Rebuilding Your Life Starts with Safety
You cannot build a peaceful life on a nervous system that still believes it's surviving.
For years, I thought what I needed was more discipline. For years, I thought what I needed was a better diet to fix my health, more self-improvement because I believed I was the problem, or a different job because surely that would make life feel better. I kept trying to fix my life, but wasn’t seeing significant improvement.
But no strict diet, deep dive into religion, or self-help book could solve the real problem.
My body didn't feel safe. And it especially didn’t feel safe in my marriage or within other relationships.
Feeling safe is such a key component in creating a happier, healthier, and more peaceful life. We’ll begin to explore some areas today in our lives that need to be addressed to make that happen, and we’ll do a deeper dive in future blog posts.
Safety is the foundation. For those of us who are in or have been in abusive environments, so much of our life has never felt truly safe. And even if we might have been physically safe, that doesn’t mean that we were emotionally safe.
The lack of safety in my own life showed up in my actions - trying to clench and control as many things in my life as I could, making decisions in rushed manners, keeping a full schedule of activities because I felt the constant pressure to “do more” and “be more” because I wasn’t “good enough” without jumping through hoops and proving my worth.
The lack of safety showed up in my body - through anxiety, insomnia, emotional rollercoasters, mental distress, exhaustion.
A few weeks before I asked for a divorce, my body told me what my mind had been struggling to admit. My ex had left for the three-day holiday weekend to go see his mother. It was just going to be me and my dogs for two and a half days.
As soon as he left, my body took a massive exhale.
I had a lovely quiet, calm, and relaxing weekend to myself at home. But as soon as Monday hit and he was on the five hour route home, my body immediately started tensing up. Anxiety flared. Irritation was bubbling up. And he got onto me for not giving him a warm welcome home. I knew without a doubt at that point that I had to get out of my marriage.
It would be over nine months after that weekend before I began to feel that calmness again, once the divorce was over and I moved out of state. And many additional traumas happened during those nine months. Betrayals. Nasty words. Threats. While my move set me free, I was also in a lot of shock. One of my dogs was diagnosed with cancer and passed away during that time.
After the move, my constant question to myself was “what do I need right now, and what do I need right now to feel safe?”. I was in a brand new city that I didn’t know and where I didn’t know anyone. My rental became my healing cocooon. I set boundaries with people and ended relationships that were not healthy and safe to me. I grieved. Hard. Anger, rage, sadness. And I focused on what I needed next.
For me, and since I had a financial cushion to allow me some time to figure things out, that looked like slowly learning my way around town. Buying healthy groceries and nourishing my body. Getting out and walking regularly with my dog. Getting the furniture and other household items I needed to get settled into my house. And feeling my emotions, at times taking long drives in the country just to grieve and decompress.
My trust was also deeply shaken and broken after everything I had been through. My ex wanted to explain the divorce away as to being because of my health and my issues. Some family members said nothing to me during all my pain. My brain was latching onto and even believing at times all the gaslighting and emotional abuse I had experienced before and during the divorce.
The process to heal from all that was far from an overnight process to me. There were times when I broke down in tears in front of new people I had just met. But slowly, I began to cultivate a community of friends that I could trust, regained self-confidence and hope for my future, and the trauma began to lift.
Healing didn't begin because life suddenly became easy. It began because, for the first time in a long time, my body believed it was finally safe.
If you’re in the rebuilding phase of your life after trauma, there are several areas to look at:
Safety in your home
Safety with the people you are around
Safety with expressing your emotions
Safety in your routines
It’s not always possible to reset everything at once and overnight, especially in high-conflict divorce cases or other situations of abuse. But each and every little step into the direction of more safety matters and can make a difference.
Safety in your home might look like eliminating clutter so there’s less to keep up with, cultivating it to feel like a sanctuary, and not allowing the people who have hurt you to enter it.
Safety with the people you are around might look like ending relationships, setting boundaries, speaking your truth in places where you’ve stayed silent in the past.
Safety with expressing your emotions looks like not bottling them up or numbing them, without judgement - finding outlets to express them to yourself and people who are safe for you, and if needed finding a therapist or counselor to help you through that process when it is too overwhelming.
Safety in your routines looks like giving your nervous system predictable patterns each day that give it calmness and consistency - this might look like a daily walk, cooking a nourishing meal, adding in supplements that support your nervous system, having a regular bedtime and sleep routine.
We will go into some of these areas in future blog posts, but begin contemplating what you need to do to create more safety in your own life. Until then, sit with these questions. You don't have to answer all of these today. Simply notice which question makes your heart pause.
Where in my life do I already feel safe?
Where do I still feel like I'm surviving?
What is one small change that would help my body exhale this week?
What would a safe home feel like?
What would a safe friendship feel like?
What would a safe schedule feel like?
You don't have to rebuild your entire life this week. You don't have to have every answer. You don't have to rush your healing.
Start with one small act of safety. One boundary. One nourishing meal. One peaceful evening. One honest conversation. One deep breath.
Because rebuilding your life doesn't begin when you become stronger.
It begins when your body finally believes it's safe enough to exhale.💚