Are You Running an Outdated Version of Safety?
Unless you’ve been happily living under a rock, you’ll have noticed that the idea of staying safe has been gaining a lot of traction in the collective consciousness over the last couple of years.
From the perspective of the nervous system, this is interesting.
You probably already know that when under threat, our nervous systems jump to the Flight, Fight, Freeze or Fawn response, depending on the situation we’re in. When our lives are in clear + present danger - as in there’s absolutely no shadow of a doubt that something definitively life threatening is moving towards us right now - these instinctive responses are adaptive and serve an evolutionary purpose. The rush of adrenaline + cortisol mobilizes us to act accordingly in order to get away from the threat and towards safety - we don’t need to stop, think and analyze.
Once safe, our systems have the space to regulate, and eventually go back to a state of balance or homeostasis. This stage of regulation and repair is essential to our health (wholeness) and well-being because if we’re in a perpetual state of feeling under threat and unsafe, of constantly being flooded by the stress hormone of cortisol, and putting excessive, inflammatory pressure on our adrenal glands, we create imbalance + dis-ease in our bodies + systems.
As I’m sure you're aware, stress in small doses is adaptive and builds resilience. Stress as a consistent state of being is maladaptive, and takes a heavy toll on all the systems in our bodies. We could even go so far as to say that stress as normalized and constant in our daily lives is systemic oppression at the level of individual experience.
(Sidenote: we can’t dismantle and evolve beyond disempowering systemic oppression “out there” if we’re still participating in it “in here”).
Surviving day to day from within the program of being “stressed out/anxious/busy/tired” not only gives us less access to our whole Self (there’s literally less blood flowing to our brains and upper chakras or energy centers + our heart beats are irregular) which impacts our decision-making, we become unconsciously addicted or attuned to this underlying frequency of consistent malaise; our nervous systems become regulated to the dysregulation.
Here’s a quick look at what’s going on when we’re living under the tyranny of relentless stress, fear + anxiety:
Say you watch/read/listen to/have a conversation about something that invokes the emotion of fear in you (even though that scary thing/possible future event isn’t right there in front of you at that moment).
The fear is an emotional response elicited by this external stimulus, which is having an actual effect on your neurochemistry and influencing how you feel. You’re now operating from your emotional brain in the limbic system, instead of your analytical, thinking brain (your neocortex), and you’re also out of touch with your all-important intuitive faculties - because we don’t need these things when we’re in a threat response. As well as producing cortisol + adrenaline, this also has the effect of slowing down your brain waves as you move from conscious thought to a more subconscious or unconscious state.
In this slowed-down alpha brainwave state - the same one that’s engaged in hypnosis - you’re more open to influence and suggestibility because your analytical filters are disabled. (Again, this function serves an adaptive + evolutionary purpose when used responsibly, with our consent, to plant beneficial, life-affirming seeds of meaning + belief).
At the same time, you have adrenaline + cortisol rushing through your system but no clear + present danger to channel that excess, inflamed energy towards.
And the moment the external stimulus creates an intense emotional response in you, and you’ve moved from the analytical to the suggestible emotional brain, your attention goes to the source of the disruption out there. In the cases of fear or threat that are not connected to clear + present danger, where you can use the rush of adrenaline + cortisol to get away from danger to safety, your attention + energy go to this external source to tell you what you need to do in order to feel safe again.
Meanwhile, as you’ve dropped into the slowed-down brainwave state of your subconscious mind, your autonomic nervous system is engaged. Your ANS oversees all the automatic biological functions in your body, communicating with your immune, digestive, and endocrine systems to maintain balance and health.
Through a junky diet of constant stress, your ANS becomes programmed to keep your body in an inflamed + dysregulated state - because it’s always poised for a threat response which can't be properly expressed + released. Enter myriad emotional + physical imbalances and chronic health conditions.
Eventually, this oppressive way of being becomes normalized in our systems - most significantly in the disempowering mandate of us putting our attention, energy + power “out there” to tell us what to do in order to feel + be safe.
This is an outdated version of safety. It’s it's the same system which preached that the human is separate from the Divine, and that a centralized + mandated intermediary is needed to tell us what’s best for us - otherwise it’s hellfire + damnation - while we continue to feed it with our attention, energy + compliance.
Same system, different more sophisticated + insidious disguises.
As the tyranny of fear and its attendant, distorting polarizations reach fever pitch in our culture, our society and our bodies, it’s clear that it’s time to evolve to new operating systems.
In the case of safety, it’s this: You have the capacity + the power to create safety + balance from within.
(And you don’t need permission from any external authority to create this for yourself in a way that’s meaningful + supportive to you).
Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor, psychotherapist + founder of LogotherapyWhy is this important?
The next time the emotion of fear is triggered within you, and it isn’t related to clear + present danger, if you’re able to self-regulate and bring your nervous system back to safety + coherence, you’ll have access to more of your Self (which includes but certainly isn’t limited to your intuition and your analytical thinking brain) in order to consciously make the best decision for you and the unique, biodiverse star-system that is you. You can reclaim your energy, your power and your nervous system.
So with all this said, I encourage you to start noticing how you feel when you consume media or have conversations, or pay attention to fear-mongering thoughts.
Systems change begins within.