Learning what safety feels like.

For most of my life I thought my greatest struggle was surviving what had happened to me, I was wrong, survival was something I learned early in my childhood. learning how to feel safe was something I had to learn much later. I grew up surrounded by domestic violence, alcohol, fear, and sexual abuse.

The violence did not begin when I was old enough to understand what was happening, in many ways it began before I was even born, my mother endured domestic violence while she was expecting me and I have spent a long time wondering how much of that fear and violence shaped the nervous system I entered the world with.

I cannot change what happened before I was born, I also can't change what happened during my childhood, but I can begin to understand the child who lived through it and most importantly I can begin to understand the adult that child became.

 I have spent most of my life pushing people away, I never really understood why I could desperately want love and connection only to become terrified when someone got close enough to give it to me. I thought something was wrong with me, never understanding that there was something's wrong with me, I was surviving my life. I learned incredibly early in life that the people who were supposed to love and protect me could also be the people who hurt me the most, I carried those lessons into adulthood, I was not aware that I was carrying it. I became exceptionally good at pushing people away. Spent much of my life in and out of therapy trying to understand why I couldn't feel safe. I didn't know I had CPTSD I didn't understand why closeness could feel like danger why trust made me panic, why I would reach for someone one minute and want to run the next.

I found a male therapist and began having virtual sessions with him. At the time, I had nothing but contempt for men, given how much they had hurt me as a child. I figured that forcing myself to sit with that discomfort might help me tolerate men better.

Eventually, I began telling him things I had spent my entire life hiding. I disclosed the sexual abuse by my brother, and that opened something inside of me that I wasn't prepared for. My relationship with my therapist became tumultuous. I pulled, I pushed, I became angry, and I was afraid. I wanted connection, and then I did not, I felt I was circling an emotional drain.

At the time, I could not figure out what was happening. I see it differently now. I wasn't just learning how to talk about my trauma; I was learning what a relationship was. I realized I had never learned what "safe" looks like.

This has been the biggest realization of my healing journey: I didn't know what a safe, mutually respectful relationship looked like. How could I? My childhood had taught me that love comes with violence, that family comes with fear, that being vulnerable gets you hurt, and that trusting someone is dangerous.

I entered adulthood protecting myself from everyone and everything. I pushed people away before they could hurt me. I kept my distance and kept others at arm's length. I didn't know how to let someone care about me without constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then, I realized something that broke my heart: how was I supposed to create safety in my relationships when nobody had ever taught me what safety was?

Trust had to become part of my healing. I had spent years thinking healing meant understanding what happened to me, but I eventually realised I also had to learn something completely new.

For the longest time I did not understand the therapeutic relationship between me and my therapist, as I never knew what safety felt like, I wanted to trust, but I would become afraid and pull back, it was a long time of me opening up and then shutting down, it felt chaotic, my brain and my heart hurt, I felt very vulnerable, things didn’t fit into what I had known, and all of it felt dangerous to me.

My therapist had become one of the first places where I seen safety for the first time, not because things were perfect, not because I was not scared, but I could pull away and then come back, and it was okay, I felt like I was navigating a mine field, but nothing blew up in my face. The push and pull were part of the learning and the growth, eventually I was experiencing safety, it was terrible in the best way, I was growing as a human. For the first time in my life, I felt it, with a male, all be it virtually, I have never been in the same province let alone the same room with my therapist, but perhaps that is why the safety built, I needed to feel safe in everything, and virtual worked for me.

Now I see I had something to build from; I could perhaps finally understand what I should have learned as a child…

 safety, trust, boundaries, and mutual respect.

 I had to learn that I could say no and still be cared for,

 that I could disagree with someone without being punished.

 that I could be vulnerable without being violated.

 that someone could be disappointed in me without becoming dangerous.

 that I could have boundaries without losing a relationship.

 that I could let someone come closer without abandoning myself.

That was terrifying and that was what healing had to look like for someone who never had a healthy relationship, and who at times lost everything they ever had because other people could just take it.

I finally understood that I couldn't learn how to create safety for myself or recognise safety in someone else if I'd never experienced it.

Now a new path has opened, one that I have to explore and learn from, I need to look not always inside, also outside of myself and begin to feel safe with exterior triggers like trust, faith in myself, letting the immediate knee jerk reaction pass, then attempt to sift through the strange and scary feelings of trust, respect and what healthy looks like, this is a deeper level of healing, part of a path I never knew existed.

Follow for updates on how its going!