It's safe to feel safe

When I first began my healing journey, and actually for quite a long time in the beginning, I would have had no idea what it meant to feel safe. I don’t think I even knew that I didn’t feel safe because being on high alert, constantly attuned to potential danger was just my normal, I didn’t realise I could feel any other way. I’ve had clients say the same upon first connecting with a sense of safety in the body, that they never knew it was possible to feel that way.

Feeling safe in my body began with being able to feel my body, which at first, didn’t feel safe at all. For people like me, and maybe like you, who don’t feel safe in their body it can be much easier to locate that sense of safety elsewhere, in a memory or imagined place of safety, anchoring in that feeling of safety before we gently and slowly begin to dip into how it feels to be in our body.

For a long time I struggled with immense frustration as therapist after therapist would ask me ‘where do you feel that in your body?’ my answer then and sometimes even now, was ‘I don’t. I can’t feel anything in my body’ If you’ve experienced the same thing it can be a sign that you’re having the same trauma response as me, we call it dissociation. If you are experiencing dissociation, that’s totally normal, you’re okay, there’s nothing wrong with you. If you’ve worked through our tapping videos and meditations the last two weeks you might have felt that the body based visualisations were just out of reach, that’s okay too. If, like me, you have a lifetime’s experience of dissociating to stay safe, you might need to be a bit patient with yourself as you work towards reconnecting with your body and finding a sense of safety within it.

Try working through the videos. They will give you a really good idea of where you’re starting from. See if you can approach this with a sense of curiosity, just noticing where you’re starting from and noticing how you feel about that. Everything that comes up here is okay. Set the intention that gently and slowly, you are ready to ease back into your body. It can also help to know that this isn’t a linear journey, you may one day discover that you can feel into your body and the next day struggle to access that feeling. Again, this is okay and really normal.

As we begin to start to access the feelings in our body we often begin to feel into what our subconscious mind had been protecting us from and that can be difficult. Be prepared to process some old stuff as you do this and be sure to be very gentle with yourself and your heart, ensuring that you have good support along the way.

If you’d like to use our Safe series of videos to support you on this journey you can find it at patreon.com/healingwomanhood

If you’d like some one to one support on your quest you can book a free consultation at healingwomanhood.com/book-online