Are We Safe Yet?

When working to help clients to heal from trauma, the first thing we really need to know is this. Are you safe?

Are you safe now?

Whatever has occurred, whatever is happening, whatever the fallout, are you in a safe place to begin to process and heal now?

And here is my worry. The world isn’t feeling like a very safe place right now.

We fell into Covid and lock-down. Many people lost family members to a disease that seemingly came out of the blue and we didn’t know where from. We were divided and separated and scared.

We came out of lock-down and were told to ‘eat out to help out’ and it was time to move on with our lives. Time to heal.

Only then came a cost of living crisis. A million children in the UK living in destitution. Car fuel too pricey to use and heating too draining on family finances to turn on. Buy your electric blanket, heat the person not the house, don’t use the oven, huddle close.

And while poverty still bites we have war and news channels focussed entirely on devastation and cruelty. Who said what, who did what, who is at fault.

The world is burning and then flooding and then burning again. The spring bulbs just came up in October.

It’s as though we have been collectively spun up and shot out over the past few years. Reeling from one disaster and collective fear to another. Our hearts racing, our stomachs in our mouths.

So, I ask, are you safe now?

Mums needing to heal from birth trauma. Families needing to heal from bereavement. People reeling from anxiety and depression. 

Are you safe to do the work now?

And unless we learn to disconnect from much of what is happening, I don’t believe that we are. 

Is this a post with answers? Not really, it’s not meant to be. 

I just want to say that if healing is taking time, then that is understandable. If you need to stop and catch your breath please notice that and do so. 

Breathe in from your finger tips and up to the top of your head, and then breathe out through your head and all the way down to the soles of your feet. Feel your solid body and the air that surrounds it. Disconnect from the socials, don’t be afraid to switch the news off, do what you need to find a safe space for you.

Because only from there can we individually, collectively and healthily move forwards.