The Risk of Feeling Safe

By Tuesday Rivera

A colleague and I recently supported a group of women in a "Wilderness Wander” - a day of fasting and exploring the land in a remote area of Maine.

In our council circle after the women's solo time on the land, I heard myself say to one of the women, "I want to thank you, not for the risk you took in going out into the wilderness. I think the real risk you took was the risk of allowing yourself to feel safe."

The room stopped. There was a collective intake of breath.

"Can you say that again?" someone asked.

"The real risk you took was the risk to feel safe," I repeated. "We don't often let ourselves do that: feel safe."

In fact, we almost never let ourselves do that. And of course, there are good reasons for that. The world is a scary place at all times, but especially now. And the world is certainly scarier for some people, especially now. I do not deny or ignore that.

But we've become so focused on the language and practice of "feeling safe" that we've come to believe the safety we're seeking is outside of us. That we must feel safe at all times to do what needs to be done in the world. That our bodies must be in a certain state of rest for us to be okay.(1)

And I want that! I want well-regulated bodies living in a just world. It's just that we don't have much of that right now. And I've come to see that we're wearing our "I don't feel safe" as a badge of honor—a way of signaling to others that we're awake to what's really happening around us. After all, how could we feel safe when the world is burning? That would be absurd.

​To feel safe would be to deny our awareness of the very real suffering around us and the risk to so many people in the world.

To not feel safe is to be a just, caring person...not a neurotic, self-obsessed one.
​
But I wonder: where did this expectation of feeling safe come from?

​The Spider's Web

While I was walking through the forest in Maine I kept running into spider webs. And when I say "kept running into," I mean that every several feet on the path, no matter how careful I was, I would find myself with a face full of spider web. I ducked and dove under them, left the path to avoid them, put my arms in front of me to feel them before I ran into them. All to no avail: up or down, left or right, I found myself with a faceful of web.

And while every single web I blundered into was a minor nuisance for me, it was a catastrophe for the spider. I was wrecking its home, disrupting its livelihood, making it miss its next several meals.

Humans are not spiders. But our reality is the same: we are beings in a natural world, always just a step or two away from catastrophes not of our making. The physical dangers are real—fire, flood, earthquakes, war and guns, a giant walking into our house and destroying the place. But most of us are talking about emotional and spiritual safety when we assert the need to be safe.
​
And with any kind of safety - physical, emotional, spiritual - we think we can control something externally to create an internal sense of safety. Most of our control comes through learned hypervigilance that we wear like a badge of honor, but that actually keeps us from our own aliveness.

The Habit of Unsafety

For most of us—certainly most of us reading this—not feeling safe is less a reflection of our actual physical circumstances at any particular moment, but rather a long-held habit. Such an ingrained pattern that it has become part of our identity. (2)

And while all of this has a basis in an external reality, at any given moment, we are safe. We can choose to see our present safety while not denying an unsafe world.

To risk feeling safe, then, is a choice in the midst of precariousness, not an impossible condition to achieve.

For many of us, not feeling safe has become a psychological and spiritual habit. A signifier. A performance—to ourselves and others—that we are aware and awake to an unjust world. But it's not a performance that feels good. It's one that we believe to be accurate, but it keeps us from engaging our own depths and shadows, from taking action for personal and collective transformation. Because to do that is always risky. And we are actually avoid risk by keeping ourselves in this chronic feeling of precarity.

To risk feeling safe is a choice to break a long-held and deeply reinforced pattern that many of us cling to without question. Not feeling safe becomes what we're used to, our natural resting state, our identity. It becomes what we think makes us who we are, what we think makes us good citizens who care about the world.
​
But I think caring about the world requires us to risk feeling safe. To drop the long-held habits that keep us focused on what we don't have and what we can't do may actually be the key to not only our own transformation but the world's.

What Would It Look Like?

So what would it look like to risk feeling safe? To shake off the ongoing narrative that safety will be found "out there" and not "in here"? To say, "I can know that this world has never and will never promise safety," but also to say, "I will risk feeling safe so that I can get on with the hard work of my own - and the world’s - transformation"?

To risk feeling safe means that I can turn to every part of my life in a different way. It means that I can find safety in myself rather than waiting for others to give it to me or create the conditions under which I will feel safe.

It is to drop the long-held habit of planning and delay: When I feel safe, I will...

And move to present-day understanding and action: I am safe, so I can...

​A Practice:
Pause here, and think: If I felt safe, I would...
Let yourself finish that thought: If I felt safe, I would...
Give yourself some real time with the thought: If I felt safe, I would...

Can you feel the risk inherent in feeling safe? Can you begin to see what you would do and be if you took that risk? Can you see how this habit of "not feeling safe" is a defense mechanism against your own aliveness and action? That not feeling safe isn't generally about actual physical danger, but that refusing to own our own safety at any moment is a psychological and spiritual habit that keeps us from beginnings, from claiming truth, and from allowing endings?

To risk feeling safe, then, could actually open all sorts of doors for us. All of us.

---

​Next week, I'll share how risking safety transforms three crucial moments in our lives: when we begin something new, when we claim what's already true, and when we allow necessary endings. For now, just notice: where are you denying your own safety? What doors might open if you risked feeling safe?
​
If this teaching is already stirring something in you—if you're feeling the call to explore where you're holding yourself back by clinging to unsafety—I'm holding space for exactly that on November 11th in a live webinar. We'll go deeper into this practice together, exploring where you deny your own safety and what becomes possible when you risk feeling safe. This won't be just me teaching—we'll do the work together. [Register here]

---

(1) Here obviously, I am not talking about those in current war torn or occupied places.  I am not talking about those who, at this very moment, may be experiencing starvation, bombs, and gunfire or who may be being pulled off the streets by men in masks. 

(2) Watch your own reaction to want to insist that because many aren’t safe, YOU aren’t safe. Or that talking about safety in these ways is somehow insulting or neglects the reality of those experiencing harm right now.  Notice your desire to go into that habitual line of thought, rather than staying here: by your phone or computer, actually safe in this moment, but clinging to your habit of denying that safety.  Watch where it might limit you.