HOW TO FEEL SAFE? (WITH PRACTICAL TOOLS INCLUDED)

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There’s one aspect to feeling safe that’s often most neglected. Therefore, what I’ll be addressing in this article on how to feel safe.

When we think about this idea of ‘feeling safe’ we often associate it with the need to take actions outside of ourselves in order to feel safe and have peace of mind on the inside.

For instance, ensuring to lock our doors, getting a house alarm in case of any burglars, making sure to create strong internet passwords and not share our banking details with anyone or not going out at night or staying out too late to ensure we get home safely, not walking alone and taking a cab when it reaches past a certain time and so forth.

And of course, these are all really really really important aspects to our safety and us feeling safe.

But another really really important aspect of feeling safe, which is often, unfortunately, neglected is our fundamental need to feel safe within our body’s.

Because I would go so far as to say that if more and more of us felt safe within our body’s there would be less crime and violence in our society.

Why? because you could go so far as to say that if you don’t feel safe in your body, you don’t feel safe in life more generally so no matter what you do or try you’ll never feel safe until you feel safe in your body.

Therefore, it’s that which, I want to talk about in more detail in this article.

So let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What does it means to feel safe in your body?

To feel safe in your body, therefore, means to feel a sense of peace and relaxation within your body because you’ve explored it in-depth to know it inside out.

What it means to know your body inside out?

What it means to know your body inside out, therefore, means you consciously know and are aware of what you are…

Believing
Feeling; and
Sensing

Through pausing and reflecting at different moments throughout the day since your body is the subconscious mind, which means it doesn’t provide you with the important information you need in regards to what you’re interpreting about your outside environment straight away.

(p.s. ignore any advice on naming and labelling your emotions because that takes you out of feeling and into thinking, which is the exact opposite of what you’re looking for when you’re trying to be present in your body).

What’s the result of knowing your body inside out?

The result of this is when you can consciously put into words what you’re believing (e.g. I’m not good enough) in regards to a feeling/sensation you’re experiencing, you can give it the reassurance and validation it needs when it needs it.

Therefore, helping it (and you) to feel safe.

Whereas when you don’t feel safe in your body, you feel this sense of tightness and tension, which at the end of the day does nothing but exhaust you because that tightness and tension is a signal of your stress, which is made up of your fears, worries, doubts, insecurities and limiting beliefs, which you’ve accumulated over the course of your life.

And you just keep replaying those fears, worries, doubts, insecurities and limiting beliefs over and over again, day in day out, towards the various situations you’re encountering.

However, you don’t notice the effect they’re having on you because you haven’t yet let go of them to be able to realise how much they weigh you down day in day out.

Why you don’t feel safe in your body?

A precarious bridge to show how to feel safe

1. Society, culture and the media

For the majority of our lives, (if not all of our lives until we make a conscious decision to do something different), we learn to identify with our thoughts because of course, we spend the majority of our time in our heads thinking.

The challenge with this, however, is by the time we’re adults, we come to take our thoughts as true facts about who we are as people, about who other people are as people and essentially, about how the world/life works or is ‘supposed’ to work.

Therefore, never in our lives are we taught to develop an intimate relationship with our body’s from the inside out because it’s not believed that intelligence or more rightly wisdom, comes from our body’s, but instead our minds.

And somehow just because we have more knowledge we’re smarter than others who have less knowledge.

Body positivity, body confidence and embodiment through dance

Sure there are lots of things these days on body positivity, body confidence and those who talk about dance as a way of being embodied.

Which, whilst of course, they are one way of helping us to feel safe in our body’s, they’re not for everyone. I mean they certainly weren’t for me.

But like everything in life, the focus is on doing something outside of you to affect change on the inside of you.

This, therefore, means there’s nothing (or at least I’ve not come across it in mainstream media), which talks about this need to feel safe on the inside of our body’s through knowing what we’re believing, feeling and sensing.

It’s only by working with a therapist that you’ll get to learn how to apply it to yourself and your very own specific life.

LEARN MORE: A COMPLETE GUIDE ON WHAT YOU NEED TO DO TO MAKE LIFE BETTER

2. Experience of trauma

Another reason you might not feel safe in your body is when you experience a trauma no matter your age, you experience a shock to your system, which can keep you feeling frozen, mentally and emotionally, in a specific period of time whether you are aware of it or not.

Therefore, you are left with a permanent sense of fear within your body until you work with (and through) the fear by taking some kind of action in order to overcome that fear, which I’ll come onto later in this article.

As a result, this can leave you feeling unsafe in life on a day to day basis.

Why does feeling safe in your body matter?

Feeling safe in your body matters because it dictates everything else in your life, which is what I’ll show you how next.

1. Your relationships

When you feel safe in your body, you feel safe with other people because you realise that you can depend on others for support when you need to.

Therefore, you can trust that not everyone you come across is going to judge and criticise you like perhaps you subconsciously believe they will because you’ve experienced it from others so many times before.

So you don’t need to do everything yourself, you can relax.

In addition, you’ll be able to recognise, that you’re in control of any situation or circumstance, which might arise in your life so can take any action you want towards it.

Which, as a result, reduces your anxiety around being with other people.

This isn’t to say the anxiety you experience now being around other people, will ever completely go away because it’s a normal part of being human.

But the more self-aware you become, the more likely you’ll be able to recognise it within you so over time can better manage it when it does arise in you.

Caveat

This, of course, isn’t to say that there aren’t going to be any bad people out there and they’ll all disappear when you feel safe in your body.

But it’s rather because you’ll learn how to see the behaviours in yourself, which you don’t like, you’ll better be able to recognise the same behaviours in others.

