A Sense of Safety
In my own inner work, I notice that unraveling the layers and stuff that I’d put on my soul over the years (sheer self-protection) also means to become more finely attuned and aware of the whole construct just mentioned. What kind of layers (such as coping mechanisms) I put on the wounds (split off memories of experiences and emotions) in order to navigate life as such and the relationships I’m in which in their dynamics are marked and often serve as aforementioned coping mechanisms.
The process of healing (as in becoming whole again, gaining inner unity) helps me to see the complexity of our psychological efforts to deal with the overwhelm and stressors of our (early) life. And it also shows me that despite its inherent pain it also carries inherent beauty.
The beauty of the curves and the flow of our life that are anything but linear or compartmentalized despite our mind’s greatest efforts of turning it into such.
The process of regaining inner unity is also marked by gaining greater space between the layers, which allows me to see how one led to the other and how very interconnected my seemingly so different life challenges are.
The greater space allows for stronger emotions to flow. At the moment there is a strong sense of exhaustion and bewilderment as to how I got to where I am. This pausing in bewilderment, despite the hollowness of the feeling, also creates peace and calm. It is this understanding of “that’s what it’s about and I never thought it’d been like that”; a sigh of relief nonetheless at the sight of the truth of things.
For me after a few years of actually realizing it cognitively I now start to explore my deep existential sense of un-safety. Nothing that is triggering it at the moment or has triggered it in my recent past is the cause of this deep-seated fear. That is unconscious memory of an unconscious phase (conception - ~3yrs of age) and it’s a good thing that I haven’t explored it any further at the time I understood in my mind that it existed.
I wouldn’t have had the capacity to hold it. In fact, I wouldn’t have felt safe enough to hold it. And even now it is a slow, progressive investigation to allow the parts within myself that feel so unsafe to reveal themselves.
When I’m in my own processes I wonder how many of us have actually built sandcastles on the quick sand of existential fear like I did. And how many of our toxic behaviors, assumptions, relations, and politics are part of that eventually crumbling construction?
I know for sure the courage, the dedication, the commitment and conviction it takes to stay onto it; to not choose a half-hearted life over going through the pain, panic, well, horror essentially, that lies at the core of such a life.
Which again is why it must be a process.
And then I also know that at the end of the tunnel lies the lightness and freedom that I’ve been (subconsciously) seeking my entire life.
If these words resonate with you, please reach out. I’d love to hear your experience and share with you what helps me staying as sane, connected, and grounded as I can in this so often deeply unsafe world.