Safety or Stress? Part Three in a Series
This is the third article in a series on living with less stress and creating the lasting change you want for your life. The first article explained Denial, the second Recognition. Those articles can be found below. This article deals with Sanctuary.
Once we are firmly grounded in Recognition, the awareness that something in our lives is not working or we want to change something in our lives, the next step to creating lasting change is creating safety. Safety is the cornerstone of creating deep and lasting change in our lives.
Again, the recognition step is just admitting there is something in your life that you want to be different. It maybe a relationship, your financial situation, your health, your stress level, or a thousand other things in your life that no longer work for you. Once we have this recognition the next step is to create safety.
In our culture, once we acknowledge that we have something to be different in our lives we are usually given advice. There are plenty of sources for advice on how to proceed or what actions to take to remedy the situation. This advice can come from friends, colleagues, or family. It often comes from some internet site, or blog post (like this one), or a book, or a seminar or workshop.
A lot of this advice may even be good advice. Unfortunately, if the advice worked we would all be enlightened and probably not reading this article.
And advice, particularly good advice, often becomes just another reason to beat ourselves up. The more we know on how we “should” be the more ammunition we have to beat ourselves up. Or, often, we get it for a couple of months and then revert to old patterns. Then we beat ourselves up. The truth is with all this good advice we now know what we should do but our underlying feelings, our emotions, don't let us.
What is missing is safety, or what I call Sanctuary. Sanctuary is important because it enables deep healing to take place. Sanctuary is a safe environment that is non-judgmental, supportive, without advice, confidential. It maybe time with your best friend, home, a special place at the top of a mountain or on a lake. Sanctuary can be anyplace you feel safe.
The reason that safety/Sanctuary is critical to transformation is that is sets us up for the next step in the transformative process, Awareness. Awareness of the deeper level of feelings and behavior patterns that keep us from making the changes we want in our lives and making those changes stick.
Sanctuary allows a deep awareness which is what allows all the good advice you've received to create lasting, positive change in your life.
When we feel unsafe we get tense, we are primed for fight or flight. Just think of a time when you have not felt safe and someone comes at you with an opinion or advice, how do you respond? Usually, we are either defensive, explaining or defending our position, or we come back at the person, turn it back on them, show them what is wrong with them or their thinking.
When we feel safe our physiology changes, we relax, our heart rate slows down. Studies have shown that our peripheral vision literally broadens, we can see more, take in more. When I am safe I tend to share more, to be more open, not just to others, to myself. When we feel safe we literally become more aware of ourselves, our intentions, our feelings, our wants, of solutions, we care more and allow ourselves to be cared for.
The other role that safety plays in transformation is to create an environment that supports change. All animals find safety for major change. Where does your cat give birth? Under the porch or in the closet, somewhere she feels safe. Caterpillars create a chrysalis when they undergo their major transformation into butterflies. It is true for us as well some traditions use the sweat lodge, or vision quest, there are sanctuaries for prayer and connection to spirit, retreats and cabins in the woods, Thoreau had Walden.
So the safer we can make an environment, either for ourselves or for others the more we can become aware of. Awareness is the key to healing, as I will explain in a following blog.
In Inquiry Method, our commitment is to Sanctuary....our brand of safety. To facilitate growth and transformation our Sanctuary includes: no judgment, no criticism, no confrontation, no gossip, anything that is shared is confidential, we are looking for the uniqueness in each individual not conformity, we promise not to rescue because we see that each person has what they need, we are looking to blow wind in each others sails, we are not looking for perfection just goodwill, it is a safe place to disagree, we want to create such a safe place that each person can get what they need, it is a safe place to share anything, say anything, feel anything.
How many places have you truly experienced that? This level of safety, once experienced with other people, creates a deep feeling of connection and community.
So, as you go through your day today I invite you to pay attention to when you feel safe and when you don’t. Pay attention to when you feel relaxed and when your fight or flight mechanism is aroused.
Step 1: Denial
Step 2: Recognition