Feeling safe enables us to relax. Feeling safe enables us to drop our defenses and be present. Feeling safe is a crucial ingredient to any successful relationship. It's vital for great sexual health and wellbeing and in fact it's critical for our health, full stop. We can't flourish when we feel under threat or on red alert.
My question to you today, is how safe do you make the people in your life feel? What could you do differently to enable people to feel safer? How safe do you feel with your inner circle of people? Are there some relationships that need some tweaking and boundary setting? Or that need some real, honest communication and “pipe-cleaning”?
For people to feel safe they need:
Healthy boundaries, which are clearly explained.
Consistency.
No-one can feel safe if they don’t know what to expect from you. If you are moody, people will always feel tense around you as they will be preparing for an unexpected part of you to show up.
Tolerance and allowance for humanity.
If you set the bar so high that people constantly feel they won't measure up or will disappoint you, they will never feel safe and relax around you or with you. You need to give people the benefit of the doubt if they make a mistake.
Clear communication.
Speak clearly and communicate about how you feel, share the stories that you are telling yourself, and talk about what hurts your feelings. This way people understand what is going on for you, inside your head and your heart. Share more rather than less, even if it rocks the boat and causes conflict. Safety is better than pseudo-peace.
To be able to start again.
Be willing to update your data, if you have an incorrect perception, idea or judgement. If your internal story is wrong, be willing to correct it.
Flexibility. Be willing to be wrong.
Honesty.
Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It might take some time to get the truth out, but secrets are toxic and lies are destructive. Even if it hurts, the truth is key.
Forgiveness.
Don’t fake forgiveness, find a way to real, hard, deliberately acquired forgiveness.
Compassion.
Always bring compassion to every encounter.
Apology and accountability.
Say you are sorry if you are wrong. Don’t pretend you are sorry, feel you are sorry. Sometimes you can only feel sorry for the pain someone has experienced, because you don’t feel that you did anything wrong, but that might be the place to start. Don’t say sorry if you aren’t sorry. If you really feel sorry, you will make a big, solid attempt not to do the problem-generating-thing again. You can't say sorry and make no changes.
Of course, there are more, please share any you can think of that I haven’t mentioned.
As we celebrate World Sexual Health Month, let’s work hard to make the people we are in relationship with feel safer with us. Let’s try to enable ourselves to feel safer, so we can all relax and have better health and wellbeing.
Much Love,
Sue
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