Where Do We Look for Safety?

Psychological and personal reflections

our barn in summer

I am interested in the ways people reach for safety, consciously and unconsciously, because I think safety-seeking drives most of our behavior.

Childhood Roots

It seems to me that unless we pay attention to how we seek safety, we mostly just repeat whatever dynamics we learned in childhood.

Some parents are able to be attentive and responsive to their children’s needs, and these children grow up with what’s called “secure attachment.” They naturally reach for safety in ways that are healthy and effective. They prioritize self-care and stand up for their needs. When they need help, they can ask for it with trust that help can be had. (For more about this, I recommend Eli Harwood’s book Raising Securely Attached Kids.)

Without secure attachment, children experience a terrible, relentless sense of isolation that develops into habits of self-abandonment, which can be ruinous to health and happiness. These habits vary widely, reflecting the variety of strategies children develop to cope with their particular situations. For example, one child learns to people-please, another learns to dissociate, and another learns to isolate.

I think the more aware we become of our safety-seeking patterns, the better our chances for healing and for developing a much more substantial sense of safety.

So, here are a few of the different safety-seeking styles I see in myself and others.

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1. Sheep mode: alignment with others

This has always been my main default safety-seeking mode:

seeking safety in meeting other people’s expectations.

For those of us who learned in childhood that our connection with our caregivers—and thus our safety—depended on our behaving in certain ways, we are likely still depending on those behaviors in our adult lives without realizing it.

For me, this has looked like people-pleasing, peacekeeping, rule-following, approval-seeking, being “good” (good girl, good student, good person, good mother, etc.), and “masking” my neuroatypical qualities.

But in others it may look different. For example, my partner seems to seek emotional safety in doing what other people ask him to do (though he might grumble about it), keeping up a certain image (being “cool”), and following social conventions and/or trends. For someone else it may look more like always needing to be needed, or to be liked, etc.

For those of us operating in this mode, safety comes from being accepted as part of the group. This is a direct inheritance from our early human ancestors, whose survival could depend on acceptance in the group. But we have better options now than to put our sense of safety and security in the hands of others.

Shadow side: shame & stress

When things aren’t working out well for us in this mode, the result is shame and stress from the pressure of trying and failing to meet other people’s expectations. Those are both old, familiar ghosts to my body and mind. How about you?

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2. Sleep mode: alignment with a higher power

I also spent the first twenty-odd years of my life in what I’m calling “sleep mode”:

seeking safety in submitting to a strong leader.

I think we are seeing a lot of this right now in America, on both political sides. Brittney Hartley, author of No Nonsense Spirituality, pointed this out in a recent video:

Some people feel safer “when they are on the good side of the biggest bully on the playground. That is why they will flock to someone like Trump, and they will worship a god who is the greatest dictator, throwing people into hell.”

Meanwhile, those on the far left sometimes seem to be all about submitting to popular social opinion on the internet, which can certainly function like a bully (I’m referring to “cancel culture” and the like). Both extremes manifest the antagonistic energy and groupthink of tribalism, another inheritance from our early human ancestors. This divisiveness that hurts our country fundamentally stems, I think, from simply needing safety.

I spent the first two decades of my life in “sleep mode,” indoctrinated to believe that the only true safety and security to be had in life (or, more relevantly, in the “next life”) came from being on the team, as it were, of God and Jesus. In other words, my safety depended on my doing, saying, and most of all, believing the “right” things.

I joined in railing against the forces of “sin,” bemoaning whatever current cultural forces seemed to be working against us, and trying to convert “lost souls” to Christianity. When doubts arose, I repented and bowed my mind to God’s higher-than-mine wisdom. Thus, it was like I was voluntarily keeping my own mind asleep.

…until it finally managed to wake up. That’s another story. Suffice it to say for now, my life feels a thousand times more peaceful from simply being free to use my own mind.

Shadow side: anger & fear

When our safety comes from doing, saying, and believing the “right” things according to our “team” (religion, political group, etc.), our safety becomes enmeshed with the status of our team. Then, when the team takes a hit, we feel anger (usually felt as “righteous anger” or outrage) against the other team, with fear mixed in as well. Anger can help energize us to fight for our causes, but it’s exhausting as a primary defense mechanism in life.

If your safety and security come from a “power greater than yourself”—whether God, a political leader, or a religious/political “team” in general—then, just as with sheep mode, your wellbeing is at the mercy of forces outside yourself, and that can lead to a life that roils with anger and fear.

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3. Survival mode: alignment with control

I’ve entered this mode during times of high stress in my life:

seeking safety in trying to control conditions.

Survival mode happens when our only apparent options are “fight or flight”—trying to fight against and/or flee from our external conditions. Some people get stuck in survival mode, relating to life as one crisis after another and working themselves to exhaustion in a futile pursuit of safety.

This has been me during times of high anxiety in my life, but it’s been my close friend for her whole life, since her childhood as basically a real-life Cinderella, minus the fairy godmother. If you also were the “scapegoat” or black sheep in your family, you likely gravitate to this mode. (For more about this, I recommend the book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker.)

This mode is particularly pernicious because it’s so self-defeating: you’ve got to keep things under control in order to have safety, but life is literally not under your control—so there’s not actually any safety to reach for, only the pretense of it.

Shadow side: despair

When everything depends on your keeping things under control, and then things get (and/or feel) really out of control, despair sets in.

Again, I’ve been there. My song “Hold On to You” and my poem “Rest, Little One” are about this, so please take a listen/look at those if you are currently in the despair part of survival mode.

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4. Secure mode: alignment with self

This is the mode I’m trying to learn and grow into:

seeking safety through tending my own mind and body.

Just as with secure parental attachments, this safety-seeking mode is all about being attentive and responsive to one’s needs.

For me, this looks like the following things (all of which I write about a lot on this blog, as I’m trying to learn them):

• identifying my feelings and needs, and responding to them with kindness

• speaking up for myself and setting boundaries to protect my needs

• relating honestly with others about my experience, and reaching for help as needed

• using my intelligence to think critically and rationally

• seeking, gathering, and practicing concepts and skills that can help when times are hard (for example, mindfulness)

• pursuing goals with a mindset of “practice” rather than insistence

It has taken me a long time and a lot of work to start learning these things. My journey of healing began with therapy, then expanded via journaling, reading helpful books, and finding a great friend on her own journey of healing. Still, I will probably be trying to build these skills and reshape my mind’s habits for the rest of my life. But with every difficult step I take towards living in self-alignment mode, the resulting joy, peace, and empowerment reward me many times over.

In the shadows

In this mode, there’s no “shadow side,” because your sense of safety and security does not depend on anything outside yourself.

Instead, the shadows come when we stop self-attending and revert to old patterns of self-abandoning. In my experience, the very worst kind of suffering comes from abandoning myself—working against my own needs and interests in order to align with others, with a higher power, or with my projections of control.

I want a life of self-alignment, like a tree standing up tall from its own roots, not a bent-over life of self-abandonment.

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Journey towards safety

Thank you for reading my reflections, and I’m interested in your thoughts. Which one, or ones, of these modes do you feel best describes your patterns? Can you think of safety-seeking modes I’ve left out?

Wherever you are on your journey towards safety and security in your life, I hope you do find it. 🌻

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