How safe do you feel? Not feeling safe is at the core of many of our struggles, worries and problems. But even if your life feels okay and you think you feel pretty safe, you will still be affected by a lack of safety, you just might not realise it. In this article, I’ll reveal how lack of safety exists and how it affects you.

Buckle up, because this article is about an 8 to 10 minute read, but it’s worth it. If you want to thrive in your life and not just survive or be okay, it is essential to understand the roots of unsafety.

Unsafety exists on this planet and no one is immune to it

The unfortunate reality is that you were born into an unsafe world where there are wars, guns, violence, systems based on competition, scarcity, classes, unequal distribution of wealth, resources and power, poverty, slavery, famine, genocides, oppression and the forces of nature that are more powerful than humans alone.

Much of this is an ancient and complex problem, rooted in trauma.

Even if you are born into the safest country in the world where there is no war, and you have sufficient resources, access to healthcare, your basic needs are met and you live in a low-crime or even no-crime area, you aren’t immune from potential danger because unsafety exists in the world and it could come for you when you least expect it.

Spiritual teacher and author Caroline Myss teaches, “What is in one is in the whole.” Unsafety exists in individuals so it exists in the whole. As you are a piece of the whole, it exists in you too.

This risk of unsafety affects people differently depending on their human design, predisposition and conditioning towards risk and danger. Some people can tune it out completely, while sensitives and especially worriers can be acutely more aware of the dangers and things that could go wrong.

2. You were born into a traumatised world

As a result of the unsafety on this planet, people have unhealed trauma, individually and collectively.

Trauma is a response to an event or situation that overwhelms your ability to cope. Unable to process the intense fear and emotions that were triggered, the person suffers from ongoing adverse effects on their physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual wellbeing. It effectively leaves a person stuck in a state of unsafe.

Understanding and treating trauma is a newer and evolving field in the history of humanity. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was only named as a disorder back in 1980 post Vietnam War. Even now our understanding of PTSD and the best way to treat it is deepening and changing.

This means your parents, grandparents and ancestors may not have healed the trauma they experienced. What is not healed can be passed on.

Even if you didn’t experience a trauma directly or indirectly yourself, you can still carry it within you thanks to intergenerational (ancestral) trauma and epigenetics.

This has been researched and witnessed within the children and grandchildren of holocaust survivors, who didn’t experience the holocaust first hand but bear psychological, emotional and physical symptoms of the trauma.

This leads into my next point…

3. Those who came before you have unhealed trauma and haven’t experienced enough safety and they pass it on to you in ways you might not even realise

Unhealed trauma and emotional wounds are problematic because they result in reactive, adaptive and unintended behaviours.

When something hits on a trauma or an emotional wound, a person can:

become flooded with emotion
shut down
dissociate and not be present in their body anymore
become very defensive or aggressive and reactive
become overly rational or bend over backwards to please someone
…not because they want to, but to feel safe in a situation where they feel unsafe.

You’ve probably been the unfortunate recipient or witness of road rage, where perhaps the act of you or someone else accidentally cutting in front of another driver instantly triggers their unhealed rage and as a result they react with scary and intimidating behaviour such as tail-gating, aggressive horn honking, gesturing or worse.

Other behaviours are more adaptive in nature and affect how the person lives their life such as:

avoiding certain people, places or situations
addictions
playing small
hiding your feelings
perfectionism
being controlling of others and all aspects of life
shutting down
over-thinking
criticizing your self or others.

You might recognise some of these behaviours in your parents/caregivers or even in yourself if you have learned them from your caregivers or adapted to trauma yourself.

Unhealed trauma can impact a caregiver’s ability to respond to a child in the way the child needs.

Trauma affects the way you show up and be present and responsive in the world. So your caregiver can be misattuned, or emotionally or psychologically abusive when they react from their own triggers or neglectful because they dissociate or are preoccupied with their own inner struggle.

Your caregiver may parent in the same or similar way that their parent cared for them and pass on behaviours and beliefs that don’t contribute to your sense of safety and wellbeing in the world. However, as the behaviour is normal within your family system, you might not recognise that these aren’t safe ways of being.

