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Just can't find an imaginary 'safe place'

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Quakegirl

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I just got back from yet another meditation class where there was yet another instruction to create a 'safe place' to 'resource' yourself. And yet again, I found myself sobbing, because nowhere feels safe, except my T.

NoWHERE in my life feels safe. Not really. NoONE feels safe, not even my husband, because he reminds me of what we've lost, and that we're not even physically together because I just can't stand to see that loss around me, every day.

When I think of the safe (happy memory) places I would have used before my life got blown up, they're either literally gone, they're actual real places I have lost, or they're still there, but they're so tinged with loss and pain, I can't bear to think of them. Like, the riverbank I'd take the dog for hours and hours with a good book, and just watch the ducks and hang out. The dog is long gone, but I used to ben able to still remember that is a warm and safe and happy memory. Now, it just feels like a reminder of what I don't have and I can't have any longer.

Thinking of those places and circumstances makes me so sad, and so grief stricken, that I just can't stop crying. Honestly, just the mention of the words 'safe place' are enough to set me off. Writing it, sets me off.

It makes meditation and yoga classes really hard - and embarrassing. I hate the crying. I know it's good to feel things and blah blah. But its horrible when it comes out in public.

Does anyone else have this issue with 'safe places'?
 
Absolutely.

One of the single purest forms of pain I know of is remembering what happiness felt like. There are no words to describe the pure and unadulterated loss. It transcends grieving and edges near madness. That kind of pain is the exact opposite of 'safe'. It's hell.

One trick is to ignore the person speaking and their ask for 'safe' and change it around to something real. Someplace I'd like to explore, for example. Safe? Pfft. Hardly. Interesting? Definitely. Or someplace delicious. Or someplace calm. Someplace serious. Someplace lighthearted. Someplace determined. Someplace else. Replace their nonsense with my own. It's MY imagination, I can imagine what I damn well please. But I have to be capable of actually imagining it, and I cannot imagine anywhere 'safe'. Safe is a feeling, not a reality.
 
Thanks, Friday.
That is actually a really smart idea. I have a pinterest board that I started of places that just look calm and peaceful and 'safe'. Sometimes I look at it when I'm really triggered to try and get myself grounded again. Mostly they're places in nature, or rooms that feel peaceful...but maybe I could just start again and make up my own place from scratch. Everybody seems quite fixated on a 'place' that has felt safe in the past, which is fine if you have that to draw on. But nearly impossible if the past just feels like pain and grief and loss.
Honestly, all I have is my therapist. Or, at least, the thought of him. I don't want him in my actual life. But I can imagine him comforting me, and it feels very calming. I read somewhere that even thinking about comfort can be quite regulating.
 
When I was asked to do this for therapy I couldn't think of a place, real or imagined either.

So I went on Google earth and searched around for a place that looked nice.

How I got around the "can't be a real place" requirement I was constrained to, was that this was before "street view" was a thing. I therefore had only a top down satellite image of the spot.
Therefore, I had to take some creative license to flesh out the scene.

Then voila! A place I've never been to, with no bittersweet memories and still containing enough detail to be useful for the grounding exercise it was supposed to augment.

Maybe trying something similar might help you find a place to be safe in?

A couple of years ago, I was on Google earth just looking around, when I remembered that Street view was now a thing. So, I was curious to see the place I had been imagining for so long from the ground.
I imagined it damn near perfectly. It was lovely to actually see a picture of it. Though I have still never physically been there.
 
Imagery. What a nightmare.

Even when they try to describe a 'safe place' for me...You're in a forest, Ragdoll (er, no, I'm not...), and there's a small lake, and there's.... Cue bombs dropped out of the sky, rabbid wolves running from out behind trees, the ground splitting open and hot towering flames from the abyss emerging! Not. Safe.

So, my safe place is usually right where I am, minus all the people. That's as far as I'm prepared to let my imagination go.
 
