Creating Emotional Safety

Are you emotionally feeling safe?

Do you clench?  Do you swallow your words? Can you feel it in your body? Do you know how you feel?

We need to feel some level of predictability and consistency in our daily lives to allow our nervous systems to relax.  Think about the beach vacation and how at the end you may feel ready to come home and get back to a routine.  Being hyper vigilant  causes a level of arousal  that communicates that we are not emotionally safe.

When we feel on guard with our actions, words,  or emotions our needs go into the shadows.  We can become strangers to ourselves.  When one person feels overly responsible it can lead to codependency.  Another persons temper, emotional outbursts, and a lack of reciprocity are all detrimental to our own self worth and self care. If we cannot set safe boundaries we will feel constricted, tense, and tight.

Healthy relationships are a comforting place to rest and reset. Sharing emotions is safe.  There is reciprocity form one person to another.  Nobody needs to over preform to ensure healthy connection.  This is not to say that there are not imbalances as we navigate our lives.  Hopefully, there is appreciation for the support and the scales can tip back and forth.

If we are clenching, and in a place of scarcity there is not emotional space to explore the other two legs of the stool, belonging and being known.  Our lives can start to feel smaller and restrictive.  Do you feel you are living your biggest fullest life?

We start creating safety within ourselves.  Can you say no?  Can you say I am not sure, let me get back to you?  Can you say yes to the opportunities that expand life? Do you know how to talk your body down when you are feeling revved up?  Is there a place in your home or area you can go when you need to relax or feel soothed?  Are there people you can talk to and feel relaxed around?  Make a list of both and schedule times to visit.

Creating your safe places is a start.  Creating boundaries and places where your feelings will be excepted is necessary  Journaling and free writing both allow for expression of self.  Finding someone in your life that can listen without an agenda and or judgement. You can find your first safe place with yourself and build from there.

Continue to read in two weeks as we explore how being known strengthens your sense of safety and the love in your life.

To belong, to be known, to be safe… the three legged stool of feeling loved.

To belong, to be known, to be safe, asking yourself these three questions can help us to determine the quality of our relationships and lead us to feeling more love and peace in our lives.  Answering yes to these questions lead to feelings of love and attachment, creating a foundation for healthy relationships.

In the 28 years of being a therapist this is the undercurrent of why almost every person walks into a therapists office.  We all want to feel loved.

Ask yourself, can I say yes to each of these three questions?

Do I feel safe? This is not the kind of safety that happens in absence of a natural disaster, this is the kind of safety you get from a lack of tension in your body.  Am I walking around tight and clenched?  Is my body relaxed? Is my breathing deep and full?  Is my brow relaxed?  Am I walking on eggshells?

Do I belong?  Do I feel like my people have my back?  Do I feel like they are in my corner and will stand up for me or support me when it is really needed?  Do I have a soft place to land when I do not feel I am my best self?

Do I feel known? Not as the one who brings home the money, that pays the bills or the one that does the grocery shopping and cooks dinner, but do the people I love know my true nature?  Do they want to know more of who I am?  Do people know me outside the expectations and responsibilities that go along with the hats that I wear throughout the day?  Do they care to know how I feel?

Do I feel loved?  If we can say yes to the first three most of the time, we may rest with a sigh that we are loved.  The first three however, can shift naturally from day to day as we walk through life.  One moment we feel safe, the next we find ourselves feeling defensive. We can feel validated and valued and then feel invisible.  How do we anchor? How can we answer a loud YES to these four questions more often and more confidently?

In the next few articles I will be examining each of these cornerstones and the actions and behaviors that can help us move towards affirming ourselves and our relationships and feeling the peace that comes with feelings of love.

Stillness...

“be still and know…”

Psalm 46:10

I opened a book today and this is what fell out.

It makes me think about myself and the world around me today.  Nobody wants to be still.  Sure, it is a good idea in theory and we all say we are working as hard as we can to have the luxury to be still, but really, are we prepared when we finally have a moment?  The answer I see is a resounding no.

What I see is a world that is covered in fear.  Fear causes us to compulsively move faster because if we slow down, if we are still, we have time to really think of the things that keep us up at night; the Coronavirus, our kids health and wellness, our bills, the next presidential election, immigration, what am I going to make for dinner…   as women we are concerned with both the large and small details of life. 

A priest once told me that for years his habit was to wake up and watch the news because he felt that it was part of his commitment to serve.  He wanted to know what was happening around the world to be informed and aware of all the suffering.  Recently, due to logistics he was unable to do this and said that what he found was liberating.  All that information was distracting him from the connections and care he could foster right in his backyard community.  He now pays more attention to what is in front of him, focusing on helping those closest to him.

