Wake up and Thrive

083- How to Create Inner Safety

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When we feel safe internally, the mind chatter calms down, we will feel more in control, and will feel safe enough to slow down and enjoy life! Inner safety is the foundation of all of these tools.

This topic is so pivotal to your healing journey, and yet it is oftentimes misunderstood. Creating safety does not mean you feel calm all the time. 

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Speaker 1:

Hi, my name is Bridget and this is my podcast, wake Up and Thrive. My intention for this space is to help women around the world live more awake, aligned and truly alive. I believe wholeheartedly that we are designed to live, feel and experience the full range that life has to offer, and in doing so, we can live fully turned on in all areas. My story began with sobriety and has since been an initiation into rediscovering parts of myself that I forgot about or had abandoned. Learning to reclaim all of who I am has been the greatest gift of living awake, and together we will go on a journey of helping you to do the same. You can expect to learn practical tools to help you connect deeper to yourself, your purpose and those in your life. All you need is an open heart and an open mind. So if you're ready, it's time. It's time to wake up and thrive. Good morning, welcome back to Wake Up and Thrive. You guys. The content, the information, the tools, the ideas have literally just been like pouring through my body over the last two weeks, and two things sort of came to mind about why this is happening because, as I've shared to you, you know, I, when we moved houses, I sort of found myself in this winter season lack of motivation, lack of inspiration, you know all the things and I really honored that season, which is part of it, because when you honor that, the season that you're in, you end up having a season like I'm finding myself in right now, this sort of spring season, where I've got lots of energy, I've got lots of motivation, I have so many ideas and things are. Things are just sort of falling in place. And so two things first of all are three things. I honored the season I was in, right, that winter season. I also am feeling completely aligned and when you align, things fall in place. When you align your creativity, it's just, it just flows, it flows through your body. This is what I teach when I talk about feminine embodiment, and it's just a really cool feeling to be experiencing like the duality of both of them, literally. A month and a half ago I was feeling like, oh my God, am I ever going to have another good idea? And now here I am, just like completely recording podcast after podcast, all this stuff. It's just completely coming through to me and it feels really good. And so I'm honoring this but also recognizing this is a season. This is a season my inspiration, my motivation, it will wane, and my job is really just to remember, to create or remember to remind myself that this is all happening exactly as it's supposed to be happening. So I do just want to share that in case anyone finds themselves sort of in a funk or a winter season. I have quite a few podcasts, you know. You can go back and listen, but I hope that reminder really serves you.

Speaker 1:

I think the other thing that has been incredibly helpful for me is creating safety. Creating safety in my body when I feel like I'm in a winter season, when I feel down, when I feel like I want to quit. Creating that safety and then also creating the safety when I feel really good, when I'm feeling turned on and I'm feeling inspired and motivated. Safety has to be present in both situations. Right, I don't know if we actually talk about that a lot, but I was interviewing a woman, becky Astey. Her interview is going to be coming out soon. She is a marriage coach sorry, she is a marriage somatic coach and we have a really exciting event that we are planning in the fall. It's the first time doing anything like this. Anyways, this is part of what I'm talking about all these ideas and all these things are falling into place. But that is coming and I'm so excited to announce that.

Speaker 1:

But the reason I bring her up is during her interview she was talking about safety, and she was talking about how so often she thought that her lack of safety was from her husband. But it really was this internal safety that she was lacking. And once she learned to access that feeling safe with him, it started to fall into place. And as she started talking, I'm getting goosebumps because I'm like oh my God, like that's the word I guess I never like put language to it, but that is how I would describe I have been feeling I mean not just during this spring season. I would say it's how I felt during my move, it's how I felt when I was in a funk. It's how I have felt this last year in a health half. I have felt so and created so much internal safety with myself. And why is that even important. I'm going to talk about that in today's episode. I'm going to talk about how do you actually create safety, because I think it's a big misunderstanding, but I also just want to share how powerful it is and can be in your life when you feel safe Right. So let's dive right in. Let's dive into what does it mean to feel safe? So let me first highlight I said what does it mean to feel safe? So safety is a felt sense. In other words, you can't think yourself into safety, and I know this firsthand.

