ARE YOU OBSESSED WITH SAFETY?

Ok so let's think back to a time when you were on fire.  Electric.. the need for safety not even in your mind.

Do you remember such a time?

Where you felt completely at one with your body?

You were in total approval of who you were right down to the cells?

You emanated. You were radiant. And the world responded accordingly..

Do you remember?

Because that's what I want for you in my coaching spaces. I call that feminine power. And I am a little bit obsessed with helping women achieve it, to be honest.

 I love to see you shine. I really do.

WELL, WHAT WENT WRONG?

Mostly though, clients who arrive at my cyber doors are not feeling so radiant. In fact, they cling to their own sense of safety like a life raft that is about to sink. Which is no way to live.

What made things atrophy and stagnate? 

Why do you often find yourself in a position of complete and utter lacklustre boredom in your life? Without too much sex? Binge eating carbs in between bouts of ketosis?

Personally, I think the reason might be that perhaps you actually tried to get TOO safe. In other words, we swapped actual safety (which is a nervous system state that I'll refer to later) for aversion.

How do i know if i am living with too much safety?

Comfort is a natural human state to aim for. We all like our creature comforts. Feeling safety in life is a good thing.

Comfort is not necessarily the same thing as pleasure, however. 

And if you know my world, you will know that pleasure is always the aim.

The problem we have with comfort, is that it can start out feeling really good, like a warm blanket we can wrap ourselves in. But over time it can become a diminishing game.

This may well be you if you think you might have become literally enthralled by your aversions. Don't like something? Don't go there. Don't like someone? Don't hang out there. Don't like the topic of conversation? Change it.

It's all perfectly understandable behaviour for a human being. But if it's like you followed the aversion path right to the homely cottage at the end with the gate, where you locked yourself in and made hot chocolate every evening whilst the world went on without you.

Then maybe you got yourself a safety problem.

safety addiction

During the pandemic this was super evident, in my opinion. Of course we want to be safe and not die. But in the end, and perhaps you know someone like this as I do, we stopped living in order to maintain safety. Most people took every injection out there and still three years down the line many refused to leave the house. At least some of us did.

Safety is a good thing then. TO A POINT.

Because safety addiction (aka the pursuit of safety but actually the trap of aversion)  is a life I have lived. And because it is not a life I want to live anymore (nor do I want you to live it, because the world fucking needs you, if I am honest.)  And because of all these things, I decided to let you know how you might consider breaking out of this kind of self-imposed comfortable prison. If you'd like.

But first a note.

It is true that many of us inhabit nervous systems that do not know real safety.

Therefore, before we get into anything that seeks to raise the timbre and frequency of sensation in our bodies, it is absolutely imperative that we know how to self-regulate.

There are many ways to do this, including gentle, explorative sexual exercises. And you can read about how to return your nervous system to safety HERE. Please start there if necessary.

However, if you feel you are dying inside? That you have contracted so much into safety that there is literally no juice left to be felt?

Then this article is for you. Because maybe you have strayed a little too far. And perhaps we need a little trip to the edge. (Don't worry. I'll come with you.)

ways to get free from safety addiction

One of the biggest tools I have in my toolbox when working with clients who shut down their sex in preference of safety (or their lives, and the two really often go together) is that of starting to slowly but surely increase their range of tolerance for physical sensation.

It is true that almost everything we feel (and/or try to control) starts out as a physical feeling in the body.

Unless we are meditating all day, or have amazing interoception skills, then we may not even notice. We flip from a physical claw across our gut feeling, or a tightness in the throat for example, to an immediate solution through thought.

This might look like scanning the environment to see if there is danger you can avoid and taking an alternative route home. Or sitting at the edge in the cinema so you can run out if you get panicky. To shutting down physically whenever physical turn on starts to build. (Or even climaxing too quickly as a way to release and not hold steady with sexual sensation in the first place.)

How does this show up for you? As there will certainly be a way. Most of us have our little quirks of aversion, even if we become quite adept at hiding them.

There is a way through all of this however - and that is called "increasing range".

In other words, the more we practice staying with the felt sense in any moment, the more we become accustomed to leaving any mental stories behind about this

Try this:

Get into a practice container - either to self-pleasure or with a partner. Make a rule for that container - so in other words "we will stroke each other and that is all for 20 minutes". Or "I will self-pleasure with this toy and there will be no penetration for 15 minutes." Create some kind of structure.

And then play.

But play with noticing physical sensation.

It can help to even speak the sensation our loud:

"There is a warm, pulsing sensation in my diaphragm."

"I feel a sense of building pressure and tightening in my vulva".

You can experiment.

the edge where the need for safety gets liberated

At some point you will find yourself coming up against an edge. 

This might be the point where you would normally leave the room. Or go over the edge into climax. Whatever it is? Stay there. See if you can lean into the sensation and simply observe how it moves.

I can honestly tell you this is one of the most liberating exercises I have ever done personally. The grooves in my brain that habituated to the thought processes "I feel this therefore this means this and therefore I must do this to escape this feeling?" All of that changed.

I found safety - through embracing my feelings. Starting first with my physical body.

And then I was able to stay in the room. 

And that was the point everything changed for me in terms of my own personal power and happiness.