Safety

 I was in a webinar today at work.  The overall webinar was about mental health and how to help your co-workers who struggle with it.  They gave some great insight on how to help those who struggle.  I really hope those who do not struggle in the office will watch it.  It will help them to help us who do.  In the webinar they talked about safety.  I have been thinking about that since the webinar.

Earlier this week I was told "I wish you felt safe here." The thing is feeling safe isn't just about feeling safe where I am not going to get hurt.  I can feel safe walking into a building, and I know I shouldn't be physically harmed in form or fashion.  That is safety, right?  We can make our building safe for those who walk in who are just getting to know us feel comfortable in a way to allow them to talk to us. What if we only make it safe for the outsiders?  How are the people who work in the building supposed to feel safe?

Safety isn't just about physical.  It's also about emotional too.  For me I can feel safe at home, work, or even at my therapist office in the physical sense.  In the emotional sense it's another story.  I have someone I live with who has a big mouth and tells the world everything I say.  Even when I say "please don't repeat this."  They still repeat it.  If I try to tell them about my day I hear how their day was much worse than mine.  If I said I have a sore shoulder, I get to hear how they are in more pain than I am.  Now, I don't feel safe talking about my problems or my frustrations.  I feel invalidated because this person is always going to make sure they one up me.

When it comes to work.  I don't always trust the people I work with.  If I open my mouth, are they going to spread around what I said.  Sometimes it gets me trouble.  I get told I am not a team player.  When in reality, I am a team player.  If I try to tell them I am struggling with my personal life, which happens to deal with mental health, I get told "leave it at the door."  When someone else talks about their personal life, it's ok.  Sometimes personal life gets brought to work.  

One has to feel safe emotionally in the space they are in.  If they don't then they are just going to curl in and hide from the world.  Honestly, I know I have.  When it comes to therapy, I feel safe there.  I know I can speak openly, and I know it's ok.  I know I won't have any repercussions on it.  At the same time, with my therapist being a male.  It's hard to feel "safe".  Sometimes my brain tells me he isn't safe even though he has done nothing to me.  That's because most men in my life have hurt me.  

Everyone needs to feel safe somewhere.  People want to feel safe in their home.  Safe with a person they can trust.  We want to feel like we know we are not going to be physically harmed.  We also want to know emotionally we are safe too.  Knowing that what we safe will matter.  What we say the person will hear us and care.  

For me, I don't have safe place buy my therapy office and my primary care office.  That's it.  I don't have a space for me to be me.  I don't have a safe space where I can talk to people and feel ok about it.  My only safe people are my therapist, my best friend, my primary doctor, one or two other friends and that is like it.  I have no family I can trust.  

When people say they are lonely, but their world is full of people.  Maybe ask them if they feel safe with those people.  Maybe see if they feel safe in their environment, they are in. That may be the case.  I know a lot of the time; it is for me.