Speaker 1:

I have shared this story. When I was 15, I was so sure that someone was in my house that I went into a full out traumatic response. A full panic. Panic first, right Fight, flight first and then complete freeze and shut down. And my body held on to that because I didn't know that. My parents didn't know how to work with trauma. And it ended up. I ended up actually going to a somatic practitioner. When I look back to the story, it was a hypnotist that used tapping and visualizations to really help me overcome that fear. So that part's kind of incredible to think back.

Speaker 1:

But when I was 15, so sophomore, junior and high school, you guys, I could not, could not sleep in my own room, had to sleep in my parents room on the floor, could not go to sleepovers, could not be left alone. I just I had so much fear, as soon as the sun went down and it was dark, that somebody was going to come in my house. I was a sophomore junior and I couldn't be left alone, like it was just in my head. I knew it was ridiculous to feel this afraid and I would tell myself over and over again you're safe, you're safe, you're safe. But my body was screaming a different story and I know for you guys. You might have experienced that. Maybe you've experienced a traumatic event like I did.

Speaker 1:

Maybe it's just your felt sense of safety was always lacking because of the environment you grew up in. Maybe it wasn't safe to express anger or grief or sadness or boredom, whatever it was it was. It's this felt sense in our body, and it doesn't really matter how old, how mature we are. You can't think yourself out of it. So if you experience lack of safety, understand that nothing is wrong with you. That's, that's exactly right, and your body is responding correctly to the experience that it's holding on to Okay.

Speaker 1:

So in order to truly feel safe inside, you have to first acknowledge that you you don't feel safe, because I think oftentimes we go to I feel overwhelmed, I feel angry, I feel stressed out, when really what we're talking about is I feel a lack of safety, I feel insecure. Even even the word insecure when people say like I don't want to have this conversation, it makes me so insecure, or I don't want to go stand up on stage, it makes me feel insecure. Well, by definition of the word in right, taking that prefix, and then security, it's not safe. That's what it is. You're lacking a feeling of safety. So, getting to know your body's cue for when it doesn't feel safe for some women, maybe you shut down and freeze. For other women, maybe you get really ramped up and you get really ragey. What are your signals? That sort of alert you that your body doesn't feel safe in this moment?

Speaker 1:

Okay, and again, I think oftentimes we feel intense emotions and our go-to is to make it about our partner, or our finances, or the state of our house, or the state of the world, or our kids or COVID. Right, we think that's what's not making us safe and sometimes those instances, they're playing a role, right, they're influencing your experience. But the truth is, as long as you keep addressing what's outside of you and you're trying to just fix, fix your family, fix your house from a place of insecurity, from a place of lack of safety, you will never actually feel good. You might be putting a band-aid on it, temporarily, you might oh, my overwhelm went down for a little bit, but it's just bubbling under the surface and it will come back up. So really, what you need to address not fix but is that lack of safety inside. So get to know, it's on a somatic level. What does it feel like for you Then?

Speaker 1:

I think, when we can really hone in on okay, in this moment, my body doesn't feel safe to have this conversation, my body doesn't feel safe to do this thing, my body doesn't feel safe to look at my bank account or be vulnerable, whatever it is for you, I think this also really humanizes the truth of what's going on, instead of demonizing the person or situation in front of you. So let me say that again, I think when we can bring it back to safety, it humanizes actually what's going on. It humanizes the root of the problem. And when we can humanize it, we can access curiosity and compassion, versus demonizing what's going on around them, versus making whatever's happening around you wrong, bad, because that puts you into ego, that puts you into judgment, that puts you into a very unsafe environment, it amps up the lack of safety. So when we can see these moments where we're freaking out as really it's just our body not feeling safe. It shifts that perspective from the outside to the inside, I think. Even as I'm saying this, I think it's also super helpful when the person you're in relationship with maybe it's your kids, maybe it's your partner, maybe it's your coworker when they are freaking out like we've all had this experience.

