The Power of Safety
What does it mean to feel safe? Is it just the absence of danger? Or is it a felt sense that is more than that?
When we embody any insecure attachment style (anxious, avoidant, disorganized), our body and our nervous system is oriented away from safey. It is more oriented to threat. We may feel hypervigilant, not able to sit still, the hampster wheel in our head going all the time. Or we may experience the opposite, numbed out, disconnected, unable to identify what we feel or what we need. In the case of the disorganzied adaptation, we may find that we oscillate back and forth never really knowing where to land.
Safety is none of these things. Safety is not hypervigilant or numbed out. Safety is knowing that if threat occurs, we can handle it and all will be well in the end. Safety is knowing that even when the relationship has rupture, things will shake out in the best interest of all involved. Safety is also not numbing out to reality. It is facing reality with courage and resilience, faith in self and faith in the world. It is believing that things tend to work out for the best and walking through the world holding that belief as central to every relationship.
When we are oriented towards safety, love in infinite and always available to us. We notice all the things about the relationship that make us happy. We notice the ways in which we are loved even if they are different than the ways in which we might love. In safety, conflict is not something to be avoided. It is a vehicle through which we can learn to love one another better. We can stay in our emotionally mature selves while we express our needs and have plenty of space for the needs of another. When our nervous system experiences safety, it’s not always pleasant to hear hard feedback but its tolerable. We can be completely accepting of our entire humanity, even when we make mistakes.
Most of us were not handed a secure attachment system. Many of us may not even be able to identify the felt sense of safety, It may be something we have to work towards. We were born into safety. It’s our nervous systems natural inclination. You can spend years in therapy working to build your nervous system’s ability to orient towards safety OR, you can do it in 8 weeks.
Safety, Clarity, and Connection are the themes for this round of HELD. Boundaries, repair, reparenting are just some of the topics for this round that address repatterning our attachment nervous system.
Where do you feel safe? Who is with you when you feel safe? What does safety feel like in your body?
If you have trouble answering these questions, you are not alone! Learn more about this next round of HELD here https://www.elizabethgillette.com/held