Securing a Sense of Safety when Stuck in Stress: What do you need to feel safe right now?

What do you need to feel safe right now?

A simple question that can have a profound impact.

Have you felt the shift?

The world has shifted in a significant way, and it is seriously impacting everything.

Whether you agree with the direction or not, it is undeniable that the changes taking place will forever alter our futures for better or worse. 

Amidst such turbulent and trying times as humans we tend to revert back to our survival states.

Our primal need for self-preservation, that lives in our gut intelligence, surfaces with strategies to suppress and suspend actions that might put us at risk. 

Our need for survival supersedes all our intellect and emotion to protect us as a species.

Our guts are the first neural connections to form when we are conceived in the womb. They start assimilating and processing the world long before our head brain even exists let alone can make sense of it.

This first intelligence is incredibly effective and efficient at detecting risk and shifting our actions (or in action) in response. If you spread them all out, they are as big as a tennis court. Imagine all the information and data your gut intelligence is processing every day all day automatically and totally unconsciously.

Survival Response

When our gut intelligence senses our safety or self-preservation is at risk, it triggers our autonomic nervous system to go into a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn state. (And maybe multiple different states on different days or situations).

Which state it selects is determined by our past patterns and experiences. They shape our safety response based on what has worked best in our past at protecting us.

Fight Response

If our fight response is triggered, we start looking for ways to fight back, resist, and overcome the risk that has arisen in front of us.

• You might be feeling angry, aggressive, and more assertive than usual.
• You might feel compelled to take action, to fight or argue with those who express messages with which you disagree.
• You might be motivated to protest, challenge authority, pursue litigation, refuse to comply, or even be physically resistant.

Flight Response

If our flight response is triggered, we start looking for ways to run away, to hide, and move away from the risk that has arisen in front of us.

• You might be exploring how to leave your location (physically or mentally), where you can hide if things get worse, or avoid those with differing points of view altogether.
• You might be trying to avoid interaction with the government, disengaging from public life, changing your behaviors to stay under the radar or even leaving your home.

Freeze Response

If our freeze response is triggered, we start looking for ways to numb, shut down, disconnect, and disassociate from the risk that has arisen in front of us.

• You might be feeling frozen, unable to take action, and unsure what to do other than to disconnect and disappear.
• You may be numbing yourself with substances, food, shopping, or other addictions.
• You may find yourself procrastinating, avoiding information, and withdrawing socially.

Fawn Response

If our fawn response is triggered, we start looking for how to fix it by people pleasing to reduce the risk that has arisen in front of us. 

• You might be trying to appease and please in order to avoid blame or shame.
• You might engage in compliance and conformity by trying to abide by all the rules, censor yourself, agree with authority figures, and avoid activism.
• You might try to seek favor from those in power or undermine those who might stand against.
• You may allow yourself to prioritize survival over even your integrity and values.
• All of this leads to emotional exhaustion, loss of identity, and erosion of trust.

Why is this a problem?

“Our systems are triggering traumas and stress that shift our bodies into states of survival.”

But the situations triggering trauma and stress are not immediately life threatening. We aren’t literally at war or running away from a predator.

Instead, the threats are more nuanced and subtle than an overt threat to our safety. They are the threats of what could be rather than what is in the present moment. 

Despite the delay, our reaction to the risk is the same.

Once these survival states have been triggered and our bodies are in survival, we are cut off from many of our neural connections. Rather than making conscious, coherent and wise decisions, we are operating from this state of survival. 

When we are trying to survive, we aren’t considering whether we are thriving.

Which means… we aren’t truly being the best humans we can be.

Our survival states serve an important purpose, but if we get stuck in them it will cause us to act and make decisions unwisely.

“While fighting back against wrongdoing, immoral, and unethical behavior is entirely appropriate – we must make sure we do it in the wisest way possible.”

Rather than do so from a place of anger and stuck in our survival response. We want to bring all our brains back online so that we can confirm our actions and decisions are the right thing to do.

What can we do right now with so many people being impacted?

How do we help ourselves?

First and foremost, it’s important to know when our nervous system is dysregulated. How can you identify if your nervous system is in balance?

• You can monitor your heart rate variability to identify when your system is in a stressed state. 
• You can take a free quiz that will give you your current state and what steps to take. 