Speaker 1:

I work in the hospital, so I will see a lot of patients and I will oftentimes get report from my fellow nurses saying I feel really bad saying this, but this is the truth of nursing. They'll say like this patient is so needy, this patient drives me crazy, this patient is so rude, this patient has issues For me with my training. Immediately I go to, this patient doesn't feel safe. That is why we're getting the quote unquote neediness or the irrational behavior or the disrespectful ways. I know that there are people in your life that are acting just acting toxic or acting out of character for who they are, if you can really look at it as they don't feel safe in this moment. There's a lack of safety going on in their body and what could I do as somebody that loves them, cares about them, respects them, to create a safer environment. What is it that I could do? And we'll talk a little bit about how do you create safety. But, yeah, I hope that, even just saying it in that light, I hope you guys are thinking of people in your own life and even thinking of you and how you show up and sort of going ah, I never thought that was related to safety.

Speaker 1:

I thought it was just about a messy house or I gotta pay my credit card. No, it's actually a lack of safety, because, remember back to my example, when that traumatic instance happened to me, I was actually not. I was truthfully not experiencing a lack of safety. I was completely safe. When I thought someone was in my house, it was my parents, but my body perceived the experience as not being safe, and so that is my reality. That is the experience for me, and so the solution is to create safety. The solution is not to think myself out of it, it's not to tell myself I'm safe, it's not to write positive affirmations or do mere work. It's to really create felt safety in the body.

Speaker 1:

So how do we create safety? And this is where I see a lot of people getting it wrong. I've even seen therapists teaching. You create safety by creating calm. You create safety by learning how to regulate. And I'm gonna tell you right now that's only part of the equation. It's only part of the equation because just think about it almost half of your life, life is always 50-50, relationships are 50-50, business is 50-50. So if safety is only about feeling calm and regulated, then that means half of the freaking time you don't feel safe. Do you know what kind of decisions and actions you make and take when you don't feel safe? Like that? Just that wouldn't work. We would live in a I mean, we do live in a unfortunately unsafe world.

Speaker 1:

But you get what I'm saying. Safety is not simply in this bucket of when you're regulated and calm, and learning regulation and calming techniques is gonna bring safety. That is only part of the equation, only part of the puzzle. Safety doesn't come from regulation. Safety internal safety, felt sense of safety comes from building resilience, not necessarily building regulation, but building a nervous system and a body that is resilient, meaning you can flow effortlessly in from fight, flight, freeze, fawn back down to homeostasis. You can be in shutdown mode and you can be able to observe that and be like okay, I got you. I got you, you are safe to feel this and we can regulate back upwards right or not regulate, we can bounce back. That's the resiliency I'm talking about. So another way to say it is you know that you are capable of feeling whatever is present and you won't die. Let me say that again Internal safety comes when you truly, truly, truly believe you're capable of feeling whatever is present and you won't die.

Speaker 1:

And I want to share a story with the past client because I think this will sort of like help nail this message home. So I remember one time I was working with a client who had a lot of unprocessed grief and and she would get really mad at her. The reason we were in our current session. We were talking about her anger towards her husband, specifically around like driving the girls to the school and how she really, you know, felt like he wasn't being safe, making safe choices, all the things. And again, there can be room for both. So maybe part of that was true, but the truth was she really was coming not to talk about her husband. She was like I feel like my reaction is really out of proportion for what he's doing and I don't really understand it. And so the more that we kind of unpacked and kind of got to the root.

Speaker 1:

We recognized that in the past three years she had a lot of loss within her family, core family members. And it was this fear of losing people because that was her experience, that was her reality, her felt sense of safety was shook, completely shook, and what was wanting to come through in those moments was her grief and her fear. Well, I'm sorry it was her fear. And then, under that was her grief, the fear was just a protection, but she was resisting it because she said, you know, first of all she said I've already let myself grief, grief. But if you are familiar at all with grief, it comes in waves, it's never actually complete and done. But she also had this big fear. If she let herself go there, you know, she didn't know she would recover. And she is a manager, she's a mom, she's a wife, like she's got a lot of stuff going on. She's like I don't really want to make time for my grief, I don't know if I'll be able to pull it together.