On top of this, modern life, society and work culture can leave parents time poor, exhausted, financially stretched and bearing the brunt of parenting alone without the support of a village. This can also test and impact their ability to be present and responsive to their children’s needs in safe and attuned ways.

Which leads me on to my next point…

4. You didn’t establish a secure foundation of safety in childhood

If you aren’t raised in an environment that is a welcoming space with consistent love, nurture, compassion, understanding, deep listening, as well as clear seeing and nurturing of your unique soul and blueprint, then you won’t have a secure foundation of safety and you miss receiving these essential maps of being a safe human being for yourself and others.

Your caregivers are responsible for providing security and care to you as an infant for your survival. Babies are born wired for attachment because it is necessary for them to survive. But if your caregiver is not consistently sensitive and responsive to your needs through misattunement, abuse or neglect, or because of loss of or separation from a parent then your attachment is impacted.

You won’t perceive your caregiver as a safe person to seek comfort from or a secure base from which to explore the world and subsequently you won’t perceive the world as a safe place. You miss out on the foundational wiring and maps to integrate safety into your nervous system and psyche and for your sensitive soul to embody and flourish within you.

This then affects the way that you move out into the world and form relationships. Some of the ways insecure attachment shows up in your life include:

people pleasing
having poor boundaries
needing approval from others
fearing rejection
not knowing your own feelings and needs
not reaching out to others for help
being overly independent
feeling anxious or fearful of becoming close to someone or them becoming emotionally close to you
feeling anxious when you are alone
low self-worth
self-hatred
shame
not trusting others
being needy or clingy
wanting to escape or pull away when someone becomes needy or clingy.

Psychologically, insecure attachment can be healed through having a partner with a secure attachment style or through counselling therapy with a safe practitioner. Learning about attachment, how to regulate your own nervous system and emotions, how to feel sensations in your body and how to name your feelings and needs are also helpful.

5. Your chakras and energy system carry the impacts of negative experiences and energies that continue to make you feel unsafe

We know from physics that everything is made of energy, including human beings. Words, thoughts, moods, emotions, actions all arise out of energy and transmit energy. We can transmit energies that are positive, loving, uplifting and higher vibrational or energies that are negative, unkind, diminishing, injurious and lower vibration.

The early childhood experiences mentioned earlier along with any trauma or difficult experiences during your life not only have psychological impacts but energetic impacts. Your chakra system can close protectively so you are deficient in energy or it can compensate by becoming overactive.

Beliefs, codes and energies can get stored or stuck in your aura, chakras, cells and energetics and continue to affect you long after a negative experience is over or you have left a negative, impactful environment.

One of the chakras that I pay a lot of attention to is your root chakra, the first energy centre at the bottom of your spine/perineum. While a lot of spiritual aspirants are focused on the upper chakras, especially the third eye and the crown as portals to enlightenment and spiritual gifts, to me the root chakra is the most important for you to be here on this earth plane and to be able to embody your soul and gifts because it is the chakra on which you build the foundations of your life.

The root chakra is developed from the time you are in the womb to 12 months old and is associated with your survival, security, stability, physical health, prosperity, grounding and trust.

When this chakra closes protectively, you may feel withdrawn, low energy, stuck, anxious or suspicious. When it is overly active taking in too much energy in over-compensation, you may be overactive, aggressive, reactive and prone to over-working and greed.

Signals that your root chakra isn’t fully and healthily functioning include worries and fears about money, inability to manifest, hoarding, feeling disconnected, lower body weight gain and problems with legs and feet.

When the human body is impacted by trauma and difficult energies, parts of the soul will flee and hide or not come in and stay very far away. You may feel as if you’re not in your body or lifted up and out, not occupying or using all of your chakras or that parts of you are missing, that you’re not whole.

Missing soul parts carry important maps, knowledge, gifts and powers. Living without them keeps you locked in existing patterns of unsafe.

