Creating emotional safety in relationships involves 2 things. First, you need to create safety for yourself. Then, you can create safety for others. This goes for intimate partners, friends, collaborators, bosses, team members, or whatever kind of relationship it is. There’s a foundational level of safety that you can create in your body and in your day-to-day experience that can support thriving intimacy, connection, and closeness in your relationships.

First, ask yourself the questions,

• Do I feel safe here on Earth?
• Do I feel safe in my body?
• Do I feel safe in general?

One of the ways you can tell if you feel safe or not is by slowing down enough to actually feel what’s happening in your body.

If you’re like me, you probably have spent many, many years using activity and busyness and accomplishment and even relationships to actually avoid what’s happening in your body. To avoid the uncomfortable sensations. To avoid the feelings that come along with perhaps fears of being alone or fears of abandonment, or whatever those fears may be for you. Perhaps a fear of intimacy. Whatever the fear is, the sensations associated with it are really uncomfortable in the body.

For me, my fear of being alone and fear of abandonment feels like a black hole in my chest. When it’s active in my body,  it’s a really uncomfortable sensation, like an emptiness that can never be filled. It comes with an emotion of anxiety to try to do something to feel it. And I feel that anxiety as a buzzing energy in my chest area and discomfort in my gut. And then my mind gets involved and starts to assign meaning to all these sensations, trying to make sense of them, identify the problem, and to try to ix it. But that only makes it worse. In these moments, it’s important to separate the sensations from the thoughts of the mind. And to practice being with the sensations and breathing into them. With time, I’ve been able to do this more and more. And so will you. 

So that’s the first question to ask yourself: Do I feel safe in my body without a relationship?

Because it’s quite common to use relationships to feel safe, to fill up the black holes, to distract from the sensations. It’s common to use relationships to receive the validation of knowing that someone loves you. Instead of first building the capacity to feel accepted and loved while you’re on your own and entering into relationship from that place.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. That doesn’t mean you have to do it outside of relationships. Even in a relationship, you can bring more awareness to where you don’t feel safe on your own. Because the circumstances you don’t feel safe on your own are the very same circumstances you likely have trouble creating safety for others in your relationships. And you can work this through in relationship, which brings us to a very important topic: Intention vs. Impact.

Intention vs. Impact

This is really, really, really important. And it’s a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way through a couple challenging relationship dynamics. I used to confuse the two a lot.

When someone in your life is experiencing an emotional trigger leading to fear,  anxiety, or panic, something’s happening in their nervous system where their nervous system isn’t regulated. It often isn’t logical or rational. It’s a heightened and activated state often leading to  fight, flight, or freeze mode. And they might be looking to you to make it better or they might be blaming you for the experience they’re having. .

And, that can often then trigger you  into a very similar experience. Now, once two people are triggered and both nervous systems are activated, it’s often two scared, defensive, protective inner children fighting each other based on past traumas that happened. And neither person can really listen or be compassionate. Then, one or both people and up feeling blamed or end up blaming the other.

And that is not safe.

Now, you’re not responsible for the other people’s feelings, but you are responsible for yours. So how you can create safety is by being able to practice on your own first, when you’re in those heightened states, to not frantically rush around trying to distract yourself too much with work, relationships, or numbing agents like alcohol or marijuana.

Sometimes, diving into work or calling a friend can be helpful in supporting the regulation. But just notice if you’re using it too much to bury the feeling and sensation instead of using it to regulate enough to deal with it. 

In these moments, avoid the temptation to eat or get lost in Netflix or anything like that. Instead, deeply breathe into your lower stomach with long slow breaths, expanding your belly out in all 4 directions. Practice really long exhales. This helps to regulate the nervous system and shift from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system.  

Or if that feels really hard to sit still and do that, go out for a walk to move the energy and stay in your body as you let your mind think through all it’s worries and fears until it begins to calm on its own.

This will, over time, train your body and nervous system to realize you can be there for yourself when things are really intense. I want to be clear that it’s not bad to reach out to others for support when you’re struggling. It’s just important to create more and more experiences where you show your body that you’re safe and can be there for yourself. This is how you being to feel more safe on your own.

So when you’re triggered with your partner, you’ll then be more likely to be able to regulate yourself with them because you’ll have built that ability into your muscles, tissues, and nervous system. 

When they’re upset with you, projecting their fears and pains onto you, or blaming you for things that you don’t think are reasonable, you’ll be able to let them be unreasonable. You’ll be able to pause the parts of you that want to be defensive. You’ll be able to hear the impact your words or actions had on them, even if that wasn’t your intention. And you’ll be able to do so without making yourself wrong.

Because in those moments, all they need is be heard. To be seen. To be held in compassion for the parts of them that are feeling really scared. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong or even need to change anything, although you may choose to.

But, to truly create safety in relationships, it’s about both you and them having the space to be seen in your deepest fears and messiness, which are rarely logical or reasonable. To do this, it’s important to notice the parts of you that get triggered and may want to defend because they may be afraid of being abandoned or left. Or they may be afraid of losing their freedom or of having their boundaries run over. 

All of that is important too and you’ll have your time to share. But, first, practice using your breath to regulate. Leave the room and come back if you need to. Regulate so you can first be with their experience without needing to accept blame. To just see them in their fear and hold them in compassion. 

Now, this is where we again come to the difference between intention and impact. We often have really, really good intentions as do our partners,  but those intentions can sometimes trigger others in unexpected ways. And there can immediately be a defensiveness of, “Well, I didn’t mean that. This is what I meant.”‘ The desire to be clear and understood is important but not effective while they’re still feeling the impact. 

So while they’re in the impact:

• Can you slow down?
• Can you hear them?
• Can you listen?
• Can you can you regulate your nervous system enough to not take it personally? To not accept blame but to really feel what they’re feeling with them. And hold them in it?
• Can you take deep breaths into your lower belly to regulate your nervous system while it’s happening?
• Can you hear the impact your words and actions have had on them without getting defensive, angry, or making them wrong or making yourself wrong?

There’s no right or wrong here, you had an intention and it impacted them in a certain way. So being able to separate those two allows you to hear what’s actually happening for them. And to be compassionate. When you’re in that heightened nervous system state, it’s really hard to do that because there’s a survival mechanism that wants to make sure this other person understands what you’ve meant, and what your intention was because there might be a fear of them leaving you if they don’t, or of your boundaries not being upheld if they don’t. 

But feeling heard and understood in your intention is Step 2.

Step One: Acknowledge the impact your words/actions had.

After everyone feels heard and relaxed, …

Step Two is to share the intention.

This is when you both can get clear on what works for you going forward. Because both of you felt heard. And both of you feel safe. And, therefore, can listen from a place of being heard and seen and loved for all the messiness that you bring or they bring.

I hope this post helped you!

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It’s an amazing, amazing tool and this report is designed to give you all the information you need to get started, make decisions that are more in alignment with how you’re designed to move through the world to remove resistance, remove friction, and create more safety within you and with others. 

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