10 Oct Where do you feel safe to feel unsafe?

Seeking pockets of sanctuary, bubbles of community, small islands of sanity and support, where we feel safe enough to let ourselves feel unsafe seems increasingly important in these times.

In a recent group gathering, a couple of us shared that we didn’t feel safe. This is a regular brave and beautiful deliberately developmental space gathering which I wholeheartedly value, including for the high levels of psychological safety built over years. One where I usually feel safe or safe-ish. So this was unusual but feels significant.

Increasingly these days, parts of me feel unsafe, perhaps fearing the consequences of speaking up which might fuel polarization generally and might lead to being cast out of the tribe, for example, in a climate in which there are significant consequences for sharing views that don’t align with those of those in power. Or literally fearing for their lives as they ‘look up’ and see the ‘meteors’ crashing down to earth, including growing signs of collapse, and greater division in our human family manifesting in all sorts of ways including live-streamed genocide. And I know I’m not alone, although the monsters feared may differ.

It’s not new, of course, this having parts within my internal family system (which mirrors the wider human family system) who feel unsafe. But there are arguably many more triggers. The world at large is feeling less and less safe for many of us. I hear this behind closed doors again and again, from fellow practitioners, clients, my children, my friends. Those of us who tune in regularly to our bodies are noticing the impact of these times on our nervous systems. And we believe that others are being impacted even if they don’t realise it.

Helping clients to feel safe/safer, be able to be vulnerable, express themselves without fear of judgement, has long been part of the work I do with individuals and teams, through psychological safety programmes with teams, one-to-one and team coaching, and individual and relational mindfulness courses.

Safe spaces are more and more needed, given what’s playing out in the world. And as coaches and other helping professionals, it’s becoming increasingly vital that we too seek out nurturing spaces.

It was such a relief in this recent session to name the unfeeling safe, to give the part feeling she was unsafe the opportunity to show up without feeling she’d be judged. And as I, and the others on the call, gave this part space, ironically, she felt a little safer. I found I was sighing a lot, my body unfurling, my hands unclenching, my stomach relaxing a little, my shoulders going back. But that wasn’t necessarily the point. The point was that in these times, when so many of us, so many of our parts, increasingly feel unsafe, I had somewhere where it was safe to feel unsafe, where I could really let myself feel. We numb ourselves at our peril, literally. As the late ecologist and activist Joanna Macy has said, “There is no future if we go numb.”

Where do you go to let yourself feel unsafe, to let yourself feel?