Safety is a precious commodity that very few have the means to hold.

Safety is not something that should be sold like a commodity, but it is, just like everything else.

How much safety do you buy?

Insurances of any kind, equipment, safety services?

It’s a huge market, because it is a basic human need.

Just like the beauty industry that plays on the basic human need for belonging.

Or the medical industry that plays on the basic need for access;used to be access to care… but they’ve currently bumped it up to access to society.

Billion dollar markets my friends! Think about that for longer than a second.

I thought that perhaps the pursuit of safety was just a cptsd healing thing; but when I look deeper it’s a human thing.

We all need safety, and many of us have no idea how to achieve it. Because it is safety that we need, and fear that keeps us stuck. It is the ultimate paradoxical dilemma… the juxtaposition between safety and fear.

The pursuit of safety for me has been stitched closely together with my pursuit of wellness; because in order to achieve wellness I also require safety, go figure!

It has been the missing piece the whole time for me, and I think that is true for many of us; because safety is something that all of us still seek in one or more aspect of our lives.

We seek financial safety in our abilities and skills.

We seek emotional safety in our relationships, the need is even more with intimate relationships.

We seek the safety of belonging.

We seek safety because we need it to self regulate and reach the rejuvenation advantage. Safety is the secret sauce.

When I can’t accomplish safety for myself I am very easily triggered into trauma responses, that’s cptsd. But it still holds true for all humans. We go into survival mode if we feel threatened or unsafe.

It is when we don’t have that sense of safety; plus we don’t have the tools or help we need to regulate during or after that a traumatic experience is formed.

It’s a simple equation really.

Helplessness and neglect of needs or isolation is “all”it takes for a traumatic experience to form as an emotional blockage.

We cross the line from a feeling of regulation and safety into a space where are not capable of regulating and initiate the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn subconsciously to survive.

We are emotionally designed to disassociate and detach ourselves from the experience of trauma. We will always have a unique mixture of our own emotions, but noticing the ways that you specifically disassociate to cope is helpful knowledge to have.

There are 4 common response paths. Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn. Certain circumstances call for each of them depending on your needs. I’ve experienced all of them, I think we all do to some degree.

That’s all complex trauma responses are built of. Compounded band aided neuropathways created after that unregulated experience. It gets complex when there are multiple experiences that help form many limiting beliefs, but that is the basic structure.

The experience of trauma happens in any circumstance when something happens to you, or around you, where you do not feel safe and don’t have the power to control your circumstances.

This happens quite naturally in parent-child relationships in general. Everyone who was once an infant communicating your needs, without language or ability has experienced helplessness linked to literal survival needs. It’s great if caregivers practice urgency and attentiveness. But it is traumatic if the needs aren’t met with some shared sense of urgency for the one feeling helpless. ❤️

If a child is “acting out” which is a child’s way of asking for more attention, and an adult is having an emotional reaction and say raising their voice… the child has no control over that. On top of that, the child also doesn’t get the advantage of regulation that they expressed the need for. This inadvertently changes the child’s behaviour to avoid asking for support, because it has been proven an unsafe path.

It can happen just once, or repeated times both are traumatic if left unresolved. Unmet emotional needs are traumatic for children to experience.

The same is true for adults unmet emotional needs are traumatic for everyone.

Chronic illness or disease is often a trigger for feeling unsafe because there is no control of what was happening, or when. There often isn’t much choice but to participate in invasive tests. Non-compliance is met with loss of access. Then often the support that is available does more harm than good.

People healing any kind of trauma pathways need safety for their healing journey, and it is hard to come by. The system is broken and it is hard to navigate, and close family and relationships are often tainted with historically charged emotional issues, judgement and unrealistic expectations; so safety is often really hard to find in healing, especially before you learn to create it for yourself.

Safety is a commodity that we exchange trust time and money to create for us the advantage of feeling safe in our lives. It is something we both need, and deeply desire.

There are layers to safety that are not widely understood; yet we know we need it and keep searching as a primal response.

We barter for it.

We want to feel safe, and we seek safety for our lives even subconsciously.

In relation to others we seek safety in their confidence with our vulnerabilities.

In general we seek safety as one of the values we guide our lives with as we meet our basic needs for shelter, water and food. We want safe environments- physically and emotionally. We want safe clean drinking water, and we want safe chemical free food to eat.

We seek safety in authentic belonging; being freed from the discrimination of others.

For ourselves we seek safety and trust from within that gives us the understanding of our implicit worth. We seek, and find that our self worth is always 100%, regardless of what we think about ourselves that day. It is there we find safety.

The emotional needs of humans are just beginning to be understood as mental health education continues to break barriers and spread emotional intelligence among society.

Safety is a precious commodity to humans, like water.

Safety; and the perception of it is dependant on individual perspective.

The feeling of safety is achieved when you get the sensation that you will be comforted in your authenticity, and not shamed. Then it is reinforced when the actions meet the intentions of your life consistently.

Some of us will only every experience the luxury of safety after unlearning the patterns that keep us from it.

If you feel like you are in a position, like me, where you know safety is available but you aren’t in the position to purchase it- I feel the injustice!

For example: Our medical and public health system isn’t designed around safety; it is created by people who can buy it for themselves. The world looks different through their lenses. They take that position for granted, and we aren’t granted safety because we can’t purchase it.

If you are struggling to feel the feeling of safety in any area of you life, know that it is possible to feel safe again it takes practice, and a boatload of self advocacy.

Buckle down and learn your needs, and how to meet them as best you can. Show up for yourself.

Do what you can do. If you have some unlearning to do; cancel the pity party you normally throw and Start unlearning now.

Small steps forward is the prescribed method for any long term change; but you have got to do the work. Seeking safety for your life in all of the areas that you desire will walk you right onto the path of self love.

When you choose trauma informed self love you learn to cultivate safety independently. By leveraging safety as a valuable commodity you learn to trust yourself and honour yourself enough to walk away from people, places, or things that no longer serve you. You begin to trust yourself differently, because you know that you have your own back.

If you have the confidence to do any of that, you’ve achieved cultivating safety independently…. Congratulations you hold safety as a renewable resource commodity; that’s some high level achievement!

Love yourself first, love yourself through it my friends!