Are we safe.
I wish I did this more, of course. This is a processed through feeling/thought/wisdom bit I shared in my yoga class Feb 26, 2022 and I loved it so much I wanted to process again here so I can come back to remember.
Lately Yael (my 2.5 year old) has randomly hugged me or my husband and at the same time she says “Are we safe.” I put a period as I don’t feel like she’s asking a full question, but rather stating an observation.
Safety.
Whether you call it this or not, I believe we are all ultimately looking for safety. This idea is born out of the fact that we unconsciously, subconsciously, and maybe even consciously have ingrained survival mode turned on. I think about this all the time, we live in a very different world/culture than the humans that were first put on this earth. Ideally, it is a more “safe” world (access to MORE should provide us safety, right?). But we have these generational, ingrained traits/methods of trying to survive.
This can boil down to something specific for each person. Once our ego is formed (around ages 4-7), we adapt to a survival response that will help us cross from one moment to the next. This response is rooted in a particular motivation. And now I am describing the Enneagram to you ;)
The motivation provides our vessel (head, heart, gut/body) a sense of SAFETY when we get it. For me it looks like this — “If I am valuable/worthwhile and validated, then I am safe.” Enneagram structure doesn’t lay it out as blatantly as this but this is my point. We are born, and then at some point we start trying to ask the world AM I SAFE. The motivation is the coping mechanism. It’s like a silk shirt. Good idea until you picked to wear it to do work in. Now you’re sweating through it and its sucking the life out of you.
We all work to get our basic needs met one of 3 ways.
1. Retreating, withdrawing, isolate, pull away from people and go into themselves, working to know best from within.
2. Move towards people, begging to know what the next best thing to do is by asking what others think, or what would they do.
3 Lastly, the good ol press against method “I don’t need help” I can do all things mentality. I will figure it out.
We pick one, unknowingly, and we lean so hard into it and ultimately have this feeling of no one gets me, no one is here to help me, i don’t know what to do, insert yours here. Something comes up and there’s a gap in the safety still. gap in the fulfillment of the need.
So we bring greater awareness forward. We invite it from within ourselves.
I had a situation last week where I got in a conflict. I felt the stress of someone else, and I worked really hard to respond in a kind way that met them on their level. And they didn’t validate that, they just sent a really unsettling response. And it ate me alive for several hours!!! Even in this, my ego went to that #3 up there and felt in my body “f that person, I don’t need them, I’m better without that relationship, just forget about how anyone feels….” the swirl of not having my need of being validated. It would have unfolded so differently if they had responded “thank you for being sensitive to me” or “thank you for trying to understand me”.
I kept replaying what I said in my head for hours that evening, and then woke early the next day in a mind swirl of that plus so many things. I grabbed my journal and did morning pages (just open and write it allllll out, no filter). Along the way I saw what was happening within me. Ohhhhhh — it boiled down to one thing: little me within is struggling being validated in this moment. My 3rd grade Olivia came forward and expressed that in gym class that one day was the first time I felt that feeling.
Who will choose me?
Am I worthwhile?
Can you validate these things in me?
my work : SELF SOOTHE. SELF REGULATE. SELF SUPPORT.
The way through is to offer the deepest rooted pain attached to these needs support, love, and a landing place.
So I wrote my 8 year old self a letter. I reminded her that what other people say and how they treat you doesn’t have anything to do with her but everything to do with their own unmet needs. How they treat me has everything to do with them finding safety in their own lives. Doing it the only way they might know. I told her she is so worthy to be chosen. She is so valuable and there will be so many more people in her lifetime that will make her feel that without having to check back in and ask. I told her that she’s so beautiful for having such a deep feeling heart and it’s okay that she feels affected by what’s happening outside of her and that the most magical thing she can do is validate herself.
I finished writing and I looked up from the paper, took a big long inhale and exhale and woosh.
The tightness, the swirl it all exhaled too.
Ukrainian sculptor and designer Alexander Milov created this beautiful depiction of what lives within at the Burning Man Festival.
It is absolutely wild to me that Yael has been asking this question lately. I don’t know where she learned it, or where it comes from. There is no rhyme or reason to when she says it. We are born and then somewhere along the way we start to need this sense of I can make it one more breath, one more hour, one more day, one more conflict IF I have ________.
I believe our greatest life’s work is truly seeing that need, getting to know what it looks like, feels like, and more importantly where it started. So we can GO BACK IN, we can offer the wound or the pain soothing, regulation, and support. When I can clearly see the breakdown of conflict in these ways and how so much of what I feel when dealing with people has nothing to do with them but everything to do with different versions of myself— I cannot help but think oh my God if everyone could see themselves in this way, what could we hold space for? Not just in ourselves but for other people. For me personally, I am always looking to place blame, or see the gap in moments with other people. Who did what wrong? Maybe no one is doing something “wrong” at the base. They are just living without knowing where the response really truly comes from.
There is so much freedom when we let our stories breathe and give permission to others to do the same.
mmm I love you and I honor you.
This is processed through and with the language of the Enneagram. Want to work with me? Click here to learn more.
