I work with clients on the ways that a lack of safety presents itself in their lives. It has a physical element where we feel physically unsafe. This could have started historically for which we still carry the wounds that get triggered by the slightest related or (what appears to be) an related situation, sound, glance, comment, image, touch etc which takes us to really difficult ‘places’ to manage.
A lack of safety also occurs emotionally in that our own emotions feel unsafe to us. We have adopted coping strategies like avoidance, anger, enmeshment, deprivation, chaos, in all the ways that they can present themselves in our lives. Often we haven’t even realised we had created these strategies as we will not always remember the moment that we felt that the adopted coping strategy was ‘protecting’ / ‘working for’ us. Upon experiencing the physical and emotional unsafety, we hold a series of pre-scripted thoughts that spring into action without any forethought to keep us in the same beliefs and behaviours of ‘safety’. The habit maintains itself over and over again.
Being able to be in a safe place with a therapist where all aspects of unsafety in the self and others is explored safely is critical for our awareness and understanding so a change can occur to enable us to have a better relationship with ourselves, others and our world.