Finding Safe People ~ Who Will Support Your Healing Journey

Winter is coming, a time of short days and long nights. This is an opportunity to spend time curled up in a blanket with a cup of hot tea, helping your heart and mind heal. Our healing journey is a mixture of solitude and community interaction. Being alone may feel more comfortable because you have been wounded or betrayed by people.

We can only heal when we are safe. We need to BE safe and FEEL safe. When we do not feel safe, our nervous system will not be calm enough for healing to take place.?

What do you need to be safe?? This is a difficult question for trauma survivors to answer because sometimes we don't know what or who is safe.? Learning to feel safe in our bodies and how to find safe relationships is difficult because the way we think and our perception has been hijacked by the trauma we experienced. ?Feeling safe and learning to trust are essential to our healing.? We don't heal in isolation; we heal in community.

One night, when I was 11 years old, I was home alone, and suddenly, there were sirens and helicopters with flood lights flashing across the yard.? The news announced the East area rapist had struck again, this time a couple of blocks from my house.? They said he was loose in the area and considered dangerous.? The news urged everyone in the area to lock their doors and stay inside.

I immediately made sure all the doors and windows were locked, but I still didn't feel safe.? I hid under my bed.? Remember, I was 11 years old and home alone.? I don't know how long I was under my bed before I heard the garage door open, my mother had come home from her boyfriend's house.? It was unusual for her to come home this late. ? She called out to me after entering the house, I crawled out from under my bed and responded.? When she saw me crawling out from under my bed, she said, "What are you doing under your bed?"? I replied, "I was afraid."? Her response scarred me for decades.? With contempt, she said, "What would he want with you"?? She went on: "Stop being so melodramatic"!

To me, this meant I wasn't even good enough for a rapist and had no value.? The person who was supposed to provide a safe place for me to live undermined and belittled me for trying to care for myself and find a place that felt safe.? This type of abuse creates doubt deep in our minds. We begin to question who is safe. Mother is an adult; she MUST be right.? I must be what she says I am.? This type of faulty thinking is NOT your fault.?

When we are wounded by people we trust to keep us safe, we suffer a betrayal that goes to the core of who we are as a person. These wounds impact us deeply. Neuroscience tells us that this kind of trauma rewires our brains.

We begin to see ourselves as who we are told we are.

We begin to believe we are who we are told we are.

We believe the trusted adult is correct and that we are wrong, unworthy, or not good enough, thus we accept their version of us as accurate. These wounds impact us for long periods and will continue to affect us until they are fully healed. But there is hope of healing. You can learn and accept the absolute truth.

When our concept of self is marred by someone supposed to be a trusted caretaker, the seeds of questioning our value and ability to reason are planted early in our lives. We don't learn to trust ourselves and don't know how to feel safe. As a result, we develop unhealthy behavioral patterns of maladaptive behaviors to cope with the internal pain and confusion.??

So, as an adult, how do you learn what safety is or who a safe person is?? Here are three indicators you can look for in finding your safe people.

1. Listen for affirmation. This will feel uncomfortable at first because it is strange and new. A safe person will believe you, validate your feelings, and not shame you for maladaptive behaviors or things that you did before you started your healing journey.
2. A safe person doesn't make it all about them.? A safe person will listen and share in equal measure.? When you are processing and feeling things deeply, they will listen and affirm your feelings.? They will not interrupt and turn the conversation to themselves.
3. A safe person will not repeat anything you share with them.? They will keep what you share confidential.?

Again, we do not heal in isolation, we heal in community.? As you learn to trust yourself and trust your ability to discern who is safe and who is not, you will know who to invite into your healing space and who not to invite.?

A broken bone or cut does not heal overnight; it is a process.? As is your mental and emotional healing from trauma.? Trauma healing is a process, a journey that you will be on for the rest of your life.? Be patient with yourself, and start telling yourself some truths: you are valuable, worthy, and lovable. You can heal. I believe in you.

Much Love,

Kelli