Therefore, helping you to have compassion and understanding for them, whilst also making the best decision for you.

Which might include choosing to stay clear of them.

In addition, as you work with your body (also known as bodywork) you’ll improve your intuition when around other people, therefore, getting a better feel for what other people are like.

As a result, allowing you to further choose to distance yourself from them or not and how exactly you’re going to do that, if so.

LEARN MORE: PART TWO: HOW TO TAKE ON RESPONSIBILITY FOR CHANGING THE OUTCOME OF YOUR LIFE? LIFE CHOICES

2. A feeling of trust in yourself and in life

When you feel safe in your body, you feel a sense of trust in life itself and its ability to provide for you.

Therefore, allowing you to see how life is always working for you rather than against you.

3. Law of Attraction

They say you attract who you are being.

Therefore, if you’re subconsciously in a place of fear in your body, you’re going to keep attracting people, situations, experiences, places and events, which are equal to those thoughts, feelings and beliefs around fear.

Which means, it’s difficult to enjoy life because subconsciously you’re constantly in a state of alertness that something bad will happen.

How to feel safe? Working with a therapist

As I’ve mentioned before, when you work with a therapist, you are given tools and practices to work with to support you in becoming more and more embodied so you can begin to feel safer and safer within your body over time.

Therefore, it’s these tools, which will also allow you to feel safer within the world you’re living in too.

LEARN MORE: ALL YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT THERAPY ANSWERED (AN ULTIMATE GUIDE)

Tools to support you in feeling safe in your body

1. Meditation

Meditation supports you in feeling safe in your body because it connects you to the earth, which supports you in feeling grounded day in day out.

Therefore, helping you to feel like your body is your home.

SEE: DON’T KNOW WHAT TO TALK ABOUT IN THERAPY? HELP INSIDE.

2. Mindfulness

Meditation, in addition, allows you to feel safe in your body to be able to practice mindfulness throughout the day.

In other words, noticing what you’re believing, thinking and feeling towards the people, places and situations taking place in your life so you can better choose how you’re going to react or not react to them.

3. Shake it off

When you experience a situation in life, which makes you feel scared, a good tactic I learnt to do to get rid of the fear in the body, is literally to do as Taylor Swift says and shake it off.

And I mean really shake it off from your arms to your hands, to the fronts and sides of your body, to your legs and feet.

Granted you will feel silly when you do it, especially if you have to do it whilst your therapist is there.

But it genuinely works.

4. Re-scripting

Another great tool to feel safe in your body when something happens to scare you is to completely reimagine the situation in terms of what you would have said or done differently and what the other person would have said or done differently.

Whilst it sounds silly and perhaps a bit impossible in having any effect on you, it is actually really effective in changing how you feel.

5. Mantras

Your thoughts have power.

Which means that what you say to yourself day in day out impacts how you feel on a day to day basis and what you attract into your life.

Therefore, if you repeat the mantra ‘I am breathing in safety’ or ‘I am safe’ in moments when you feel scared, you’re going to begin to feel safe in those moments, which is important for you to be able to have a clear head to be able to listen to that still small voice inside (i.e your intuition), which is always guiding you to safety.

The benefit of working with a therapist to feel safe in your body

1. The courage to listen to yourself

How many times have you said to yourself you’re going to do something or not do something and you either do it or you don’t do it?

I have done so many times before, kicking myself later.

However, by working with your body using the above tools and sharing the realisations you’re getting from them with your therapist, whilst, receiving validation for them in return, the more confident you’ll feel in listening to yourself and acting on your ideas towards the situations that you’re facing in your life, in the future.

Therefore, making decisions that are right for you.

2. Detachment

Another benefit of using the above tools to feel safer in your body is you’ll learn to become detached from all the people, places, situations and experiences in your life.

LEARN MORE: 9 HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY WAYS TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL BETTER

What does it mean to be detached? and the benefits of detachment

To be detached means to be emotionally independent of any one person, place, situation or experience.

Therefore, allowing you to be able to distance yourself from all the people, places, situations and experiences in your life to be able to see them from a different perspective.

So you can ultimately make the best decisions for yourself and your life.

This, however, doesn’t mean, that you don’t care about the people, places, situations and experiences in your life.

Instead, you care about the people, places, situations and experiences in your life, but not so much that you depend on them for anything and can’t let them go when you need to.

It’s almost like this clinging on for dear life because you’re so afraid of what will happen if you don’t.

An example of the benefits of detachment and feeling safe in your body

An example of detachment, which I absolutely love, love, love is by Rich Dad Poor Dad writer Robert Kiyosaki who talks about how his rich dad’s friend taught him not to get carried away with the feelings that arise with getting a paycheck because then you become dependent on the paycheck.

Which means you struggle to get out of the rat race (See: HOW TO MAKE THE BEST USE OF A JOB CHANGE (AND WHAT STOPS YOU)?).

This, as a result, has led him to become rich himself because having a job to earn an income, was never his main priority.

Instead, what he could learn in a job he was going to work in was what was most important to him so he could eventually become rich himself.

Summary: How to feel safe? (with practical tools included)

So, there you have it, how to feel safe? (with practical tools included).

To feel safe isn’t only to focus on our home, internet and personal safety, although of course, they are really important.

It’s also about feeling safe within our body’s from the inside out and in listening to the information that is being communicated to us about us.

As it’s in doing this, which allows us to feel a sense of safety, happiness, trust and peace within ourselves and our lives.

Learn more

Now over to you

I would love to know what you think about working with a therapist to learn how to feel safer in your body.

So let me know in the comments section at the bottom of this page.

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