Speaker 1:

And so in that moment, as she, she felt safer going into a story about how it's her husband that's the problem and that's creating the lack of safety, right, but the truth was his actions were just triggering oh my gosh, if he's not driving in the most safe manner, right, like the sphere of losing him, of losing the girls this underlying grief that is there. And so we worked with the grief. As we started working with the grief, guess what happened? She started to feel a lot safer having those conversations with him. She felt a lot less reactive when he was driving the girls to school. It wasn't that he was doing anything you know crazy, but she started to really be able to sort of unravel and separate from the story.

Speaker 1:

And in that moment I know it wasn't like an easy season for her to actually feel and access that grief, but that's what was needed to create safety. And once and she saw it she acknowledged you know what was like the after effects of allowing her, allowing herself to really feel the grief and using her irritation and blame just as like an alarm clock, right, or that check engine light. I've used both those analogies before just saying like hey, like hey, hey, hey, time to look under the hood. But again he didn't change. She just started to see that she is in control of feeling whatever's present and she doesn't have to jump into story, she doesn't have to jump into control mode and it's the more that she felt the grief, the safer that she felt to really like acknowledge it and acknowledge it to him right and say like this is what's coming up for me and just really be present for that. So I share that example because inner safety does not come from just bringing your body to a calm state from up regulation or down regulation. It comes from being willing to feel whatever's alive, right.

Speaker 1:

I know many of you listening experienced this during the pandemic, experienced this intense fear, this intense fear and lack of safety because we were afraid of losing people. We're afraid of getting sick, we were afraid of losing our job. And what I want to say I learned this from Matthew Singer from Untethered Soul. He really writes in there like the whole premise of his book is that what we actually are afraid of is the feeling that whatever we're trying to avoid will bring meaning. Like, let's say, I'm trying to think here, like for me, for example, just like the rejection feeling, rejection For me in my business that might look like fear of putting out a new program right, I'm not actually afraid of the program, I'm not actually afraid of people saying no. I'm afraid of, while I'm healing when people say no, what that triggers inside of me and how uncomfortable that is. So the more that I have worked with that wound, the more that I have witnessed her, witnessed this part of myself with compassion and curiosity and safety Safety.

Speaker 1:

Safety is safety, says you can feel whatever's alive. It's okay, I got you, we're not going to fall apart, I'm not going anywhere. That's safety. And as we do that, as we start to get more comfortable with feeling and allowing whatever's present. And this is so huge when we talk about feminine embodiment and feminine energy, because feminine energy is energy, it's the energy, it's the life force. Energy, it's the highs and the lows wanting to move through our body. And so if you're wanting to lean into feminine energy, you have to be willing to say okay, in this moment I'm not feeling safe because of XYZ, but I'm really not feeling safe because if XYZ took place, I would have to feel this, I would have to feel grief, I would have to feel repressed anger, sadness, fear. What is the feeling that you're actually avoiding? And once you get good at feeling that you guys, you become unstoppable. You become such a safe person for other people, right, because the more that you allow yourself to feel whatever, the more you're willing to allow other people to go through what they're feeling, and vice versa. So inner safety comes from this knowing and allowing that I'm capable of feeling whatever's alive and you know.

Speaker 1:

And one other way, before we sort of wrap this up that I would love to think about is just just even think about the people in your life right now. Think about that one relationship that you would consider a very safe relationship. Right, we definitely have those people where we consider them toxic, and on the other side of the coin, we have people that we consider safe. And in both cases, almost always, what makes them safe? It's usually that you don't have to hold back, you don't have to tiptoe around certain thoughts, feelings or experiences. You are allowed to be fully you.

