How Safe Are You With You?
Most of us spend a great deal of time trying to figure out whether we are safe with other people. We pay attention to their tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, and reactions. We look for signs that tell us whether we should speak up, stay quiet, lean in, or back away. Those observations are important, but there is a question we infrequently ask: how safe are you with you? The answer to that crucial question may influence every relationship you will ever have, especially your relationship with yourself.
The One Relationship That Never Ends
No matter where you go or who enters your life, one relationship remains constant: your relationship with yourself. Every decision you make, every difficult conversation you have, every disappointment you experience, and every success you celebrate happens in your own company. Yet many of us spend far more time learning about other people than we do learning how we relate to ourselves. We seek to know what makes them happy with us, what makes them choose us, what makes them celebrate our relationships, and especially what makes them turn against us. But here’s the hard truth: If your relationship with yourself does not feel safe, it becomes much harder to navigate the relationships around you.
Safety Shows Up in Small Moments
Being safe with yourself is not about avoiding discomfort or pretending life is easy. Life will always include uncertainty, disappointment, and conflict, and safety shows up in how you respond when those moments arrive. When you make a mistake, do you respond with curiosity or criticism? When your body tells you it is exhausted, do you listen or push through? When your emotions ask for your attention, do you acknowledge them or convince yourself they should not exist or explain them away? When something feels wrong, do you establish a boundary or abandon yourself to keep someone else comfortable? These moments may seem small or even inconsequential, but they tell you something incredibly important about the relationship you have with yourself.
Your Responses Become Your Relationship
Many of us learned to rely on other people to determine whether we were safe. Over time, we adapted our behavior to avoid fear, conflict, rejection, or harmful consequences. Those adaptations—intelligent behavioral strategies—often worked exactly as they needed to when we were younger, but the challenge is that those same behavioral strategies can become our go-to ways of being even when we show up in safe spaces and places. Without realizing it, we may continue ignoring our limits, dismissing our emotions, questioning our own experiences, or abandoning ourselves in order to maintain connection with others. The more often those responses occur, the more embedded those strategies become, and the more they become the relationship we have with ourselves.
An Ongoing Practice
Safety with yourself develops the same way every healthy relationship develops. Each time you pay attention to your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations, and meet yourself with kindness, caring, and compassion, you strengthen your relationship with yourself. Each time you establish a healthy boundary, acknowledge your experience, or protect yourself from fear and harm, you reinforce the message that your well-being is important.
So before asking whether you are safe with someone else, consider asking a different question: how safe are you with you? The answer may reveal where your relationship with yourself needs your time, effort, energy, and attention.
