I don't feel safe

restoring a sense of relative safety in an unsafe world

I had a therapist once who, whenever I was having physiological reactions to talking about my trauma history, would say “Just notice that you are completely safe right now.” I wanted to scream at her. I was so angry that anyone could presume a feeling of safety in this violent world. I was always on the lookout for danger and that seemed appropriate. But my constant hypervigilance didn’t really protect me all that much.

Now I like to think about relative safety.

There are a bunch of tools I have used to help my body understand when it is helpful to be vigilant and when it can let down it’s guard.

First, one thing I had to wrap my mind around is that even if there’s pervasive and constant existential threat and political threat, having my body all jacked-up all the time wasn’t serving me. It didn’t help me be a more effective activist or a better friend.

Then I learned about the threat response cycle and talking to the body in the language of the nervous system.

Whispering to the brain stem

When mammals are in the wild, they look off in the distance every so often to see if anything dangerous is coming. If they do see something off in the distance, they move closer to their pack. They reassess. They go back to grazing if that seems right, or saunter off, further away.

(image from the Beehive Collective)

In another scenario, if they catch of whiff of danger, and they scan the distance and don’t see anything, then they have to look closer in. But at that point, a whole series of things are already happening in their bodies, because if the threat is that close they have to be ready to fight or flee.

The blood moves away from the limbs to the core to help the heart get ready for quick expenditure of energy. The heart rate quickens, the pupils dilate. All that stuff. It’s all body stuff that is organized by the brain stem. When I was in highschool people always thought I was on acid because my pupil were wide black holes.

So now, I have become a brainstem whisperer. Whenever I feel that heart rate creeping up, I remember to orient. I look into the distance, but not vigilantly, just with soft eyes. Maybe a little scan and then taking in what’s beautiful, the colors and the shapes, a soft reminder to myself of where the doors are.

If the heart keeps pounding, I use a scaling tool. On a scale of 1-10, how much immediate physical danger am I in? Because the heart rate thing is for physical danger response, and not necessarily that helpful for other kinds. If I’m in a disagreement with someone I love, it’s scary, and feels like a life-or-death threat, but when I scale it for physical danger, it’s on the lowest end. And so my heart rate can come down and I can remember that we’re just disagreeing, and these days the people I love do not want to hurt me. I can remember that when my heart rate comes back down.

Sometimes I do a little heart-whispering. Put one hand on my heart and one on my belly, and if my head is spinning, take the belly hand and bring it up to my forehead.

Sometimes I think of my heart as a little rabbit, and I imagine it backing softly into its den and resting there, surrounded by softness.

One thing I don’t do is tell myself I’m perfectly safe. I don’t tell myself nothing is happening. I don’t gas-light myself. I honor what the body is trying to tell me.

It’s telling me “I’m scared.”

And I speak the body's language back so it can build new (neural) pathways.

Over time, the pathways have opened.

And over time, I have learned to feel safe.