Part 1 - The Magic Ingredient in Personal Growth and Change: Emotional Safety

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share what I think is the magic ingredient in personal growth and change -- emotional safety.  This is the first part of a 2-part series.

Okay -- so I've come up with some theories about the nature of human behavior and change and I thought I'd share them with you.  The question is -- why does it sometimes feel like we're stuck?  Stuck in our old patterns and behaviors -- wanting to make changes, knowing change would be better for us -- and yet, not being able to do it or do it consistently?  I believe that real and lasting change only happens when you feel emotionally safe.  This is a concept that is widely understood when working with clients who have experienced trauma, but I have come to believe that it is nearly universal human need. 

Let's look for a second at Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  First we need the basics for our bodies -- food, water, shelter.  Next, we need to feel physically safe.  After this,  Maslow continues on to building healthy relationships and love and belonging, but I think he's missing a step.  I think not only do we need to feel physically safe from harm, but in order to continue up this hierarchy, we also need to feel emotionally safe in order to build good relationships and make healthy changes in our life.  So what does it MEAN to be

Emotionally Safe

It means you can feel sad, angry, disappointed, disgusted, irritable, scared, or stressed out.  And you know that those emotions won't kill you, won't go on forever, and that you can handle them even if they are incredibly intense.  That your life won't splinter into a thousand pieces and that you will come out the other side a stronger and more resilient person.  Feeling emotionally safe with another person means that you can trust them to not run away from you, dismiss you, invalidate you, or try to fix you.  That they won't deflect your feelings or say a bunch of trite phrases that don't make you feel any better.  That they have the strength and capacity to sit with you and hold those powerful and difficult emotions with you.  That they also believe in your ability to get through it and come out the other side a stronger and more resilient person.  That sounds great, right?  So, why

Origin Story of Emotional Security

do we have our level of emotional security -- whether it is low or high?  Well, I won't go into all the specifics of attachment theory, but some people are lucky enough to be born to parents who make them feel emotionally safe and secure.  As children and babies, they were allowed to have a full range of emotions without criticism, invalidation, or threats of abandonment.  They felt soothed and comforted by their primary caretakers and learned that they were strong enough to feel powerful emotions and could calm down afterwards.  In relation with their primary caretaker, they were able to be soothed and comforted and, through this process, they learned how to do this pretty well on their own. 

But, as you know, not everyone was born into this idealistic environment.  A large proportion of us had emotionally immature parents, who many times through no fault of their own, could not handle their own emotions, let alone those of their children.  As as result, many of us grew up feeling like we couldn't show our uncomfortable emotions without getting in trouble, being ignored, being told we DON'T feel the way we do, or much, much worse.  Some of us received physical, emotional, or sexual abuse at the hands of our parents or caretakers which REALLY traumatized us and, as a result, messed with our sense of how to get calm.  We weren't reliably soothed and comforted when we were upset, so we weren't given the tools to do this on our own. 

AND to make things worse, even if we were lucky enough to grow up with emotionally safe parents, we still had to run the gauntlet of middle school and high school, where you could never show a single emotion other than joy or anger without massive social repercussions.  Double, triple, quadruple all that for boys.  And some people got really wounded by a relationship gone bad, which ruined their ability to trust that others would be there for them.  With all of that, it's a wonder any of us feel anything but absolutely, freaking emotion-phobic.  As a result, lots of us grew into adults who have a hard time feeling emotionally safe.  For us, uncomfortable emotions are dangerous things that ALWAYS have bad consequences.

So, where does that leave us?  We stuff everything down.   If I don't feel it, I don't have to deal with it, right?  I'm sad about my friend's death, stuff it down.  I'll distract myself, think about other things, numb myself, run as far away from those very real feelings of sadness, emptiness, loneliness, and fear -- run as far as you possible can.  But the thing is -- your body is holding onto all of those things and it's gonna come up one way or another.  Sometimes it squirts out in bursts of irritability or anger that we just can't seem to control.  Sometimes it seeps out of us in bitterness, discontent, depression, or anxiety.  And sometimes it manifests in physical ways through weight gain, high blood pressure, cancer, and other stress-induced illnesses.  It's not safe to feel things, but it's eating us from the inside out.

Join me in my next video where I talk about the problems with emotional fear and the two different types of emotional safety.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!