In Africa, there is a word Ubuntu.  It means I am, because you are. When a neighbor has no food another neighbor provides, it is their way of life.  In this country we have spent too much time separating ourselves. We take pride in our ability to be independent. We forget that we are a community that is connected by the same feelings, fears and world around us.  If we could remember this tremendous connection maybe we would not feel so isolated and separate, even as our neighbors live a stones throw away.

Paying closer attention to our communities around us, our need for each other, allows us to start trusting.  We need to know that not only our husbands and partners have our back but that our friends, families, neighbors, our church and our government have our back too as we have theirs in return.  Fostering a trust in the community around us allows space for life to grow and expand.  Expanding our ability to be a better mothers, wives, friends and humans.   We could start to let go of our unrelenting fear.

Today I am going to bring flowers to a friend I have not seen in a long time, just to say hi.  I want her to know that I have her back though we have not seen each other for a while.  Today, my prayer is that we can all think a little about what we can do to foster connection in the communities around us.  We are all living in the same spaces.  We need each other and our separateness is not helpful in defining us.  I am because you are…  

Let us take better care of the ones around us.

Trust

Reflection, as I sit this morning I think of the themes that circle in my life as we all walk into a new year.  I love the idea of starting over, whether it is in the morning as your feet first touch the ground or as the year and the decade turns over.

Many of the people who visit my office are at a transition point in their lives, something has changed or they want change.  I also find myself in transition as the new year begins.

Transitions are messy and unknown.  We do not have the answers, there is no certainty, and the path we are on is not clear.  We are not accustomed to this mess in our lives.  We live in a time where we do not see messiness anywhere.  In a  world of social medial and good markets and highly educated people the messiness is keep in the dark corners of our society

We have developed the overwhelming need go towards perfectionism.  It is when we are busy, competent and “in control” that we think we  will relax.  That is misleading. Control is an illusion and thinking that competency or “success” leads to relaxation and happiness is even more misleading.   Control is only comforted by more control.  Fear and anxiety take over as rigid thoughts and rules become what we trust.

Trust.  That is the next theme that has become as loud as a toddler’s tantrum.  In our perfectionism we trust nobody but ourselves to get the job done.  It is part of the reason we are exhausted and cannot rest.  We have stopped the practice of releasing and we hold onto our lives and relationships with a death grip.

Richard Rohr wrote in a meditation, that our prayer should be for clarity to live without certainty. To have clarity we absolutely need to know ourselves, ALL the parts, and ALL the mess.  Life is messy sometimes.  The great religions of the world all all talk about struggle.  We will never live a life on earth that is free from pain.

The implication is that we have the wisdom to lead us to where we need to go.  That if we can listen to ourselves and to the world around us we will receive what we need in our lives.  That the teachers, the mentors, the love, the job, and the answers will all present themselves.

This idea of trusting in our divine world is not easy, especially when we have been let down.  Our brains recount all the times the world was cold or uncaring, this is a survival skill and we think it protects us. However, what we fail to recognize are all the times someone or something showed up just when we needed it most. The times things did not go wrong but instead really turned a significant corner, going in a better direction.

My challenge to you for the start of this year is to look for your moments when the world really shows up for you.  The moments people or experiences come into your life and offer you just what you need in that moment.  Trust. Stop holding on so tight, let go a little and trust.

Enough

Enough, that was my meditation today, living from a place of abundance and not scarcity. It is Thanksgiving and we are on the eve of the Christmas season.  It is a time we are reminded by the actions of others and the beauty and sacredness of the season, that we are in the midst of so much love.  Enough.

In the reading today I was reminded that when I see that I have enough in my life there is freedom.  Freedom, because I can relax and stop the pressure and compulsion to find more and to do more.  The drive to store up and accumulate my accomplishments and my perfection, to guard these things as if they were the only prize that matters. 

Enough does not mean perfect.  It does not mean that our finances are in abundance or that our marriages are perfect and passionate, or our kids are always well behaved or even that we are getting 8 hours of sleep a night.  Enough is about living with gratitude for all the amazing moments and gifts in our lives.

The gifts of the moments we share with our loved ones, the snow covered trees and the  laughter in our children.  Enough is a hug, a cuddle or a kiss.  It is a warm house with a turkey and mashed potatoes.  Take a moment to see what is enough.

I encourage you to give yourselves a gift today and if you feel inclined continue this gift for the whole Christmas season, put down your phone, disconnect from Facebook and Instagram.  Comparisons rob us of our joy and our enoughness.  We cannot feel like we have enough when we are always looking and checking on somebody else’s.

Our lives and our graces are so perfectly paired with who we are and what is important and meaningful to us.  Our comparisons distract our hearts.  They send us running on fractured paths that lead to nowhere instead of being able to focus on our blessings and gratitude.

So this season take a moment, or the whole season, to reflect on the freedom of your enough.