Safety is a Skill
By: Rachel Jones
What does it feel like to be safe?
If you’ve never truly felt safety, how do you know it when you see it? And if you’ve only ever felt safe, how would you begin to imagine its lack?
What is the feeling of safety? Can it be learned?
Under the right conditions - Yes
Safety is a Skill.
Rationally we may think of safety as being dependent upon whether or not there is a threat to life. This also happens to be one of the main DSM criteria for PTSD.
But we know what it feels like to be trapped in traffic
Just like we know what it feels like to be cuddled in bed.
Neuroception is a term coined by Dr.Steven Porges that refers to the automatic “process through which the nervous system evaluates risk without requiring awareness,” (Porges & Porges, 2023).
It allows us to conceptualize safety on a spectrum.
To consider all of the other scary things in life that, although rationally seem safe - will just never feel that way.
One end of this spectrum is complete safety with no possible discomfort.
This extreme is rarely reached, or at least not for long.
The other end of this spectrum is facing sudden death with no possible defense.
This extreme is rarely reached, or at least not for long.
This spectrum is made possible by neuroceptive unconscious commitments.
Seek safety
Defend against danger
Neuroception makes it possible to imagine an infinite amount of ways to understand what is safe and what is not along that spectrum - even if not rationally explained. This is because the nervous system understands danger and safety based upon past experience. It has no use for rationality - its bigger priority is to keep you on the side of safety.
When trapped in traffic - the discomfort you can’t put your finger on is the nervous system pulling you towards one end of the spectrum.
Defending against the loud danger cues honking all around you.
And your nervous system can’t wait to get home to jump into a safe warm bed.
Or any desperate attempt to pull you to the other side of the spectrum.
Because the nervous system wants to seek safety.
And under the right conditions - it always will.
Safety is where we heal
Where we digest and sleep
Where we learn
Love
Express
Safety is where we experience all of the things that make us human.
It’s the nervous system’s job to seek safety
And under the right conditions it always will.
These conditions require:
No physical threat
No threat to wellbeing
No threat of judgment or manipulation
A deep sense of trust and support
Opportunity to express complete truth
To be authentically seen by another
And only be received with love and acceptance.
Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Sounds like something to live for.
Yet these are not the conditions we are born into.
These are definitely not the systemic conditions in which we live. Systemic conditions that change for individuals depending on their community belonging, gender, race, orientation, etc. As fate would have it, we are all influenced by a particular part of the safety spectrum within the conditions of the life we were born into.
Safety allows us to experience all of the things that make us human.
Yet it is the human condition to constantly have experiences lacking safety.
To ironically borrow a quote from atheist Sam Harris, “Confusion and suffering may be our birthright but wisdom and happiness are available.”
Safety is the avenue in which wisdom and happiness are built.
There’s a big difference between surviving/getting by and happiness.
And don’t we all have a right to pursue that?
It is possible to still function while living on the wrong side of the safety spectrum.
But is it a function worth living for?
How do we find safety in a world that is not safe?
It is a skill that can be learned.
But only if the conditions are right.
The nervous system understands safety based upon past experiences. And we are all guaranteed a lifetime supply of triggering, uncomfortable, unsafe experiences - to varying degrees of extremity.
Therefore we must create the conditions to experience examples of what to come back to. Within our own bodies - but also within the communities around us. Examples of love, trust, support, wellbeing, safety.
It’s not about creating conditions free of triggers.
That extreme of the spectrum is rarely reached, or at least not for long.
It’s about becoming skilled in the art of coming back to safety.
But our nervous systems can’t know safety unless they have experienced it.
So although a world free of triggers does not exist -
We must create the safety blanket of which we know we all can fall back on.
Within the systemic conditions we live, as well as the systemic conditions affecting everyone in uniquely unsafe ways.
It’s a skill that must be learned over a lifetime - over generations.
Good thing we are gifted a lifetime supply of experiences to practice with.
While both ends of the spectrum provide a particular kind of fear and vulnerability, they also provide particular sources of wisdom. To know the extremes of safety, is to clearly know what it is and what it is not.
Those who have experienced extremes on this spectrum have the potential to become the most skilled.
A source of wisdom valuable to us all.
