Feeling unsafe is hard to put in words but yet it is a fundamentally disturbing feeling. It makes me feel uncomfortable whereever I am, stressed and triggered by everything. Everything can easily become too much to deal with and I feel lost, lost at what to do, how to deal with this. Engaging with anything outside my comfort zone is scary, even going outside in the darkness is unsettling and uncomfortable. Even within my comfort zone it’s somewhat burdensome and unsatisfying in the end.
It is hard to engage with life on that basis, when you feel fundamentally unsafe in this world. I felt like every little thing could make me stumble and fall, it’s like being constantly on the edge and alert. What used to be beautiful and nice is just distant. Even connecting with those you love is not really possible on a basic level. I felt disconnected from life and at a loss of how to reengage. I can still run my life at somewhat auto-pilot and that works. But that doesn’t feel good, I can still sense that something is off and it bothers me in the back of my mind, all the time.
But how to get out? There must be at least one way, but where is it?
I tend to look inward, so I tried to listen to myself and guess at why I am feeling this way. What’s so stressing or insecure that it results in a feeling of unsafety? What am I scared of that will happen? Which part of me is anxious and overwhelmed?
The honest answer is that I still don’t know. It seems to run too deep for words. I know that feeling too vulnerable makes me anxious and feeling distressed. But that’s not the whole truth, I don’t know that one yet. It might not even mattered. What I realized though is that is that nothing bad will happen even if I fall over the edge. And interestingly that calmed it. It was not about ruling out the possibility of falling. For me, it was about realizing that nothing major would change, I would still be the same person, with the same experience and the same past, I would still have the support of loved ones, no matter what happened. There’s nothing much to loose even when I fall. And I know I stand up again.
So it’s okay to feel unsafe and vulnerable, and I can see that as a danger but I don’t have to. I can choose how I relate to life, I can choose to see the beauty or the danger in vulnerability or both. Choosing vulnerability also means choosing trust and connection instead of disconnection. So I made my choice for vulnerability, knowing that it’s not the easy path but the right one. I have lived with shields up to a max for long enough so that I want to go a different way. It is not a simple switch to use and it will just work but it’s the commitment to choose this path over and over again until it becomes normal. It’s also a commitment to be courageous.
What will you choose?