I flunked imaginary safe places as well, after a variety of attempts. Finally, I decided to try a piece of art work that I felt a strong peaceful & safe affinity for. So to do the exercises for the class... I ended up screen printing the painting and put it as a cover for my binder which I used every day, made it my desktop wall paper for my computer, and things like that so that I would keep looking at it and it was easier to remember the details. Basically I just put myself into the painting - sometimes on the shore, sometimes in the canoe.

It worked and when I talked to the instructor about it she just said something about how my background was severe enough that I had the core belief that nowhere was really ever safe but that by shifting to the painting the sense of safety was kind of one step removed from things and that was what I considered "safe" at that time. Not the one, but just an example (click to enlarge):

<Content edited pending link or confirmation of source: repost and include link/source, or open a help-ticket, including a link to this post, for more information.>

I flunked ink blots too... but eventually it improved.
 
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I found myself sobbing, because nowhere feels safe, except my T.

I was wondering if you could use your time at therapy with your therapist for a temporary safe place until you feel strong enough to explore other options since you do feel a measure of being safe there?
 
I struggle with meditation and it took me forever to establish a "safe" place for EMDR. IT took a lot of work with T figuring it out....mine had to be a completely fabricated place with some elements that were calming, but also some extra layers of"security" to make it relatively safe. It is a struggle and you are not alone it being difficult. I agree with what others have said about changing the wording...I think sometimes the word safe alone is triggering. Best wishes.
 
My current three "safe" places: 1. Childhood memory exploring a farm, 2. Sitting on a hill at church camp talking to God, 3. My current living room at Christmas time.

1. Makes me cry and miss my Grandma. 2. Made me panic of what was to come in my near future 3. Started melting into a gray of sadness

Yup. Safe places just don't stay safe. When these things happen, my therapist changes up the grounding. We switch to bilateral tapping or apply extreme statements to intrusive thoughts.
 
Gotcha!

I felt like a complete EMDR flunky because every wonderful place I'd ever known, felt safe and secure when I'd go to and always sought refuge at - I stupidly took the enemy to my hometown & shared with Satan, sullying them all. I still love and adore "my places" in "my mountains" - but they will never be the same and his sinister presence will always seem to linger there. Every single safe or comforting space I'd known and loved was gone once my life was nuked and forever altered to this hell I map out, trying to escape.

While an inpatient at a trauma center, I was finally able to muster up my "safe place" (I agree with all of you on the terminology suckage). I've really struggled in the past to focus on anything not "real" (my reality having been so screwed up as is). What I ended up with was just that though. Completely imaginary, but very beautiful and close to my heart...a picture colored by my niece. She was just about 6 at the time and still believed in a life full of unicorns, beautiful glittering castles and happily ever afters (I sure as hell didn't!), but I was able to look at that crayon picture and imagine it through HER viewpoint. A view so innocent and untarnished. So safe and cheerful. The 3/4 sun in the corner making it such a lovely warm day and perfectly realistic to HER.

I'd tried everything else I could think so...if she could not simply see this place, but share her vision with me with such pride and happiness each time she colored inside the lines...why couldn't I?

I could and I did. It wasn't easy. I did not participate in EMDR for about 3 days. Instead I used that time practicing my focus and immersion into this new, ridiculous, strange and wonderful place. I added my own safe and fake loveliness - fields of flowers in my favorite color I could just barely brush my fingertips across. A breeze I could not feel, but see in the in the main of the unicorn I turned into a horse softly moving and the way the bottom of the sundress I wore ruffled. Things just too far fetched I'd place far in the distance (glittering purple castle with turrets).

I consider myself a pretty practical and non fanciful person and feel silly admitting this - but hey, whatever it takes! My life is already a Lifetime Movie no one I know will ever understand or relate to. Heck, some still don't even believe me and never will.

I suppose I had to stop trying soooo hard, like it was some college exam in which my life hung in the balance of, and instead literally step back and look at my walls. To stop looking and start observing. To stop searching and begin seeing. Most of all...nobody told me IT TAKES PRACTICE! I'm telling you now - it takes practice and no, it's not easy. I don't feel as if anything along the journey of trauma is freaking easy!! It's all pretty much, well, traumatic.

I hope you are able to visualize what you seek and would love to know when you do.

~Namaste
 
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