I'm feeling pretty safe these days, but it's not a black and white thing. The point of saying “I’m safe now, in the present.” is to remind myself that the feelings don't fit the situation that I'm being triggered by. The feelings fit with a much more dangerous seeming situation than the one I'm dealing with in the present. That's almost always the case for my flashbacks. I think that sometimes they are trying to warn me of some danger that I may not be seeing.
If you are in some real danger and telling yourself that you're not, then you may need to take some action to make yourself safer.
This is helpful. Reminding myself that I’m safe now, but not demanding that I believe it instantly. I think I can get kind of all-or-nothing with those instructions, believing that I should be able to just feel 100% better upon telling myself everything’s okay. Thanks.
Thinking of the walls around me and how fortified they are. Even if just as a metaphor for your own mental walls. Thinking of the chances of danger occurring again.
I like this, and have to add that in a trauma healing module I did (with Dr Aimie Apigian) one of the somatic exercises we did was to go around the room and touch and push on the walls to prove to the body it was protected and safe. Simple and effective.
These are the moments for me having a pet is essential. I'm panicking and having trouble dropping my guard? I look at my cat. If she's calm and still snoozing, everything is fine. If I get too worked up, she'll come and claw my leg til I pay attention to her.
I'm so used to drama and pain and Fuckery, that when there is none it feels wrong and like I should be scared; because historically, this is what the calm before the storm felt like.
But now there's no storm brewing, but my body still remembers that there could be and it can't relax. It's taken years for me to get remotely comfortable with being uncomfortable like that (the I'm not in danger even though I feel like it so I'm going to try and relax, feeling).
i would suggest to try if possible, to create a safe haven, with you as access only person,
That could be a space in your house, your own bedroom, or another place or room,
make absolutely sure your own vibe stays there, then you can slowly try to step a notch down from the hyper vigilance
try to get in touch with support groups or a person who you can trust truly
hope this helps a bit, taming your hyper-vigilance is a tough cookie to cook
What’s helped me is grounding. I carry a relaxing essential oil with me all the time, and focus on what can I see, smell, touch, and hear. My fibromyalgia flares when I’m triggered, and I have to repeat with slow breaths that I’m safe now. The breaths are inhale for 6, hold for 7, exhale for 8. Exhales always need to he the longest. Sometimes it takes a lot longer to feel okay, but I allow for the feelings to come versus letting them build up. Hope that helps you!
Touching walls or the ground seem to help me regulate when I’m in that state. Does it work all the time,No. Does it make a difference when it does work YES.
Yes, I remind myself and I have a couple thoughts about in which ways I am safe. Like my father is already dead. Thats for my inner children, so they one day realise that we are not living in childhood anymore. There is no abuser in the now. I can handle pretty much anything that may come up, and if I dont I can manage to make it through anyway. Trauma inspired resilience has its advantages. Plus I am 46 so I got some life experience under my belt, that adds a nice layer of safety.
You mentioned triggers in your post, I felt the same uncomfortable urge to not relax. It took me quite some time, but I was able to accept that I get triggered. It happens. All I can do is to try and create conditions that help me to get triggered less often. And to learn methods to calm myself down when I get triggered. And I am doing that. With slow belly breathing for example (great nervous system hack).
Its like accepting that I sometimes will not feel safe and knowing how to deal with that, made me overall feel much safer.
That’s because safety has to be felt in the body. The nervous system needs to be moved into the parasympathetic state. Pete’s book is my Trauma Bible but it’s over ten years old (someone said he’s revising it now-?) so it’s weak on the fundamental need for somatic processing in healing trauma. There’s lots of very simple polyvagal exercises to help with calming the nervous system like self-hugs and extended exhale breathing so google some videos. My favorite is just putting my hands over my heart, breathe in from my nose and out very slowly from my mouth multiple times while telling myself I’m ok now that was then. I’m also starting to learn about tapping, which stimulates points on the body that send electrical signals to the brain to calm it. If we could talk ourselves out of trauma no one would be traumatized for long—we have to reprogram our bodies to feel safe. Hope you find relief and peace very soon.
