What if we all felt safe?

I wonder what the world would look like if we all felt safe no matter who we were talking to? The reality for most of us is that we are much safer than our nervous systems believe we are most of the time. I want to acknowledge first of all that some of us genuinely are in unsafe situations and that that requires a very different approach to the one I’m about to explore so if you know that’s you, please do seek support to change your situation.

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Recently I was chatting to a friend and happened to mention something that we disagree on. I did it without thinking because I can have a tendencey when I’m with people I get on really well with to assume that we agree on everything but this time I was wrong and I felt my friend’s nervous system activate immediately. She didn’t feel safe. In this situation one or the other of us steered the conversation away from the danger zone and we continued to enjoy our time together. I can’t help wondering though, if we’d both felt safe enough to discuss the thing we disagree on, whether we could have come out of the situation with a closer bond and a greater understanding of each other’s perspectives. Not necessarily with the objective of either of us changing the other but just to come to a place of greater compassion, understanding and connection.

To do this we would both have to be able to keep a calm nervous system and feel safe in ourselves, knowing that we weren’t under threat. That’s what this week’s tapping video was about and you can find the link down below if that sounds good to you. It’s my dream that everyone will do this tapping so that we can all enter these conversations without arguing and losing friends!

On another occasion, quite a few years ago now, I found myself in a group of people, all of the same opinion as each other, on a certain subject which was, again, the opposite to my opinion. This time it was my turn to feel threatened and go into fight or flight. In this situation I was hugely outnumbered and there was an assumption on their side that I would agree with them. I confess that I made myself as small as I could and got out of there as soon as possible. I did not try to express my truth, nor did I particularly try to understand theirs.

I mention this because that’s the natural human response, that’s how our nervous systems are set up. We perceive a threat, we consider whether we can fight or flee, if not we might freeze, fawn or flop. To create a world in which we can see each other clearly and compassionately through all of our diversity we need to find a way to override this system and perhaps the best way of doing this would be to not feel threatened in the first place. To come to a place where we can recognise that we don’t have to agree with everyone and that we can be safe while expressing a different opinion, that maybe we can even contuniue to love and respect that person while having a different opinion and be loved and respected in return.

When we come from this perspective we begin to see the nuance of the different positions people take on different things, how their past experience and their greatest fears all come together to form an opinion. Instead of choosing our position, for or against, and doubling down any time we even detect a hint that someone might not be fully on our side, we can begin to understand where others are coming from. Maybe in some situations there may be a middle ground that’s fair to all. Maybe, when coming from a calm nervous system, our brains are more able to work together to find solutions that work for everybody and maybe we might just find ourselves in a kinder and more loving world.

If that sounds good to you, make a start with our tapping to feel safe with discomfort here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fFixBfybTY

And if you’d like some more personal, in depth support, be it with generating a feeling of safety, overcoming trauma or anxiety, living a happier menopause or anything else, book your free chat here https://www.healingwomanhood.com/book-online