Has anyone found any places where they feel safe?
To me, safety is just that. A feeling. Not a reality. And, as a feeling? It will both come & go, and is not actually representative of how safe I
actually am.
A case in point? I hate, loathe, despise... “dependable” hours. Sure, a lot of people love them, love the consistency, love the reliability, it evokes feelings of safety for them ... :wtf: yuck... but I HATE them. Hate. Loathe. Despise. Abhor. For mostly trauma-reasons. And the more I try and adhere to them? The more dysregulated and irrational I get. Because they’re not something I’m being forced to do, but something I’m choosing, which makes it both worse & complicated.
So what I do? (What I learned to do, I should say... earlier in my life I simply walked away from IDFK how many jobs). I set my own hours. In jobs with strict time clocks. How? By adding time. I come in early, and use the gym. Take a shower. Chat with people. Arrange my day. Make personal calls. By the time my actual shift starts? I’ve usually already been there a few hours. But it could be as little as half an hour or as much as half a day. Because I’m the one setting when I show up. Leaving? I can knock off as the minute strikes, or stick around and get shit done, or hit the gym, go out with people, etc. I can ALSO walk off mid shift. Done that. The world doesn’t end, nobody shoots me, I just don’t have a job there, anymore. If I want to have a job, I stay, but I don’t
have to. Because, freedom. And choices. And the choice is always mine. :sneaky: So I choose things that make me happy, confident, secure in my own self. Instead of tied to something I hate, loathe, despise, which f*cks me up 6 ways from Sunday. I can make hard choices. I’ve made harder ones. But I try and avoid making hard choices when good choices -like things that make me happy! :D- are on the table.
If there are no safe spaces, how do you manage?
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By not making safety my goal. I don’t want to be safe. I want to be absolutely confident in my ability to handle anything thrown at me, and to make damn good choices, and many many other things. So I don’t ask myself if I feel safe, or if this place is safe. I ask myself if this is somewhere I want to be, and am I being the person I want to be, and if not? What changes do I need to make, to be the badass person I want to be, who loves their life down to their fingertips?
Outside the house was where I felt safe, now it seems wherever I work will also be unsafe.
This is one of those cognitive distortions so common with PTSD. When you were being abused? Home was unsafe, everywhere else was safe. Black and white / blue or not blue (black and white gets used so often it’s sometimes meaningless... but asking if something is blue or not blue? Can make the mind suddenly remember, right! There are more colors out there than blue & not-blue. Describing something as not blue? Doesn’t actually say what color it IS) / all or nothing thinking.
Facts are? Everywhere else was NOT safe. Bad things happen everywhere. But they’re not guaranteed, like when you were being abused at home. So,
in comparison, everywhere not-home was safe. Now you’re bumping into the shades of grey. The not-blues. That doesn’t mean that everywhere else flips, all or nothing. Someone can be an asshole, but they’d never lay a hand on you. But, the all or nothing thinking? Will try and link all the shades of grey to black. Or whitewash them. Because that’s what it does. Safe v unsafe. Abuse v not abuse. All or nothing.
Learning to see things in degrees? To see the shades of grey? The other colors that’s aren’t blue? Takes some time. And, often, a lot of work. But it helps.