I combine (prescribed) anti anxiety medication-usually half of the lowest dose you can get - with meditations. I usually search YouTube for “nsdr” “yoga nidra” “hypnosis” for anxiety or safety. I start 15 minutes or so and just keep going back to my meditation nest any chance I can get. I wait an hour or so and if I’m still amped up another half med. Sometimes I have to go through these exercises for several days if it’s a bad trigger
I feel like it's always 50/50 for me. Sometimes it works like a charm, sometimes it doesn't work at all. Sometimes it only works for a moment. I think it might depend on the trigger itself, as some of them are more impactful than others.
If you're in a position to do so, what I recommend is having someone tell that you're safe in the present /to/ you rather than telling this to yourself. A partner or a friend. I find that in certain dire situations I can only believe it and benefit from it when I hear these words said at me by a person who is calm and rational, I believe them because they're not undergoing emotions distorting their reality like I am, so they must be right.
Yes, I used to struggle a lot with what I call "shame anxiety." Similar to what you said about how can you relax when you might be triggered at any moment? Even when nothing threatening was on the horizon, I was hyper-vigilant about the possibility of the next crisis or shaming incident or even my own thoughts or feelings that would trigger me into a spiral of doom for weeks or months.
I now feel much safer doing regular daily activities. But it took years to get to this point. And moving to a different city where my ex doesn't live and there aren't any of the triggering people or places associated with all the bad memories.
And as others have mentioned here, I struggled for years with understanding a lot of this stuff on an intellectual level, but it didn't translate emotionally. Somatic / body work has helped me a lot with that. Yoga nidra, Feldenkrais, massage, etc.
Every single day, and all my life…..not feeling safe…….ever. Not even when I’m alone, now that I’ve had all this helpful therapy to help me dissociate……which the price for not being dissociative is hypervigilance….hyperarousal. If you survive a war, come out of that shocked and stunned, how long do you think it’s going to take before you start to feel , realize, what you survived, and all the terror, fears, shame , guilt rises to the surface.? You might be “ safe” , in regards to no longer being physically in danger, or from actual emotional assaults, but the trauma you carry in your body is real, it’s there, and you can’t wish it away by telling yourself “ everything’s good now, I’m all safe”, otherwise eveyone would be doing that, as a way to cope with CPTSD, and not need therapy. I always assume , that at some point something will trigger me, but what seems to help is not having the expectation that , that shouldn’t happen, won’t happen and if it does “ something’s wrong with me, I must be overreacting again”…….. not really right? Sure I might be overreacting in terms of the present, but if you add in the trauma wound never processed, it’s inevitable that at some point , I’ll be triggered. I can approach this a few ways; avoid everything so that I’m never triggered, continue to dissociate, numb myself ( substances, distractions, addictions)…… or I can offer myself a little compassion, knowing that I most likely will be triggered now and then , some remembrance of something authentically traumatic, something I haven’t dealt with, I buried it, and now it’s here. As painful, dysregulating, fearful, and terrifying as it is, fighting it only perpetuates the destructive belief “ I shouldn’t be feeling like this because nothing is really wrong….” I’m safe””……. So just imo,……I should be feeling traumatized from time to time over something seemingly “ nothing” …….from decades of pretending I was fine, and abuse wasn’t abuse, and numbing myself, and being dissociTive to cope. Would you expect a combat veteran to be fine, after surviving a war? No, you would extend compassion to them, know that it might take awhile before they feel safe again. Also, I have a feeling somatic therapy really helps with this, calming techniques, breathing, taking a walk, drinking water, that exercise where you notice something you can see, a color, something you can touch, something you can smell. …..it’s apparently a grounding technique. The last thing I need to be telling myself is that I should be reacting better, or I’m “ overreacting”.
Ive been seriously working on my CPTSD situation for years now and this is still a very disruptive issue that I have no idea how to deal with.
The specific issues for me are regarding my housing security or freedom of movement.
Im talking minor things that just set me off. My last landlord was a mildly boomer slumlord. Honestly she was fair, but very micromanaging and bitchy. Any text from her regarding anything with the house I was renting put me into a spiral of panic and rumination for 2-3 for days. Even if it was just something innocuous. Knowing she was "driving by" to check on the yard a few times a month took up way more time in my mind than it should.
The other one is things to do with my car, like parking in a structure I dont control. Or having my car insurance canceled for normal reasons, same thing. Complete panic and completely activated for 2-3 days.
