HOW CAN WE FEEL SAFE IN THE UNSAFE?

Think about a moment when your body reacted to danger,
even before you could verbalize what was going on.

Did you pay attention?
And if you did—
How did you decide to act?

– Gail Conrad

Opening (with music):

Hello and welcome to the Wildscape Podcast, sharing tales of stepping into the unknown to create more art, beauty, and magic in your life. I’m your host, Gail Conrad, and today you’re listening to:

SAFE IN THE UNSAFE

You cross a street.

You’re going about your day.

Suddenly you stop.

Suddenly you don’t feel safe.

You don’t see anything different, nor notice anything different than a moment before.
This is your neighborhood—familiar territory.

But now you’ve picked up on something.
That something is danger. You freeze, or pause—

And then you make a decision, whether you’re conscious about it or not. And that is:

Do you continue forward, or do you turn around?

And already, even that one question, is so incredibly complex.
Notice right now what you’re thinking.

Do you flash on one particular situation?

Or are you saying to yourself:
Well in this instance–I’d go forward, but in this other situation, I’d definitely turn around.

How do you decide?

Right now, I live in Los Angeles. Wildfires are burning. Each day I check-out the air quality. But I don’t have to look, not really. I can taste it in my throat. Like yesterday, when the graph for my area was bright red, in other words—very unhealthy. The kind of unhealthy where they say—Don’t go out.

We hope that our water will be safe, that our air won’t poison us, that we all can go out and take a run around the neighborhood without being shot, and that we can hug a good friend.

We want to plan for a future and feel optimistic about what we’re intending, or how about—just looking forward to next week?

Hello everyone!
Know I’m beginning on a serious note today, but that’s because all I keep hearing is that no one feels safe.

And that makes me think:
Is anything safe—100% safe?

And if you answer NO, as do I, then my next question is:

How can we feel safe, in the unsafe?

Now I’m not an expert on safety. I don’t pretend to be. So today, I’m just going to share some thoughts and stories around this topic, but mostly, I’m going to ask questions, and I’d love you to take a look at your own beliefs and stories.

And unlike emergencies where the fire’s at your door and you’ve got to immediately flee, I want to speak to those moments when you have time, even the tiniest window of opportunity, to pause—take note, and consciously choose what you do next.

Now I like to travel and used to travel a lot, often by myself.

A number of years ago, I was traveling to a city I’d never been to before, and as often happens, friends comment and say things like, “Oh, I love that place!” or “Be sure to check out this restaurant!”

But one friend says to me, “Whatever you do, don’t go to this part of the town,” and he names a few actual streets. But he doesn’t say why. He just says—don’t go!

So okay, perhaps it’s that rebellious part of myself that doesn’t like to be told “don’t do this,” especially when I don’t know why.

And I admit, my reaction is very similar to telling a young child: whatever you do, don’t hop on one foot and put your shoe on your head, because before you say that, the child probably isn’t thinking of doing that, but because of the way you say it, that’s exactly what they’ll now do.

But also, I’m thinking:
Hey, I’m a tough New Yorker—I travel all over the city day and night.

And then I get really curious and wonder:
What it is about that part of town?

So of course, I arrive in the city, and the very first night, I go to that spot.

And the thing about it is, it doesn’t really look different from the rest of the city.
There’s no one lurking about.

Nothing looks particularly scary or dangerous, but I’ve got to tell you—suddenly, my body freezes—it knows it’s in danger. And also, I get it; I don’t know why exactly I shouldn’t be there, but know my friend is right; you can cut the energy of the place with a knife.

I stay only for a moment, then I turn and walk, very quickly walk—away.

So what I notice is, sometimes the most dangerous stuff is stuff that is invisible. On the surface, you might not see anything that you equate with danger at all.

But how about how your body reacts? For I’d say the body knows instantly.

Some researchers pinpoint it further, saying the heart knows, or the gut knows, or your deepest intuitive and instinctual sense, even your cells—often they ALL know and transmit it first that you’re in danger, even before your mind has rationally figured it out.

Think about a moment when your body reacted to danger, even before you could verbalize what was going on.

Did you pay attention?
And if you did, how did you decide to act?

It’s like the classic story of the smiling stranger, one who comes up to you and offers something nice, something that you’d like to have. But while they’re talking and smiling your body tenses. You feel in danger.

How often do you override the feedback that you get?

And I bet you’ve noticed that every time I mention the word safe, the word danger pops up. For can you think about feeling safe, without also thinking about danger?

My thought is—NO.

Then consider, when you feel danger:
It jolts you, can freeze you, or can make your adrenaline race. Your body isn’t reacting based on the future; your body’s reacting now.

And just the way your body is always in present time, it’s also in constant change. The same is true about feeling safe.

We can feel safe one moment, but this can change in a blink—to unsafe.

The intensity of danger puts us smack in the moment—right? And maybe that’s a good thing, because it gets our attention.