Second, we need to know how to regulate our nervous system to bring it back into balance and out of survival (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn). It’s critical that we do so before we make any major decisions or react to others who might trigger us to react in a way that would be unproductive and unhelpful to our primary purpose.

How to regulate your nervous system:

• Option One: Free & Easy – Balanced Breathing – even breaths in and out for six seconds each for 2.5 minutes to bring your system into balance.
•  Option Two: NeuroFit – Somatic Practices – utilize an app like this one to identify your current state and the best practice to shift your nervous system into a more ideal state. You can get this app here: NeuroFit

Finally, once in a balanced and regulated state, we can connect with our multiple intelligences and bring them into their highest functioning state.

“When our head brain is at its best it’s creative, when our heart brain is at its best its compassionate, when our gut brain is at its best its courageous.”

Ask yourself: What is the most compassionate, creative, and courageous decision or action for me to take right now?

How do we help others?

(1) Recognize & Acknowledge

First, it’s important to recognize and acknowledge that many people are stuck in survival right now. Leaders in particular must be conscious and considerate of those who are impacted directly.

When we try to move on as if nothing has changed those who feel the weight the most, are left to carry it alone. As a result, they will remain stuck in survival negatively impacting their performance, lives, interactions, and results.

It’s not hard to acknowledge that people are struggling and recognize the impact of the current climate on people’s lives. To simply state that you see and hear them and will do your best to be supportive and respectful.

(2) Witness with Compassion

Even better, we acknowledge those who are struggling and meet them with compassion. When we do this, we can help to support them to shift out of survival.

As I coached people this week it became apparent the impact that people are experiencing – positive and negative. While people are afraid and triggered, they are also experiencing connection and support from like-minded individuals.

“When we are witnessed in our struggle and met with compassion it allows us to process our experience and move it through our bodies.”

Rather than leaving that stress stuck in the body, we are able to move it through us.

It's important to call out “witnessed AND met with compassion” because compassion is not sympathy or empathy.

Compassion is empathy in action. It means that the individual who is witnessing us is actively engaging in expressing empathy for our situation and holding space for us to process and release it.

You can’t fake compassion. You either are doing it effectively or you aren’t – there is no in-between. Not everyone has the skillset or the capacity to be able to offer this effectively.

People need this witnessing with compassion now more than ever before. The more who can develop the capability and capacity to offer it the better!

(3) Identify Needs

If you can’t offer compassionate witnessing, then maybe you could consider asking “what do you need to feel safe right now.” Our gut intelligence will have wisdom for us of what we most need to do to feel safe enough to take action or make wise decisions.

Consider Asking:

• “What do you need to feel safe at work right now?”
•  “What do you need to feel safe at home right now?”
• “What do you need to feel safe in this relationship?”
• “What do you need to feel safe to speak freely?”
• “What do you need to feel safe to show up as yourself?”
• “What do you need to feel safe…”

Reflection

Here’s what I want you to do for yourself right now (especially if you are struggling):

• Put your hand on your belly (gut brain) and ask: What do I deeply need to feel safe right now?
• Notice what comes up – do you feel sensations, burp, gurgling, does your throat get scratchy, do you choke up, what image do you see, what color, sound, or taste do you notice?
• You might be surprised by the wisdom your gut has to offer you right now!

Once you’ve done this for yourself it’ll be easier to then ask the question of others. To offer them the same supportive question that demonstrates your compassion.

Conclusion

In the current climate of chaos and conflict we can begin to feel confused as to what is truly happening, how serious it really is, and what it means to us specifically. 

While we can’t know the future or have all the answers for what to do to make it better, we can access our inner wisdom to guide us.

Here is my question to you my dear reader:

• What do you need to feel safe right now?
• What can I do to help you to feel safe right now?

No matter how small or inconsequential it may seem, I am willing to take action if it means helping someone else feel a little safer in an otherwise very scary world.

I choose to be the shelter in the storm.

I choose to be compassion in the face of cruelty.

I choose to be acting rather than reacting.

I choose to be creative in the face of crazy challenges.

I choose to be thriving rather than just surviving.

I choose to be courageous in the face of chaos.

I choose to be the light in the night.

I choose to be me, no matter what you may think, 

because the true me is exactly who I want to be.

Who will you choose to be?