So welcome everyone.
And thank you.
Thank you for listening.
And thank you for being here.
Now you can listen to this however suits you.
There is nothing you need.
To get right.
Now,
I want to talk about safety.
And it's a word we hear everywhere at the moment.
Nervous system safety,
Relational safety,
Safe spaces,
Safe containers,
Holding the field.
And a lot of that language points at something real.
But I think somewhere along the way.
The word has become a little heavy now.
It has started to sound like a qualification.
Or a place we are supposed to have arrived by now.
Let's set all of that down for a while.
And ask a much simpler question.
But what is safety?
Not the idea of it,
The feel of it.
Underneath everything you do in a day.
Your body is asking a quiet question,
Over and over,
And there are no words.
Is it okay here?
Is it okay with this person?
Is it okay to let my shoulders drop?
And it asks when you walk into a room.
When a message arrives and also when someone's voice changes tone.
So mostly you never hear the question,
You just feel the answer.
When the answer is yes.
Something widens.
The bread finds a little more room at the bottom.
The belly doesn't need to hold itself in.
And the jaw can hang a fraction looser.
The eye stops searching and start resting on things.
You begin to notice the edges of a room.
The light on a wall.
And sounds far away The body is no longer bracing for the next moment.
So it can actually be in this one.
And safety often shows up in small,
Ordinary ways.
A yawn.
Curiosity laughing at something silly.
Maybe being able to hear what someone is actually saying instead of what you're afraid they would say.
So you might take a moment if you like.
To see whether any of this is here right now.
Not to create it,
Just to see.
Perhaps it's here in one small place.
Maybe warmth in the hands.
Is there warmth in your hands?
Maybe the weight of the body held by whatever is underneath it.
Or the simple fact of your breath arriving on its own.
And if not much of it is here right now that's alright too because we are not measuring anything Now let's go to the other side.
Is it okay here?
And the answer is no.
When the body's answer is no,
Things narrow.
The breath goes up into the chest and stays there.
The stomach tightens or drops.
The ears tune in to one voice,
One door,
One footstep.
We start rehearsing sentences before they are needed.
Scanning the face for the change we think is coming.
Some of us go loud.
Some of us go very quiet.
And some of us simply leave while the body stays sitting there.
And clinicians would call it dissociation.
So none of this is a malfunction.
This is a body doing what bodies were built to do.
Something in you has noticed a threat.
It believes the threat and it has put every resource it has into keeping you safe.
Such an intelligent system.
And here's where I think something has gone a little sideways in how we talk about all of this.
We have all learnt now that feeling unsafe is bad.
And here's another buzzword,
Regulated,
That a regulated person should become.
So when the unsafe feeling rises with a certain person in a certain place or at a family gathering or in an office maybe even to the room of people sometimes who are perfectly kind.
We all treat it as a problem to get rid of.
We breathe at it.
We reason with it.
If we tell it,
There's nothing to be afraid of.
And sometimes we tell it,
This should all be over by now.
And the more we fight it,
The harder it holds on.
Because think about it from the point of view of that part which is believing the evidence.
It has a job.
And it believes something important is at stake.
And the very person it's trying to protect.
Keep telling it to stand down.
What would you do in this position?
If I were you,
I'd shout louder.
And I'd hold on tighter.
So,
I would like to offer you a different possibility.
Something very simple.
What if the part of you that doesn't feel safe has a reason?
I am not saying it's a logical reason,
But it has a reason.
Not necessarily a reason that makes sense to your adult thinking conscious mind.
Not always the reason about your present or today.
But there is a reason.
Sometimes the reason is right here in the present.
The body has just picked up something that the mind hasn't admitted yet.
A tone,
A pattern,
Or a person who says all the right things while something underneath doesn't quite add up.
In those moments,
The feeling is information.
And it's worth listening to.
Because it may be asking for distance,
For a boundary,
For a shorter visit,
Or for the door to be left open.
Sometimes the reason is older.
The situation that you are in today.
It rhymes with a situation from long ago.
And the body responds to the rhyme.
Somebody raising their voice at you.
A raised voice reminds you of another time when a voice was raised and there were no resources to deal with that.
Or maybe it's a particular kind of silence.
The feeling of being handed responsibility too early.
So your body remembers what it was like to be small in that.
And it's still faithfully standing guard all these years.
After the danger has passed.
Sometimes it's older still.
Some of us carry a watchfulness that didn't even begin with us.
A grandmother who learned to keep one eye on the door.
A family that learned generations back that it was never wise to be too visible.
So we can inherit the watching.
Without ever inheriting the story?
And I'm saying this because you don't have to work out where it's coming from.
Your conscious mind can point you in the direction of where it may have started.
But there may be more to it.
And you don't need that.
Not today,
Maybe not ever.
It's enough to begin from this understanding that this part of me has a reason to feel unsafe.
That's enough.
Tudors Day.
There are rooms I walk into where my shoulders rise,
Before I've even said hello.
And for a long time,
I treated this as proof that I had not done enough work on myself.
A few years and thousands of euros,
If not more,
On therapy and courses later.
I tend to meet it with something closer to respect.
There you are.
And you've been doing this for a long time.
And it's strange.
But when I stop arguing with it.
It really needs to shout.
So with this understanding Let's try something together,
Very gently.
And at your own pace.
And you are welcome to keep your eyes open for this.
Whatever helps you feel safe.
Let your eyes now wander around the space that you're in.
Slowly.
Wherever you are.
No need to look for anything in particular.