Speaker 1:

Right, and even when we look at the toxic people, the toxic people are usually the people where we we can't tell them this, we can't bring up conflict, we can't say this, do this not, do this, not say this because of fear, of fear of how they're going to react. Right, they're not a safe person. A toxic person is not safe. They're not safe Not because they're bad, wrong, evil human beings. They're not safe because they're not. They are not capable of holding space, of being present with whatever is alive in the moment.

Speaker 1:

And I work a lot with women whose husbands are oftentimes the non safe person, meaning when they're in a mood, or they're the woman is irritated or frustrated, the husband just sort of shuts down. That really does create a lack of safety in the relationship, a lack of emotional intimacy and safety, and I just I say that because I think it's. I think it'll highlight what I'm teaching you and it'll sort of reinforce oh yeah, you're right. Like you know, this coworker, this family member, maybe it is your partner I don't feel safe. And the reason I don't feel safe it's not necessarily something he did, it's that I, I'm not allowed to have my full experience in front of this person. It's not, they're not capable of holding it, and that creates safety.

Speaker 1:

So even just taking that concept of the safe people in our life, taking that and letting it be a reflection of the safety that we have cultivated for ourselves, within ourselves, so you know, for me I used to think I didn't have a lot of safe people in my life, and that may have been true. What I will say today is, I can safely say the relationships that I have today are incredibly built on safety, and that came from me first being willing to see, acknowledge, feel, reveal what I was feeling, and then feeling comfortable to reveal that within the relationship, to be vulnerable, to come forward and not pretend like I'm fine, but actually share what's alive for me, good or bad, right, and as I had to create the safety within myself first. Once I did that, once I understood I'm capable of feeling anything and I am capable of holding myself through it, that's when I was able to allow other people to do the same for me. So, if you are listening to this and you're like I have, I don't have any safe relationships I have.

Speaker 1:

There are so many toxic people in my life. I want you to hear me, first of all, without judgment, because I was in your position not too long ago, without judgment. I want you to. I want you to hear me and say hear me, say there's nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You are not somebody who can't attract good relationships, but you are somebody that is lacking safety within yourself. So what parts of yourself, what emotions, what thoughts, what stories. What experiences are you disowning, are you shutting down, are you trying to fix? Because the more that you do that, the more, the more insecurities and lack of safety that you will feel within your body. So, yeah, that's what I have for you guys today.

Speaker 1:

I hope I would actually love, love, love to hear from you guys, because this is sort of a big concept and I don't really see it being taught in this way. And I think when you teach it in this way, when you break it down like this, it makes a lot of sense. It made a lot of sense to me as I was teaching it and understanding it for myself. But it also it opens up. When you feel safe inside of your body, you will no longer feel fear about doing the thing, because fear is a feeling. You're capable of feeling fear, right, you're capable of doing that. So anything that may or may not produce fear, you got it. No big deal, just a feeling inside of your body, very uncomfortable. But you've worked with it, you can hold yourself through it and this is when life becomes really fun. This is when you get to really step into higher levels of change and growth, because you have, you're building, this foundation of safety. So that's what I want for everybody that listens to this podcast, everybody that joins one of my containers.

Speaker 1:

Safety is so pivotal, so let's take what we've learned today and let's start cultivating that. I am going to also drop a guide in the show notes which has five body based, my five favorite body based tools that you can use today to start to create that safety. Meaning you're going through life, you're starting to feel overwhelmed. You're like, okay, my body doesn't feel safe right now. What can I actually do? I would start there. That guide will be incredibly helpful and they are regulation tools, but understand that that's not the goal. When that becomes the goal, you're bypassing. Like how to create the safety. The safety is okay.

Speaker 1:

In this moment I feel really out of my window of tolerance, but I'm capable of feeling this. I don't need to reach for a substance. I don't need to blame anyone or anything outside of me. You know I get to reach for my tools. I get to sit with myself. I get to know, know with certainty that this will pass. That is internal safety. So that's what I have for you guys this week. I love you so much. Have that guide and I will be sure to see you guys next week.