Feeling Safe

Help people feel safe and you will change the world.
-Stephen Porges. 

I have been really focused on safety and what it means to feel safe. I was talking about this in the last several months after finding polyvagal theory and its application to children living out of parental care. Many of the people I see are children involved with Children's Services. In the case of many of these children, they have been neglected to different degrees and witnessed violence and intoxication. 

Their brains have adapted for survival first. They do not have the same trajectory of brain and holistic development as a child who has been raised in a felt sense of safety. For these kids, their brains are so adapted to survival, that even when they are moved to a safe home they don't immediately feel safe. It can take months of stability and predictability and caregivers in small moments of therapeutic intervention and providing corrective experiences for the trajectory to shift a few degrees into a new direction.  

And what happens when all of their adults begin to feel unsafe? These children are like the proverbial canary in the coal mine. They will respond faster than others to the sense of tension in the air. And the air is full of tension this week- especially in larger group care facilities. It's a steep learning curve with information changing daily.

We humans in the Western world are not used to high and on-going levels of uncertainty and safety. The exceptions are plenty and these kids I described are the example. For most of us though we have multiple places where we feel relatively safe. For example, maybe work is challenging, and your supervisor is mean, but when you go home to your children or partner or you go to the gym you feel safe. You see people you know and you re-set through small or significant social interactions. We feel better about our self when we have social relationships that mirror the best aspects of our self. 

Now, we are all home. We are all feeling unsafe and tense- intermittently between feeling calm enough, distracted or simply numbed out. When our nervous systems have been activated and we can no longer sustain that level of activation we collapse. Likely many of us are hopping between activated and collapse. At least the people I've been speaking to who are juggling uncertainty on multiple fronts. 

So how do we find a way to become safe again. Is it okay to feel safe when we are (in that moment) in fact safe? How do I help my body know that it is safe? 

First, remember you deserve to care for yourself as much as anyone else deserves your care. Next find two minutes and a quiet place. 

Close your eyes and imagine a place that is calming for you. By the ocean or lake on your last vacation... or in the woods or maybe swimming lengths at the pool. Any place you have experienced as feeling calm and safe. 

Take a few deep breaths. Don't worry about counting. Just begin to slow your breath- each time going more slowly-- inhale, hold and exhale. If you feel drawn to taking long breaths and holding longer and exhaling longer, do that. If it is harder to take your breath out of your chest and into your belly, breathe as deeply as you can. No shame. No judgement. 

Feel your feet on the ground. Imagine there are roots coming from the bottoms of your feet. With every exhale you can breathe out through the bottom of the feet and release any tension…down down…. down from the bottoms of your feet and into the earth. Allow the earth to take that energy to recycle it into something else. You can let go of anything you no longer need to hold on to. 

Allow yourself to stay in this state for a few minutes. Give thanks to what or who moves you to do that and tell yourself: I'm doing the best that I can and that is enough. 

The last thing any of us need at this time is shame and judgement. Shame is frequently the emotion that fuels the anxiety/ stress/ feeling of unsafe. We are all in this together. We are all worthy of love and belonging. We all deserve support and to be seen for a human who is trying their best in these interesting times.  

Take care friends.