiu, T., Bain, P., & Lindert, J. (2021). Built environment design and people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): A scoping review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(6), 3203. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18063203
P.S.
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