Safety is a big deal. A very big deal.
Emotional safety, as well as physical safety. It is a lack of feeling emotionally safe that lies at the heart of most relationship distress today.
But it doesn’t feel like that, usually. It might be that you are actually physically unsafe with your partner, or together you cannot get your physical needs met. For most us though, when we are having trouble with our relationships, it feels like sadness, or frustration, or lack or respect, different value systems, too few things in common, poor communication, or too much time apart. Lots of things, but generally not safety – I don’t really think you are going to hurt me.
So how can safety be the issue?
We have come through an evolutionary process that favored people who were not alone. If you were alone, your chances of surviving and mating were very much reduced. Therefore, we have developed a lot of need for, and skills relating to, working with and managing others. And knowing how to read the emotion in their responses to know if we can believe them. We can still be so traumatized by being excluded that we kill ourselves rather than live life expecting to always feel unsafe. Or kill others we feel are responsible for excluding us.
The need for emotional safety is instinctive. To the extent that a new born baby knows if you are smiling at them and paying attention to them, or not. These are our instincts before we are taught any other social-cultural skills. Our facial expressions that show others what is going on emotionally within us, are universal across all peoples, from the most civilized to the most primitive. Including our prehuman ancestors, the great apes.
And how many situations have people lived through where they were actually very unsafe physically – like war, but were actually okay with their physical risk as long as they felt they were in it with others they felt connected to. Even if those others weren’t present. In tough situations, it is especially clear how important emotional safety is.
It helps to think of our distress in terms of safety, emotional safety. Feeling afraid and alone are very basic and very strong instincts. When we are lied to, when we can’t make our feelings known, or don’t feel they are accepted, then we start to feel a bit scared – not safe. We might also feel mad or sad, but these are ways to deal with being uncertain and unsafe. So trying to curb anger without addressing the feeling of emotional insecurity is just an attempt to change behavior without addressing the motivation. Hard to do.
If we can be helped to feel safer emotionally, we can relax more and enjoy life more.
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