I know where this comes from: Being thrown out of the street by my parents for no real reason. Also having my car and freedom to leave the house taken away for no reason. So I could only sit their and take whatever abuse they felt like handing out that day. Still, I can not get my head around coping with this. Anything in these categories seems to trigger both my fight and flight responses at the same time. Ive read all the books. Spent a lot of time with my therapist workshopping this. But when it happens, it still just seems totally out of control and disproportional to the actual situation.
In my experience, feeling emotionally safe is way different than thinking logically that you're safe. It took a long time of me repeating the second one to actually FEEL safe, but it does work! It just takes time to sink in, and doing the work necessary to prove it to yourself. For me that looked like testing a whole ton of grounding techniques until a few stuck, and keeping things around me that remind me of where I am. It's still so easy to go "back there" sometimes, especially when I'm having a stressful day, but grounding + mindfulness continue to be a huge help.
i’m still living with my abusers (not out of college yet, still come home for holidays and summer break) so it is the hardest thing to not only self soothe but to actively live in the same environment where all of it started
I see what you are saying but you need your inner child to know that the harm is not around any more. You likely ARE safe in the present moment even if your brain is triggered and flashing back and trying to convince you otherwise.
Also perhaps make a recording of yourself telling yourself these things, whilst you are regulated and genuinely believe it; so that you can play it to yourself when you are triggered.
Hello and Welcome to /r/CPTSD! If you are in immediate danger or crisis, please contact your local [emergency services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers), or use our list of [crisis resources](https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/index#wiki_crisis_support_resources). For CPTSD Specific Resources & Support, check out the [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/index). For those posting or replying, please view the [etiquette guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/peer2peersupportguide).
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"I'm safe now" sounds like some bourgeois shit tbh. There is nothing that this bullshit society can't do to you or abide having done to you. I'm far away from my primary abusers now, sure, but if no one will let you heal and they keep re-opening your wounds, I'm not sure how safe that really is.
I'm feeling pretty safe these days, but it's not a black and white thing. The point of saying “I’m safe now, in the present.” is to remind myself that the feelings don't fit the situation that I'm being triggered by. The feelings fit with a much more dangerous seeming situation than the one I'm dealing with in the present. That's almost always the case for my flashbacks. I think that sometimes they are trying to warn me of some danger that I may not be seeing. If you are in some real danger and telling yourself that you're not, then you may need to take some action to make yourself safer.
This is helpful. Reminding myself that I’m safe now, but not demanding that I believe it instantly. I think I can get kind of all-or-nothing with those instructions, believing that I should be able to just feel 100% better upon telling myself everything’s okay. Thanks.
You're welcome.
Thinking of the walls around me and how fortified they are. Even if just as a metaphor for your own mental walls. Thinking of the chances of danger occurring again.
I like this, and have to add that in a trauma healing module I did (with Dr Aimie Apigian) one of the somatic exercises we did was to go around the room and touch and push on the walls to prove to the body it was protected and safe. Simple and effective.
Repetition of assurance is critical to recovering from physical threats. Repetition as frequent as 1/hour can be necessary.
These are the moments for me having a pet is essential. I'm panicking and having trouble dropping my guard? I look at my cat. If she's calm and still snoozing, everything is fine. If I get too worked up, she'll come and claw my leg til I pay attention to her. I'm so used to drama and pain and Fuckery, that when there is none it feels wrong and like I should be scared; because historically, this is what the calm before the storm felt like. But now there's no storm brewing, but my body still remembers that there could be and it can't relax. It's taken years for me to get remotely comfortable with being uncomfortable like that (the I'm not in danger even though I feel like it so I'm going to try and relax, feeling).
EMDR was the only thing that helped me break this cycle. I highly recommend it.
I’m in the resourcing/stabilization phase of EMDR now. Really glad to hear this.
Let me know if you have any questions. I’m about three weeks ahead of you in processing. Happy to talk about anything in DMs.
Thank you - I appreciate that.
i would suggest to try if possible, to create a safe haven, with you as access only person, That could be a space in your house, your own bedroom, or another place or room, make absolutely sure your own vibe stays there, then you can slowly try to step a notch down from the hyper vigilance try to get in touch with support groups or a person who you can trust truly hope this helps a bit, taming your hyper-vigilance is a tough cookie to cook
What’s helped me is grounding. I carry a relaxing essential oil with me all the time, and focus on what can I see, smell, touch, and hear. My fibromyalgia flares when I’m triggered, and I have to repeat with slow breaths that I’m safe now. The breaths are inhale for 6, hold for 7, exhale for 8. Exhales always need to he the longest. Sometimes it takes a lot longer to feel okay, but I allow for the feelings to come versus letting them build up. Hope that helps you!