Just let them land where they tend to land.
I am not asking you to count your breaths.
Simple.
Just my eyes wandering around the space.
And they land where they land.
Maybe a corner,
Maybe a color.
Maybe a door,
Maybe a window.
Maybe a windscreen,
I don't know.
Let your eyes find it.
Now let's do this very slowly Let your head turn a little the way an animal checks the edges of clearing.
Go left.
Then go right.
And this is one of the oldest ways a body finds out where it is.
By looking.
Just look.
Now.
Just bring to mind a situation.
That sometimes doesn't feel safe to you.
Nothing too overwhelming.
If there was a scale from 1 to 10 choose something which is a 2 or a 3 Maybe a particular colleague.
Maybe a phone call you tend to put off.
Or maybe a particular kind of gathering.
And you don't need to go into the situation.
We are standing outside at the threshold.
Just bring it to your awareness.
The door is there.
And you haven't gone through.
Somewhere near the door.
Notice there is a guard We can call this the part.
This is the part of you that says,
Not this,
Not yet.
Just be careful.
And you might sense this part as a tightness somewhere.
Heat pulling back.
If you're visual,
You might picture it.
It might be young for some of you.
And for some of you it might not look like anything at all.
However it shows up is fine.
This is me feeling,
Seeing,
Sensing.
The part of me which feels unsafe in certain situations with certain people,
It has a reason,
I don't know the reason and I don't need to know the reason.
I can just see that part.
Now silently or out loud,
Let's acknowledge this part.
I see you.
I see you.
I see you.
Just notice what happens.
When we see it rather than arguing with it.
Perhaps nothing.
Or maybe your feeling.
Something.
Feeling what you feel.
Noticing what you notice.
If it feels okay for you.
You could ask it one question.
And this is not interrogation of the part It's more like you're asking somebody who's been standing out in the cold for a long time.
With compassion.
We don't need an answer.
We don't need an image.
We'll ask anyways.
What made you take up this post?
What made you take up this post?
Whatever comes,
Let it arrive A thought,
A feeling,
An emotion,
A sensation,
Or nothing.
Let's be present with it for a few more seconds.
Now whatever has arrived or not arrived for you We are not going to dismiss the guard.
And we are not telling it the danger is over.
It may know of things you've forgotten.
Instead.
Imagine offering it a chair now.
It can stay right here by the door.
It can come up every time you're in that situation.
It doesn't have to leave the post.
It can keep watching.
But it doesn't have to stand rigid anymore.
It's allowed to sit down.
Now feel free to change the words You can stay.
You can keep watching.
And you don't have to do it alone anymore.
I'm here too.
You can stay.
You can keep watching.
You don't have to do it alone anymore.
I'm here too.
For the next minute,
I just want you to notice anything in the body.
The breath,
The hands,
The feeling,
The tightness.
Has anything moved even a little?
A small drop in the shoulders.
Or perhaps it is all just the same.
That you are simply a bit more aware of the card.
Few more seconds.
And now let the doorway fade.
Come back to the room,
The chair.
Lets find the window,
The door,
The corner,
The color again.
Exactly how we started.
So you let your head turn a little left.
And write.
You are here now in this room,
In this space,
In this car,
Wherever you are.
So what we just did might look very small because it is small But I think it points at something that changes a great deal over time.
Most of us have been taught that safety is a state something you either have or you don't Something to reach like a destination and then hold on to it.
So every time the unsafe feeling returns,
It feels like failure,
Like being sent back to the start.
I am saying,
What if safety is less of a state and more of a relationship?
Not the absence of the part that's afraid,
But the presence of someone who stays with it.
When the body learns that you won't abandon it every time it gets scared,
Something begins to shift.
It doesn't happen overnight.
It doesn't happen on a retreat.
Not because you've fixed anything.
But because the guard is no longer alone at its post.
And a guard that isn't alone.
Doesn't need to be quite so fierce.
This is how it tends to soften one breath at a time,
One day at a time,
Brick by brick.
Never by being overpowered.
But by being accompanied.
In practice,
This can look very ordinary You're sitting across from someone and the familiar tightness arrives.
But with time,
Instead of pushing it down,
You just let yourself feel your feet on the floor.
You notice where the door is.
Or you say to yourself inside,
There you are.
That's the guard.
That's the one in me that has a reason to feel unsafe.
I know.
You might speak a little less than usual.
You might leave a little earlier.
You might decide you don't need to be fully open with this person.
And that's allowed.
Sometimes it is the healing.
You may also find that some places and some people will probably never feel safe and they don't need to.
Not every door needs to be walked through.
Part of growing up on the inside is letting the God tell you something true and believing it for a while.
And there is a phrase I find kinder than safe.
Safe enough.
Safe enough.
I am safe enough to stay in this room for now.
I am safe enough to take the next breath.
I am safe enough to feel what's here without drowning in it.
And safe enough is something the body can actually find.
Right now.
Because safe enough doesn't ask for perfect conditions It doesn't ask for a nervous system reset It doesn't ask for an expensive retreat It only asks you to keep company with what's already here.
Just for now.
Rest here and take a few more breaths.
The guard nearby sitting or standing.
Whichever it chooses Nothing needs to be solved.
You might simply notice what it's like now to feel safe enough.
As long as you need.
Take your time coming back.
And whenever the guard shows up again.
Today,
Tomorrow,
Next year.
You will know what to say.
There you are.
I know.
And you can stay.
So thank you very much for joining me and namaste.
