In a previous post, I repeated a few words and there was a reason for that. I wanted to reinforce the difference between healthy survival safety and unhealthy survival safety. I will share those here one last time as to how I refer to those in these posts:
Healthy survival - Modeled healthy connection and safety. We learned caution and responding appropriately to threat. Feeling safe in the world to care for ourselves. Thriving in life.
Unhealthy survival - Abandonment, neglect and, lack of safety. We feel unsafe in the world.
Humanity is so interesting to me. We're all so different and yet so alike. We all want to belong, but in order to survive we often times end up fitting in to feel safety. When we fit in, we change who we are in order to please others and hope to be accepted by them... this may work short-term, but it rarely lasts long-term.
It's extremely scary to be an original thinker... to stand out and to question. This scares our world which doesn't want to think beyond what they may believe in this moment.
As we grow older and mature, our ways of feeling safety or finding safety may change. If we have been raised in and modeled unhealthy survival, this probably means that these types of changes will need to be more intentional than someone who may have been raised in and modeled healthy survival.
For those of us who were modeled unhealthy survival, these changes may be very frustrating and it may feel like we've made no changes at all, that we've gone backwards or, that we just keep repeating ourselves. I remind myself of three things that I was told by trusted people during these times:
1) We do something 10,000 times before our brain changes
2) When we feel frustrated, it's actually a good sign that our brain is making changes
3) Empathy in knowing we're changing DNA that has been set for many, many, many years of a type of survival that served us well then.
We all find ways to keep ourselves safe and, those ways are endless and personal to us. These ways may be healthy or unhealthy depending on how we each utilize them but, they're each ways that we have come to believe will keep us safe. We tend to not change those ways until they are no longer working for us.
It's extremely scary to be an original thinker... to stand out and to question. This scares our world which doesn't want to think beyond what they may believe in this moment.
As we grow older and mature, our ways of feeling safety or finding safety may change. If we have been raised in and modeled unhealthy survival, this probably means that these types of changes will need to be more intentional than someone who may have been raised in and modeled healthy survival.
For those of us who were modeled unhealthy survival, these changes may be very frustrating and it may feel like we've made no changes at all, that we've gone backwards or, that we just keep repeating ourselves. I remind myself of three things that I was told by trusted people during these times:
1) We do something 10,000 times before our brain changes
2) When we feel frustrated, it's actually a good sign that our brain is making changes
3) Empathy in knowing we're changing DNA that has been set for many, many, many years of a type of survival that served us well then.
We all find ways to keep ourselves safe and, those ways are endless and personal to us. These ways may be healthy or unhealthy depending on how we each utilize them but, they're each ways that we have come to believe will keep us safe. We tend to not change those ways until they are no longer working for us.
Our world models survival in many ways every moment of our lives. It does this in so many ways that we truly don't even know that this is survival. One way the world shows us this is in "group" or "titles". Our world feels the safest when we can place someone in a group and we can give them a title. We feel safest when we can instantly know who someone is and whether or not they belong. A group may give the illusion that it is the strongest and safest place to be when many times it is not. We see it all of the time on the news - large groups (some claiming to be "peaceful") coming together in survival through protest of something - all wanting to turn everyone to their way of thinking because, if we don't think or believe the way they do, we are wrong and we are unsafe to them. We all want to live in the world that we want to live in and we'll try to make everyone fit into that so that we feel safe. We dare not question them. (Note: I am not referring to the black lives who most definitely matter. I am referring to those who are falsely entitled.)
I've never been a "group" person and I don't enjoy being in groups. As I'm questioning in (early) 2020, I'm pondering whether that's because of who I am or is it unhealthy survival? I've tried groups over the years (like, religion) that my parents forced me to be a part of, even though the beliefs didn't fit me. I've also tried other groups (like, spirituality or yoga) because we're told that this is the next RIGHT step after religion. These groups didn't fit my way of living nor my beliefs and I didn't feel safe in these groups, but my hope is to come to a place of healthy safety where I can be in a group and more easily make a decision of whether to stay and just observe or to leave and know that it was an experience to be a part of.
The most difficult part of unhealthy survival is never having the opportunity to get to know who we are. In order to be safe, we may have been modeled people-pleasing as our way to survive. We learned that who we are is whatever someone wants us to be in that moment and that's not thriving.
The most difficult part of unhealthy survival is never having the opportunity to get to know who we are. In order to be safe, we may have been modeled people-pleasing as our way to survive. We learned that who we are is whatever someone wants us to be in that moment and that's not thriving.
Just in questioning and sharing what I've shared, I've already grown closer to a new way of safety.
--Lisa Pratt
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