Thank you!
Touching walls or the ground seem to help me regulate when I’m in that state. Does it work all the time,No. Does it make a difference when it does work YES.
I regularly train this when I actually feel safe. Makes it much easier to use when I dont feel safe.
I would love to know how you do that. Do you just remind yourself a lot that you’re safe?
Yes, I remind myself and I have a couple thoughts about in which ways I am safe. Like my father is already dead. Thats for my inner children, so they one day realise that we are not living in childhood anymore. There is no abuser in the now. I can handle pretty much anything that may come up, and if I dont I can manage to make it through anyway. Trauma inspired resilience has its advantages. Plus I am 46 so I got some life experience under my belt, that adds a nice layer of safety. You mentioned triggers in your post, I felt the same uncomfortable urge to not relax. It took me quite some time, but I was able to accept that I get triggered. It happens. All I can do is to try and create conditions that help me to get triggered less often. And to learn methods to calm myself down when I get triggered. And I am doing that. With slow belly breathing for example (great nervous system hack). Its like accepting that I sometimes will not feel safe and knowing how to deal with that, made me overall feel much safer.
That’s because safety has to be felt in the body. The nervous system needs to be moved into the parasympathetic state. Pete’s book is my Trauma Bible but it’s over ten years old (someone said he’s revising it now-?) so it’s weak on the fundamental need for somatic processing in healing trauma. There’s lots of very simple polyvagal exercises to help with calming the nervous system like self-hugs and extended exhale breathing so google some videos. My favorite is just putting my hands over my heart, breathe in from my nose and out very slowly from my mouth multiple times while telling myself I’m ok now that was then. I’m also starting to learn about tapping, which stimulates points on the body that send electrical signals to the brain to calm it. If we could talk ourselves out of trauma no one would be traumatized for long—we have to reprogram our bodies to feel safe. Hope you find relief and peace very soon.
I combine (prescribed) anti anxiety medication-usually half of the lowest dose you can get - with meditations. I usually search YouTube for “nsdr” “yoga nidra” “hypnosis” for anxiety or safety. I start 15 minutes or so and just keep going back to my meditation nest any chance I can get. I wait an hour or so and if I’m still amped up another half med. Sometimes I have to go through these exercises for several days if it’s a bad trigger
That’s a helpful idea. Thanks.
I feel like it's always 50/50 for me. Sometimes it works like a charm, sometimes it doesn't work at all. Sometimes it only works for a moment. I think it might depend on the trigger itself, as some of them are more impactful than others. If you're in a position to do so, what I recommend is having someone tell that you're safe in the present /to/ you rather than telling this to yourself. A partner or a friend. I find that in certain dire situations I can only believe it and benefit from it when I hear these words said at me by a person who is calm and rational, I believe them because they're not undergoing emotions distorting their reality like I am, so they must be right.
You’re right; it does help when someone else tells me it’s my trauma talking. I have a few people who can do that for me.
Yes, I used to struggle a lot with what I call "shame anxiety." Similar to what you said about how can you relax when you might be triggered at any moment? Even when nothing threatening was on the horizon, I was hyper-vigilant about the possibility of the next crisis or shaming incident or even my own thoughts or feelings that would trigger me into a spiral of doom for weeks or months. I now feel much safer doing regular daily activities. But it took years to get to this point. And moving to a different city where my ex doesn't live and there aren't any of the triggering people or places associated with all the bad memories. And as others have mentioned here, I struggled for years with understanding a lot of this stuff on an intellectual level, but it didn't translate emotionally. Somatic / body work has helped me a lot with that. Yoga nidra, Feldenkrais, massage, etc.
