The Safe Enough Podcast: Ep 19 - Without Safety There Can Be No Love
This requires your brain, AND your body, in fact, to be able to stay present ENOUGH as you’re experimenting with giving and receiving, and advocating for genuine loving action. And because the experience of fear can take your brain away from staying present with your body, and away from the situation as it’s unfolding, the feeling of safety is critically important. Critically. More critical than any tool you try for change. So feeling safe enough can make all the difference in whether learning and change actually happen, whether patterns of giving and receiving love can grow and flourish.
Welcome to the Safe Enough Podcast! This podcast is an exploration of what it means to feel safe enough in order to live the kind of life, or make the kind of changes that transform our lives, into those with all the love, connection, belonging and purpose that we seek and strive for. My name is MacPherson Worobec, founder of the It Begins To Move studio. I am a safety and self-worth recovery partner, and I’m so happy that you’re here.
This is the third of a series of 3 episodes that are being published in the month of February, which for much of the western world contains the holiday Valentine’s Day. As Valentine's Day is typically a celebration of love, I thought I’d make this month’s theme all about love. In the first episode in this series, I talked about how love is not a feeling, but it is a verb. That it takes consistent and continuous concrete actions, with six essential ingredients, to express a sentiment of genuine love. In the previous episode I talked about how to learn to be more concretely loving. And in this final episode in the series, I’ll talk about the foundational importance of safety in both the giving and receiving of love.
In her book all about love, feminist author bell hooks says that “without justice there can be no love.” The opening of the chapter about justice is a beautiful quote by Judith Viorst, about how we learn how to love by those who care for us. And the specific meaning of Viorst’s quote is that attachment wounds create dysfunction in love and loving, in adulthood. This is so true. Attachment theory and neuroscience prove this over and over.
As a feminist and critical theorist, is it makes so much sense for bell hooks to use the term “justice.” And I completely agree. However, as a nervous system informed self-worth recovery partner, I would replace the term “justice” with “safety.” Without safety, there can be no love. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has research that proves we have learned how to behave, from our prior environments and past relationships. This might seem obvious, but Barrett’s Theory of Constructed Emotion PROVES that how we behave now, comes from how we learned to. Her research proves that humans don’t have universal emotions or universal behaviors, that no behavior is predetermined, but instead it’s learned. This proves what behavioral researchers have been observing for years, and what all trauma workers have been saying too. Barrett’s research is the science that backs this up.
In this context of love, The Theory of Constructed Emotions demonstrates that how someone understands, expresses and expects love, is directly related to how they experienced it themselves. So if you experienced someone saying they love you, while doing hurtful things, then love as aligned action - where the words and the actions towards you match up - might seem strange, or like an impossibility or a rarity. Or might be challenging to stand up for. Or might bring doubt about your worthiness. You might find that it’s difficult to even recognize loving actions, if you’re so unused to experiencing them. If you’ve learned that you are not worth love, loving or expressing loving actions, it might be very scary to have someone expect loving action from you, or be hurt when they don’t receive it from you.
And if any of this rings true for you, it makes so, so much sense. And it’s okay. I promise that you’re not doomed to experience unkindness, pain or loneliness forever. It might simply mean that your felt sense of safety could use some discovering, or strengthening. And though that’s not necessarily an easy thing to do, the result? It’s worth it, my friend! It really is. I am still learning, that’s for sure, but I can share with certainty, that it feels so much more tolerable, and the whole process actually feels doable, when I’m firmly planted in a felt sense of safety. And the results have been beyond what I’ve dreamed of. Sometimes sad, and still okay, but sometimes so connected, and life-affirming, and worthiness affirming!
According to The Polyvagal Theory, when you feel safe, you are in a state where you’re okay enough, legitimately okay enough, to make it through tough experiences. It doesn’t mean that what happens isn’t painful or hard, but the difference between feeling safe and feeling unsafe, is that you feel like you have what you need, to make it through. And when you’re learning anything new, the newness itself brings with it elements of uncertainty, of fumbling or stumbling. This can be really scary. The thought of fumbling or making mistakes, especially mistakes that can bring real harm—whether it’s physical or emotional—can be overwhelming. It can feel like it’s not okay to make mistakes, or that you don’t have the kind of room or forgiveness that you need, in order to make it through the fumbling process of learning. Or even make it through the process of asking for what you need, for fear of losing a relationship. And while it makes complete sense to have that kind of fear—and it is a very real fear, there’s nothing made up about it, it’s real because it comes from experience—so it does make complete sense, AND that kind of fear actually prevents parts of your brain from staying present enough with what’s going on as you try something new, which is what’s needed to begin to transform old patterns.
These parts of your brain need to stay present, in order to notice and reflect on how your new way of giving and receiving love is going, so that you can grow awareness of what it’s like to give and receive loving actions, to reflect on whether they truly feel good and aligned, or whether tweaks need to be made. The Theory of Constructed Emotion shows that old understandings of love can be changed, but it takes a new kind of experience that you can remain present for (or consistent new kinds of experiences), in order to make that permanent change in your brain. This requires your brain, AND your body, in fact, to be able to stay present ENOUGH as you’re experimenting with giving and receiving, and advocating for genuine loving action. And because the experience of fear can take your brain away from staying present with your body, and away from the situation as it’s unfolding, the feeling of safety is critically important. Critically. More critical than any tool you try for change. So feeling safe enough can make all the difference in whether learning and change actually happen, whether patterns of giving and receiving love can grow and flourish.
AND feeling a felt sense of safety can be so helpful in that process. Because if it's a FELT sense, that means it’s concrete. It means the safety is not abstract and you don’t need to question whether you have it or you don’t. The felt sense of it means that you know, for sure, that safety, connection, support, kindness, understanding, and your unshakable sense of self-worth and value are right there. Right there. Right with you as you are exploring something that is so deep, and so important, and therefore very tender and so vulnerable.
The felt sense of safety is right there in your body, which is why it’s so concrete and knowable rather than abstract and doubtable. And though your body and your felt sense might be incredibly reliable sources of whether you feel safe, and what you need to feel safe, and even how your experience of something new is working out, the felt sense of safety requires a connection with your body. And that means that connecting with your body also needs to be a safe enough process. Often, if you’ve had really tough experiences in the past, connecting with your body becomes unsafe. And this happens for multiple reasons. If you’re interested in learning more about that process, you might want to check out episodes 8 through 11.
So you may find that discovering a way to safely and gently connect with your body, is the key to real, genuine, life-affirming, connected and nurturing love. And that means that it’s so important to find a way to safely connect with your body, any way that you can. How you do that doesn’t really matter at all. There’s a whole bunch of different ways to do that, and the best one, is the one that works for you. If you’re looking for some safe and gentle options, I have some free resources on my website that you can check out if you’d like. That’s itbeginstomove.com. all lower case and the word to, t-o, not the number 2, itbeginstomove.com. The ones on my website are the safest and gentlest ways to connect with the body that I’ve ever found, and they work great for me, and for the folks I work with. Please try them out if you’d like, and if they work for you, wonderful! And if they don’t, please keep trying others, until you find the one that works for you. That way IS out there. It is. And, folks who can do a great job of supporting you, exactly as you are, and in the exact right way that you need, they are out there too! In the spirit of love, I wish you gentle, empowered, and nurturing giving and receiving of full and genuine love. Take care, kind soul.
