Could You Explain "Feeling Safe" to a Trauma Survivor?

Safe means protected from harm, danger, or risk. It is an adjective referring to the feeling we have when we are Safe.

Source: Merriam-Webster

Safe is a word that we use every day, and in my opinion, it is over-used and has lost its true meaning. It’s thrown out there at random and assume everyone knows what it is. Safe this and Safe that.

What does Safe feel like to a person?

Sure, we have laws about Safety, which are about how to manage situations and equipment in the safest possible ways.

Being Safe is on everybody’s lips these days.

How many people know what the word Safe means to an individual who has lived through Trauma and Abuse?

Could you explain it to them?

Where do you start?

Imagine if you come across a woman who’s lived with domestic violence for years and been beaten every single day by her husband. 

How would you describe feeling Safe to her?

Imagine if you are helping a war veteran coming back from the war zone and a car backfire outside the window. 

How do you explain to him / her that they are Safe now?

Imagine if you are helping a refugee family who have arrived from a natural disaster-torn country, but don’t speak English. 

How do you explain Safe to them?

Imagine if you discovered a child who’s been sexually abused and you are tasked with convincing them to come with you. 

How do you tell the child that they are Safe with you?

These are real scenarios that happen every single day. People are rescued from a traumatic situation or an abusive home.

What Happens Next is Just as Important as the Rescue

An individual who has been through trauma is going to feel something for a long time after their situation has ended and feeling Safe is the most important of all.

A child who is not feeling Safe, will not be able to do anything or learn anything new because they are frightened.

A grown up who jumps at every single sound isn’t going to take in anything in their surroundings until they feel Safe.

These trauma / abuse individuals are still living in a survival status.

The five automatic survival reactions; Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flop, are what your nervous system uses when it senses danger, or severe stress.

These survival instincts don’t just go away by themselves.

You can’t say to a war veteran that now they are home and it’s a Tuesday morning, therefore you must snap out of it and feel Safe.

You can’t say to the abused girl, that now that her abuser is in jail, she is Safe.

You can’t say to the family who were trapped under a concrete structure for days without food and water that now they’re rescued, they are Safe.

It doesn’t work like that!

Trauma lives inside the body for a long time after the horrific events stopped happening. Trauma doesn’t care where you are or who you’re with.

If you have suffered from Trauma, you will feel UNSAFE.

You will have heard people talk about the fight / flight instincts. Some survivors can be living like this without even knowing it because they’ve learned to adapt to a society without having to feel anything.

Feeling Safe is paramount to our existence. It trumps everything else. Sure you can go through live and not feel anything. I’ve been there and it’s not a way to live.

Learning to feel Safe again or for the first time, takes a while. For some it can take decades to learn how to feel Safe, not just in your body but in your mind too.

Feeling Safe Starts in the Body

Most of us don’t even notice that we are feeling Safe. We go through life without being in danger, and nothing bad happens to us.

We must be feeling Safe, right?

We take our normal days for granted and that is why it’s so hard to understand what someone who’s lived through a Traumatic event feels inside their mind and body.

How can we know if we don’t communicate with them?

Well, not everybody feels Safe. In fact, many people don’t feel safe in our world right now. There simply is too much trauma happening everywhere. 

Trauma lives not just in other countries, but in our cities, towns and neighborhoods. Most importantly, trauma stays in the body for a long time and it has to be reprogrammed to feel again. 

For some people, our bodies haven’t got the message of what feeling Safe is like even after years of a traumatic event has ended. Heck, you might not even remember it at all!

You might be having a totally normal day, but you feel restless. You feel on edge, and unable to switch off if you are at home or focus on your work in the office.

Feeling Safe starts from within our bodies, and it can be taught to someone who has never experienced it.

This is how you explain feeling Safe to someone who doesn’t know it.

Feeling Safe is taking a full breath without thinking about it, and the next one, and the next. Feeling the fresh air going into and out of your body feels good, am I right?

A Trauma survivor may not be aware of their breathing at all. They might be hyperventilating or breathing shallow breaths so as not to scare their abuser or this who imprisoned them.

Feeling Safe is not rehearsing your next conversation but allowing yourself to speak your own voice without fear.

A Trauma survivor will have learned that their voice doesn’t matter. They are used to being talked over and ignored. Teaching them to find their voice and using it to ask for simple things is a great start until they learn how to communicate their feelings.

Do you feel hot / cold / tired?

Do you need the bathroom?

Are you thirsty / hungry / scared?

Sit with the survivor and get to know them. Find out what they need and what they want in that moment. Presence and listening are vital here, especially if they’ve just been rescued from their situation.

Feeling Safe is being able to sit in silence without needing to fill it with noise and activity.

Learning how to feel Safe in their own body, and that’s it’s okay to not be active all the time.

Feeling Safe is knowing you don’t have to be “on” all the time, and that you are allowed to relax.

Teach them how to relax their bodies and mind. A simple mindfulness activity can be a useful step in learning how to switch it off.

Feeling Safe is letting the stress melt away from your body by letting your shoulders drop with the tension in your neck.

Allow the survivor to notice the tension in their bodies and understand how they can communicate this and how to relax their muscles. This is not an easy one because Trauma tends to live in the tensions in your neck and shoulders or stomach.

When a trauma survivor slows down enough to notice what’s happening within the body, they will begin to understand themselves a little differently.

I’m not telling you how someone should feel, or to fix what’s difficult. Just to be in that moment.

Slow down to sync your mind and body so that they’re on the same page when life gets hard.

Pause.

Breathe.

Relax.

Allow yourself a place and time to listen.

My name is Lizzy. I’m a trauma survivor, a wife, a mom, a teacher, and an author.

If you like reading my posts, then please follow me.

For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

Support your fellow writer:

https://ko-fi.com/elizabe69245484

How to Explain Complex PTSD to Loved Ones

https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-explain-complex-ptsd-to-loved-ones-769f81d437ab

The Restoring Ability of Nature

https://medium.com/illumination/the-restoring-ability-of-nature-aaafc469f13f

Smiling is Fantastic…

https://medium.com/p/1c7b1f9ee1a9

The 1% Ripple Effect

https://medium.com/illumination/the-1-ripple-effect-53de586655f6

Mental Health Matters

https://medium.com/illumination/mental-health-matters-0d145057cf5d

What Do You Overcome Every Day?

https://medium.com/illumination/what-do-you-overcome-every-day-25fd8f06d362

What is Your Inspiration?

https://medium.com/activated-thinker/what-is-your-inspiration-14bb2fdc57db