what is safety?

[nats]

as a multiple, we periodically struggle with this question and don't have a satisfactory answer. is safety avoiding everything that frightens or triggers you and restricting your behaviour till you 'feel safe'? is it ignoring those triggers and intentionally putting yourself at risk 'because you're strong'? is it something in between and if so what does it look like?

obviously there is a big difference between feeling safe and being safe, but how important is that difference. given the news in Paris, Beirut and other places we can all be excused for feeling a bit less safe than usual even though the reality for most of us is that our families were a bigger risk to us than the average int'l criminal/terrorist. how do these conflicting perceptions and realities help us think about safety and make good choices?

[Cammy]

The concept of safety fluctuates with whatever my current situation is. While walking in a dark parking lot, safety thoughts are about physical safety from robbery or assault. In social situations, safety involves not letting myself disclose personal information or say something that may make me vulnerable to psychological ridicule or abuse. When I am around certain individuals who in the past have hurt me emotionally (usually unintentionally), safety involves avoiding those issues or topics or situations that brought on the harmful behaviour from the other person. Bottom line, however, is that safety is protecting myself on all levels: physical, emotional, or financial. As multiples most of us have a protector personality within us. My safety monitor is always on duty in the background whenever I am around other people, mostly because people have been the source of pain in the past. My safety monitor is very active within me - I am always vigilant regarding safety issues not just emotional, but in every aspect of my life - driving, working with tools, the list goes on. I even think that my vigilance is a little over the top compared to most people, but part of this viewpoint was occupationally acquired. In my previous profession safety was always a number one consideration, and the habit of thinking in terms of safety never leaves you. As a multiple, I am also very sensitive to any sort of abuse, perceived or real, and I find that I will go to great lengths to avoid placing myself in harm's way. Safety is at the forefront of the way I live my life, who I communicate with, how I communicate with them, and it seems to rule the way I plan and execute all that I do. I suppose I am a sort of slave to safety, but it is a cage that I have built around myself for what I feel are good reasons.

[FreyasSpirit]

For us, being safe means that we have space where we can curl up and be broken. There are many places which are neither safe nor unsafe such as work or at a store where we are not unsafe, but also would not be comfortable curling up and having a panic attack. The places and people who we consider safe are those who we do not try to suppress panic attacks and flashbacks around and instead, freely express ourselves, knowing that they will not judge us or try to intervene, but just let us have the flashback and recognize we need the time alone for recovery.

It is only within the last 6 months that we have been able to start curling up with anxiety around others. Before then, we needed to be alone to do this and being around others meant that even if they tried to give us space, we were unable to take it. We view this as a huge step forward that we are able to trust others to this degree and creates much more space for us to feel safe around others.

[The People]

Safety is both physical and emotional. Various people find this sense of safety by being around people who make them feel safe. Others feel safer when they are alone. Personally we feel most safe when we are alone or with very trustworthy friends who know about us (going for lunch with 2 tomorrow) The difficulty is that re emotional safety we can go from safe to unsafe without warning. Like being caught in a lightning storm while playing golf.

We find that we have felt less safe during dark times since we lost the cats. Especially Two.

As for the difference between feeling and being safe I think the main difference is that over time we can learn to recognize when the unsafe is a feeling rather than a being.

Drat More faces but they still don't work. I was going to do the shades guy in the bottom row or the paper bag.

One thing that may or may not be personal to me is that, other than T and PDoc we cannot tell people when we feel unsafe. Well here as well. But we cannot pick up the phone and call someone or wander over to a fiend when we are in public. We did have a friend once upon a time and when her kids were little we would just show up at her house. If we went straight downstairs to where the kids were she knew it was a bad day.

So I guess we feel safe around kids.

[MakersDozn]

My safety standards are more stringent than most of the others in our system. They will elaborate if they so choose.

Rachel