Without Security There is No Trust

During a recent therapy session, I was asked what made me feel safe, and I really struggled with an answer. It was in that moment, that I realized, that so many of my feelings, thoughts, and behaviours are centred around the fact that I rarely feel safe, and without that feeling of security, I don't trust. Growing up, the only times I felt relatively safe was when I was alone. I see now, that this is still the case to this day. I grew up always feeling like I was walking in two worlds I wasn't accepted into because I never really belonged to either. Neither world offered the security and safety I so needed.

My family life was difficult to say the least and I experienced so much trauma and neglect. I was raised with very traditional, European, and catholic values and beliefs. I grew up immersed in my culture and only spent time with people outside my community at school. So much of what I was taught did not fit with my own beliefs and values, and I found my culture oppressive, limiting and no security in it. The belief that "blood is thicker than water" was force fed to me as far back as I can remember, and I struggled with this so much. It made no sense that I was suppose to value and love my family above all else despite them being the ones hurting me. I was made to feel like nothing, like there was something wrong with me. I was ridiculed, abused, and humiliated constantly. Home was suppose to be a safe place, but for me it never was. It was a place I felt alienated from.

The world outside my family wasn't much better. I met different kinds of people, but again, so much of what they believed and valued didn't fit either. Again, I was often ridiculed, called weird, or crazy because I was different. I experienced different kinds of cruelty, abuse, and abandonment. This was another world I didn't really fit into either. 

I think so much of why I struggle is because I want nothing more than to find a place I belong, that feels safe and secure. I meet people and think, maybe this time I found it, but then something happens and I am left feeling disappointed and hopeless again. I realized that I keep looking to others to offer me that feeling of security, but that if I don't feel that way within myself, I'll never find it with anyone else. 

So I find myself asking, how do I offer safety and security to myself? What are the things that make me feel safe and secure? How do I give myself these things? Do I also need others to help me feel safe? I can't help feeling that by finding the answers to these questions that I'll finally be able to help heal a very old and very deep wound within. 

Nick Cave & The Badseeds 'Jubilee Street'