So what if feeling safe in the unsafe means:

Feeling safe in the midst of danger, but aware of the danger—meaning, we’re conscious of the danger.

The thing is, we’re human, and what do we humans tend to do when we don’t feel safe?

Well, we buy stuff…

When 9/11 hit, I had two friends living very close to the New York world trade center. The trauma all over the country, but especially for tough New Yorkers, is almost impossible to describe.

I’ll fast forward a few years later:
New York is rebounding. Still there’s a big hole in the city and most everyone is raw. Both of my friends still live near ground zero, but I’m going to talk about just one.

It’s nighttime. She’s in the shower, washing her hair after a workout, in the building’s basement floor.

The lights go out.

The way she tells it, she does finish rinsing her hair, then races, as much as one can race in the dark, to an exit, where she meets up with all of her building mates outside on the street.

One guy’s wearing a miner’s hat, but the battery light is dead. Another has some kind of blinking survival rope—he’s still trying to untie the knot. Another has a megawatt siren alarm. She clicks it on, but it won’t turn off.

A few have basic flashlights, but most people have all these gadgets that they bought after 9/11, that now backfire or simply don’t work.

Turns out that it was an accident—an electrical outage. It hit all of downtown. But in a blink, everyone goes right back to that nightmare of two years before.

A while back, both the New York Times and CNN did articles on doomsday bunkers and let me say, in today’s off-the-charts fear and uncertainty, buying a bunker is all the rage.

For a price, you can hunker down with luxurious amenities. One company describes them as akin to indestructible, nuclear-proof, underground yachts.

But makes me wonder, with those super-thick, submarine-steel and high-tech electronic doors, what if something happens—like a fuse blows, or it gets hacked, and you get in, but then you can’t get out?

Or how about—if or when the world ends, you’re visiting someone, and you’re not by your bunker at all?

Sometimes I think that the more things that we collect and erect to protect ourselves: the electronic fences, infra-red cameras, searchlights, and high cement walls, the less safe we feel.

I say YES to wearing masks in a pandemic or seat belts while driving; they make a positive tangible difference.

But this other stuff?
We stockpile an arsenal of super weapons, and still have mass killings and war.

So what if bunkers and weapons and barriers just won’t do it? What if our first step to feeling safe in the unsafe has to do with nothing outside of us at all?

I’d say It’s tricky, isn’t it? Because sometimes all we want to do is to blast out—run out—take any act to make the world a safer place and to remedy all that is causing us fear.

But I will argue that in order to effectively act, consciously act and act with the greatest of power, we first have to know well and trust that safe place within.

So today I began by talking about how we pick up on danger—from our body, our intuition, from some inner knowing or wisdom, that won’t always be visible and can’t always be rationally explained.

Can you practice, even for a moment every day and however this works best for you, tuning in to your body?

You might simply notice that you’re breathing, that you’re alive and you’re aware, and that in this one moment—you are safe.

I like to do this 1^st thing in the morning, but again I urge you—whatever the technique, find something that works for you.

Then, and here it gets more challenging:
Can you practice, maybe not with the big house-on-fire emergencies, but with those smaller, more subtle signals of danger?

For example, say you’re about to something that’s part of your ordinary, everyday routine. But bang—suddenly your inner alarm bell goes off, and you can AND do take, that nano-second to pause and tune in.

Might this change what you do?

It’s like boot camp Part I—practicing on the little threats for the big threats.
Here we practice first on ourselves.

If feeling safe in the unsafe is:
Acting in the midst of danger, aware of the danger.

We’re not hiding.
This is a highly activist and super-conscious state.

We first find that island of safety within, so we can go out and act to bring it to all.

Is it still scary?
Yes.

Can there be any guarantee?
I’d say none.

But can we do it?
I say: you—me—we’ve all got to try.
—

Thank you, and don’t leave quite yet, because this is just the beginning of the conversation on this subject. At a later date, I’ll address a very different aspect of feeling Safe in the Unsafe.

But right now, I’d love to hear your own thoughts and stories on this topic and know that I will respond!

You can email them to me at podcast@wildscapecoaching.com.

Again, that’s podcast@wildscapecoaching.com.

I also want to give a big shout-out and thank-you to four colleagues, whose feedback was invaluable to me while working on this episode.

They are: Fausta Luchini, a Trauma-Sensitive Consultant and Coach, Erin Fristad, a Life Coach and Equine Specialist, Kecia Lee, a Personal Coach, and Alexis Niki, a Narrative Leadership Coach and Story Consultant.

You can find their contact info in the show notes to this episode on my website, which is:
gailconrad.com/podcast-stories.
That’s gailconrad.com/podcast-stories.

They do amazing work. Do check them out!

I’m Gail Conrad, your host of the Wildscape Podcast.
The opening music is by Chip Barrow.
And remember, I’d love to hear from you and receive your stories. Bye for now.

How do we stay safe…?