"Safe place"

My third therapist is pleasant and more focused than the last who had to leave for personal reasons. She asked: Is there a place where you feel safe?  This is a standard thing, apparently, in EMDR work (a type of therapy often used in longer-term or complex trauma) because there is a preparation/stabilisation phase before activating traumatic material. The therapist wants to know whether your nervous system can access even a small calm/safe state or resource to help you return to the present, regulate distress, and close sessions safely.

When the second therapist had asked me this question, I thought about of my tent. There, I don't expect to be attacked although I did once camp with someone whose car window was broken right next to him as he slept. In my tent, there are no demands, no pressure, no jobs besides those tasks I bring with me.

I am immersed in nature: the hoot of owls at night, of crickets in the day, the calls of birds at dawn, the scurrying of mammals. That is when I'm in my ideal place. But recently, I went to an event there where the grass was long and I knew ticks were present, I wasn't in my regular spot, and felt exposed. The thermometer hit 40 degrees and the tent, in full sun, was uninhabitable all day.

In the another place I camped recently I wasn't given a choice of pitch and felt exposed to the gaze of strangers in campervans, rather than being tucked away in a corner by a hedge.

The next place I stayed, I was attacked all night by seagulls, which at first felt like someone was banging on my tent. So, no, my tent doesn't really feel that safe anymore.

So when the third therapist asked this question about a safe location, I considered the tent but this time, rejected it.

The very next thing that came to my mind was a memory of a certain, phenomenal dance. Actually, it wasn't even the dance I remembered, it was the embrace as a place of safety and place is important considering the next question she asked. It was a sense of safety in the embrace at a moment of stillness and connection. The safety came I think from this sense of being held, not just literally, and so, in some sense, relationally, but outside time.  I don't know the person to whom the embrace belonged to particularly well. I was surprised this came to mind at all. I didn't mention it to the therapist because how can you describe a dance embrace with someone you don't really know and that you experienced once as a place of safety? That dancer didn't invite me again for a year which caused all kinds of other issues so actually, if you asked me to think consciously and rationally, rather than intuitively, which is where a lot of therapy work seems to happen, for that reason it was about the very last place I would have suggested. Since then, we had danced again, but I'm not sure that was relevant or affected that felt sense of safety that came to mind so spontaneously.

I realised later perhaps it is precisely that kind of embodied safety, especially a kind of relational safety that could be so key to this work. On calm, rational reflection, would I choose that embrace, that moment held outside of time as my safe place now? No, because I still distrust a sense of safety that that stands in relation to a person, even in a memory, even when the sense of safety was more to do with the embrace, the moment, the embodied sense, than the character and traits of the person it belonged to. Is that a mistake, that rational choice over the intuitive one, a mistake? I'm not sure.

After I said no, there was no place of safety, the theraplist asked if, instead, I had a person.  Considering the nature of my traumatic experiences, this was never likely.   But I considered two friends who had come to my aid last month when they didn't need to, who had never harmed me, or caused me to shrink back, but people are fickle and people change, especially beyond the context of one particular moment. I didn't want to hang my hat there. So I said, no, I couldn't think of anyone either.

What about in fiction or films? she said, but I thought: No, maybe because they just aren't real enough.

I had done some work with Internal Family Systems just on my own. In this, you identify "parts" of yourself that are really behaviour, thought or I supposed even physical patterns that evolved to serve particular situations. These patterns can get stuck and loop or trigger when they don't need to, stopping your healthy evolution. To try and clarify in more concrete terms, I have, for example, a very strong watcher or vigilant part for instance, as I expect most people with traumatic experiences do.

I hadn't read too much about IFS because I hadn't wanted to influence myself from experiencing it. A lot of my "parts"stand in relation to something like an outdoor fire circle. Right by this fire was a very centred, grounded, wise part who I was surprised to eventually understand was also a part of me. I wasn't sure if this was what the therapist wanted or rather something outside of me. She asked about the colour of this part, the relevance of which I haven't gone yet explored.

At this point, I realised I had no safe place, nor person and also that not even my own body felt safe anymore.  There have been so many unpleasant experiences with my body since the autumn, since returning to the place, my home, this town, this region, where i was when so much of these traumatising experiences happened.  I get through one issue and think we're done, we're through, when another starts up.  Just now, simply moving is often exhausting and painful.

In the next session she realised that nature for me is a great solace and counselled not to underestimate that power. My backyard is a small, north facing area of small stones on concrete but over the last few years about a hundred species have decided, upon my scattering wild seed I find in late summer, to make this place their home. It might sound sentimental to say I greet my plants, each time I come home or leave home but I do have some sort of communing with them, much like anyone who walks around a garden. Dad used to take a daily walk around his garden and was always enthusiastic to show me. 

So I acknowledge the plants, which I do not consider "mine". I see them. I stop and pause and engage with them. I deliberately notice and respond to them.  And as I see their changes and what they are doing and drink in their beauty, really, and the miracle of their existence and what they've come from and where they are growing, for that matter, I will also hear the buzz of an insect or the soft brush of a bird's wing in the undergrowth. These things give me a profound sense of peace and pleasure and presence, which I suppose is a kind of safety.