If you have done a lot of talk therapy or psychological healing but things haven’t fully resolved, it is likely that your energy system has been impacted and also needs clearing and healing. You may need to reclaim and heal lost and injured soul parts too.

6. Societal systems try to conform you or only welcome part of you and they let you down.

Our school systems aren’t designed to teach you in the way that best works for your unique human design. You are expected to fit into a system that grades and compares you to others and doesn’t fully welcome your diversity or unique gifts nor does it protect your sensitivity or dreaming nature.

As a result, you may learn to leave parts of yourself out, hide or change aspects of your nature to fit in. You are given the message that isn’t safe to be wholly you and that acceptance and success only comes in a certain way.

The same generally applies to our work places. You are expected to turn up and do a role and your unique personality and quirks may not be valued or fully appreciated.

You must fit into the workplace culture even if it is unhealthy. You may be expected to be professional and leave your personal problems at the door. You’re not welcomed as your whole self. Maybe you hide part of yourself or change or mask yourself to fit in. Again, you’re given the message that it’s not safe to be you.

Then there are the work performance management systems. You are valued when you achieve the goals they’ve set for you but put on notice when you fail to excel, threatening an aspect of your security.

With families to feed, mortgages and rent to pay, many people will overwork and/or stay in toxic work places or jobs because they are scared of not having a job to pay their bills and the impact on their family. They pay the price in chronic stress, exhaustion and physical ailments.

In schools and the workplace where you are not treated and welcomed as a whole person, parts of your soul will leave.

Then there are the ways our healthcare and social security systems are designed.

In Australia, Medicare gives us access to basic healthcare but there is still often out of pocket expenses and/or long wait periods unless it is life-critical. Many people can’t afford the cost of private health insurance.

For those reliant on social security payments – well they aren’t even above the poverty line. Rental costs have skyrocketed in recent years thanks to the ever-booming property market. Many people struggle to find affordable accommodation and the wait list is years long.

Long story short, if you can’t work and earn well above minimum wage and afford your own life and health insurance, there may be no safety net for you if you fall. And that is unsafe.

7. The news, media and marketing are always broadcasting fear

Unless you avoid all newspapers and television news and advertisements you are being bombarded by fear messaging every day and unless you consciously clear the energy of these messages, it stays inside you.

The news and media uses fear all the time to sell its products to you, in the headlines to draw you in and in messaging to engage you, sell their products to you and keep you coming back for more. They strategically push the button inside you to make you fearful so you want to scan your surroundings for danger including reading or watching the news so you are in the know and can be prepared to act.

Because this is a constant tactic and message and you probably aren’t consuming media with this awareness, you will absorb fear unconsciously. You are being programmed with fear. Marketers use it too, pushing your FOMO (fear of missing out ) button.

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to be very conscious and selective of the media you choose to consume, be present and mindful when you consume it and learn how to disconnect from it when you are done.

So there you have it, my 7 reasons there isn’t enough safety on this planet and how it affects you even if you think you’re safe:

Unsafety exists on this planet and no one is immune to it.
Trauma is everywhere here too.
Those who came before you have unhealed trauma and haven’t experienced enough safety and they pass it on to you in ways you might not even realise.
You didn’t establish a secure foundation of safety in childhood and have normalised beliefs and behaviours that protect you or overcompensate.
Your chakras and energy system carry the impacts of negative experiences and energies that can continue to make you feel unsafe.
Our societal systems contribute to unsafety.
And the news, media and marketing continually broadcast fear and use it to make you buy their product.

Awareness is the first step towards change. While you can’t change the overall state of safety in the world, you can start with yourself.

One by one as we heal the wounds of unsafety within ourselves and become safe people for others in our lives, the medicine of safety will ripple out.

And you will build the strong roots necessary to thrive in your life.

Want to feel safer to be you?

I’m here to help you feel safe and heal from the lack of safety you’ve experienced in your life so that your soul can land and express its gifts, qualities, mission and essence through you.

Read about what it means to feel safe.

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7 causes of lack of safety and how you’re affected (even if you think you’re safe)

Unsafety exists on this planet and no one is immune to it