How To Replace Fear With Safety

When we feel depressed or anxious, it’s normal for us to drop into black-and-white thinking, especially when it comes to relationships. We place things in categories to keep our life safe and predictable. This includes the people in our lives.

We place people we’re comfortable with in the “safe box”, and we place people we’re challenged by in the “unsafe box”. 

This would be highly adaptable if people were that simple. But none of us are perfect. We make mistakes. We let each other down. We drop the ball. 

If we place everyone in our life who has ever wronged us in the “unsafe box”, we will be left feeling unsupported and alone. Lack of social support is the last thing we need when we’re feeling depressed and anxious.

There must be a better way. A better way to maintain safe AND realistic relationships.

This is where the work comes in. We need to toss the streamlined process of categorizing we’ve developed to protect ourselves and begin practicing...you guessed it...setting boundaries.

Setting boundaries involves effective communication about our needs and feelings in relationships. No wonder our culture would prefer the boxes. Knowing our needs and feelings, much less communicating them, can be so hard!!!

If we start small and mindfully, we can begin noticing what NEED we’re missing when we feel that urge to push someone away and put them in the “unsafe box”.

Do we need to feel listened to? Do we need space? Do we need connection?

What would it be like to communicate our needs and see what happens? Is it possible this mending of relationship--this sharing and being responded to--could feel even more safe and healing than someone getting it perfectly right in the first place?

After we set boundaries, we can look for evidence to support a person’s place in the “safe box” or “unsafe box”. We can observe whether the other person behaviorally respected our boundary request.

In this way, setting boundaries cuts down on our urge to mind-read or fortune-tell--both unreliable sources of information. We can instead perceive behavioral evidence that we are safe or unsafe.

Setting boundaries then creates self-trust and safety rather than feeding the fear that comes with the unpredictability of people and relationships. 

If you’re interested in working with me personally to overcome your unique challenges related to boundary-setting and begin replacing your fear with safety, I invite you to contact me here.

What's Cozy About Your Depression?

Depression is an incredibly isolating and painful experience. When depression moves through us, we feel hopeless and guilty for it.

But it can also be scary to think about moving out of depression. There’s a comfort in the known, despite the pain that comes with it. There are valid reasons we resist letting our depression go.

We know how to blame everything on ourselves. If we’re the worst, we don’t need to have difficult conversations with others. We don’t need to set boundaries. If we take all the responsibility, we’re never let down by others.

We know how to maintain hopelessness. If life is hopeless, we have no figuring out to do. We don’t have to anxiously consider our future or our existential questions. We are released from the risk of desiring things/people/experiences in our life that we don’t yet (and might not ever) have.

We know how to just be. If we’re feeling depressed, we have no motivation to get out of bed. We don’t need to go anywhere, do anything, or see anyone. We’re simply surviving.

Black and white thinking is SIMPLE. That’s why our brains love doing it so much.

We think we’re protecting ourselves by boiling life down into “this or that”--“I’m bad, you’re good”. From this mindset, there are no surprises, and we are in total control.

We don’t step into the complexities of the truth of the human experience, including that people are not bad or good but instead terrifyingly and beautifully dynamic. We spend no time on elusive hopes that may or may not manifest. We certainly do not engage in frivolous activity like exercising or socializing. Life is simple.

After a while though, we recognize how long life is. How torturously slow it feels to move through life within this molasses of simple but monotonous depression. We wonder about getting out--about healing.

This is where baby steps, kindness, and safe others come in. Because healing must be done at a manageable pace with the support of people we trust, whether they come in the form of a friend, family member, therapist, or all of the above.

It’s okay and normal to be afraid of healing. The important part is recognizing what fears depression is protecting us from. Do we fear worthiness, connection, activity, vulnerability?

Slowly but surely, ideally with the help of a mental health professional, we can begin to deconstruct these fears and step into the experience of wholeness. Wholeness meaning our complex and dynamic existence as human beings, free from the dangerous simplicity of black and white thinking.

If you or someone you know is feeling curious about beginning the healing journey out of depression, you can check out www.psychologytoday.com to find a mental health professional who can help. If you live in Colorado and are interested in beginning your therapy journey with me, reach out at www.discoveringpeacetherapy.com/contact.