Humans have an uncanny attraction to discomfort. We click on true crime documentaries, devour dystopian novels, and hang around tragic news headlines, as though some invisible hand compels us to do so. The paradox behind this—our fascination with what unsettles us—reveals something deep about our psychology: we seek disturbance for reasons not limited to feeling fear but to feeling alive. Discomfort is the shock that reminds us our emotions are still intact in an age dulled by convenience.
Artists have always recognized this instinct. From Caravaggio's shadow-drenched saints to Francis Bacon's faces contorted into impossible shapes, beauty and horror are often indistinguishable traveling companions. What frightens us can also illuminate us, cutting through layers of politeness to reveal the raw mechanics of being human. The grotesque and the sublime are twins, not opposites. When art makes us uneasy, it is often because it is reflecting something that we know but will not acknowledge.
Psychologists describe it as "benign masochism"—our ability to enjoy negative experiences when we know we're safe. The brain circuits that process pleasure and fear often overlap, which means a little danger can be thrilling if kept at arm's length. This now makes sense of the eerie pleasure of horror films and tragic symphonies: they let us flirt with despair from the safety of the theater seat. Our bodies respond as if in peril, but our minds remain the master of ceremonies.
Discomfort, paradoxically, is a teacher. It nudges us past the comfortable fictions we build around ourselves—the illusion of stability, of control, of moral clarity. When we encounter disturbing art, it dismantles these illusions, leaving us temporarily exposed. But in that exposure lies revelation: we see what we’re made of, and what we’re capable of. To be disturbed is to be momentarily disillusioned, and disillusionment is the beginning of truth.
Modern media has commodified this instinct: from serial killers to political scandals and apocalyptic forecasts, streaming platforms algorithmically feed us curated dread. The art of discomfort has been industrialized into bingeable content. And yet, even in packaging and monetizing, the appeal remains. We may complain about "doomscrolling," but some secret chamber of the psyche craves the sharp edge of unease—it reminds us that meaning still exists in tension.
Discomfort also carries moral power. Works that disturb us often force empathy by showing what we would rather ignore: war, inequality, cruelty, the fractures beneath the polished surface of civilization. To sit in discomfort is to resist apathy. That’s why social movements often begin in moments of collective unease—when art, protest, or tragedy jolts the conscience awake.
At the personal level, discomfort fuels creativity. Artists, writers, and thinkers have described tension, doubt, and even pain as the raw materials of insight. To be perpetually comfortable is to stagnate; to be slightly disturbed is to evolve. Growth never feels good in real time—it feels uncertain, messy, occasionally unbearable—but it's friction that shapes character and art alike.
Culturally, we over-sanitize. We edit out grief, censor fear, and package happiness like some consumer product. Meanwhile, in our obsessive pursuit of comfort, our hunger for that which cuts through it only heightens. Discomfort, in this sense, is rebellion—a reminder that humanity was never meant to be fully smooth, algorithmic, or anesthetized. To feel disturbed means to feel human, unedited and unrefined.
In the end, it's possible that our attraction to the unsettling is how the soul keeps itself honest. We seek discomfort not because we like to suffer, but because we recognize our need of it. In an increasingly curated world designed to spare us unease, disturbance becomes a rare luxury: visceral proof that we're still capable of feeling deeply, of thinking critical thoughts, and of facing the truths that polite comfort conceals.