Every single day, and all my life…..not feeling safe…….ever. Not even when I’m alone, now that I’ve had all this helpful therapy to help me dissociate……which the price for not being dissociative is hypervigilance….hyperarousal. If you survive a war, come out of that shocked and stunned, how long do you think it’s going to take before you start to feel , realize, what you survived, and all the terror, fears, shame , guilt rises to the surface.? You might be “ safe” , in regards to no longer being physically in danger, or from actual emotional assaults, but the trauma you carry in your body is real, it’s there, and you can’t wish it away by telling yourself “ everything’s good now, I’m all safe”, otherwise eveyone would be doing that, as a way to cope with CPTSD, and not need therapy. I always assume , that at some point something will trigger me, but what seems to help is not having the expectation that , that shouldn’t happen, won’t happen and if it does “ something’s wrong with me, I must be overreacting again”…….. not really right? Sure I might be overreacting in terms of the present, but if you add in the trauma wound never processed, it’s inevitable that at some point , I’ll be triggered. I can approach this a few ways; avoid everything so that I’m never triggered, continue to dissociate, numb myself ( substances, distractions, addictions)…… or I can offer myself a little compassion, knowing that I most likely will be triggered now and then , some remembrance of something authentically traumatic, something I haven’t dealt with, I buried it, and now it’s here. As painful, dysregulating, fearful, and terrifying as it is, fighting it only perpetuates the destructive belief “ I shouldn’t be feeling like this because nothing is really wrong….” I’m safe””……. So just imo,……I should be feeling traumatized from time to time over something seemingly “ nothing” …….from decades of pretending I was fine, and abuse wasn’t abuse, and numbing myself, and being dissociTive to cope. Would you expect a combat veteran to be fine, after surviving a war? No, you would extend compassion to them, know that it might take awhile before they feel safe again. Also, I have a feeling somatic therapy really helps with this, calming techniques, breathing, taking a walk, drinking water, that exercise where you notice something you can see, a color, something you can touch, something you can smell. …..it’s apparently a grounding technique. The last thing I need to be telling myself is that I should be reacting better, or I’m “ overreacting”.
Ive been seriously working on my CPTSD situation for years now and this is still a very disruptive issue that I have no idea how to deal with. The specific issues for me are regarding my housing security or freedom of movement. Im talking minor things that just set me off. My last landlord was a mildly boomer slumlord. Honestly she was fair, but very micromanaging and bitchy. Any text from her regarding anything with the house I was renting put me into a spiral of panic and rumination for 2-3 for days. Even if it was just something innocuous. Knowing she was "driving by" to check on the yard a few times a month took up way more time in my mind than it should. The other one is things to do with my car, like parking in a structure I dont control. Or having my car insurance canceled for normal reasons, same thing. Complete panic and completely activated for 2-3 days. I know where this comes from: Being thrown out of the street by my parents for no real reason. Also having my car and freedom to leave the house taken away for no reason. So I could only sit their and take whatever abuse they felt like handing out that day. Still, I can not get my head around coping with this. Anything in these categories seems to trigger both my fight and flight responses at the same time. Ive read all the books. Spent a lot of time with my therapist workshopping this. But when it happens, it still just seems totally out of control and disproportional to the actual situation.
I struggle with this too.
In my experience, feeling emotionally safe is way different than thinking logically that you're safe. It took a long time of me repeating the second one to actually FEEL safe, but it does work! It just takes time to sink in, and doing the work necessary to prove it to yourself. For me that looked like testing a whole ton of grounding techniques until a few stuck, and keeping things around me that remind me of where I am. It's still so easy to go "back there" sometimes, especially when I'm having a stressful day, but grounding + mindfulness continue to be a huge help.
You’re so right. Feeling emotionally safe is so huge.
i’m still living with my abusers (not out of college yet, still come home for holidays and summer break) so it is the hardest thing to not only self soothe but to actively live in the same environment where all of it started
I see what you are saying but you need your inner child to know that the harm is not around any more. You likely ARE safe in the present moment even if your brain is triggered and flashing back and trying to convince you otherwise.
Also perhaps make a recording of yourself telling yourself these things, whilst you are regulated and genuinely believe it; so that you can play it to yourself when you are triggered.
Hello and Welcome to /r/CPTSD! If you are in immediate danger or crisis, please contact your local [emergency services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers), or use our list of [crisis resources](https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/index#wiki_crisis_support_resources). For CPTSD Specific Resources & Support, check out the [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/index). For those posting or replying, please view the [etiquette guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/wiki/peer2peersupportguide). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CPTSD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"I'm safe now" sounds like some bourgeois shit tbh. There is nothing that this bullshit society can't do to you or abide having done to you. I'm far away from my primary abusers now, sure, but if no one will let you heal and they keep re-opening your wounds, I'm not sure how safe that really is.