The Difference Between Familiarity and Safety
It’s not as obvious as you might think
When speaking with a friend earlier, I was complaining about how often I felt I wasn’t okay. What made that even more frustrating for me was hearing others who study the 3 Principles mention something along the lines of “We’re always okay, even if we don’t think we are”.
Now to my mind, since I wasn’t feeling okay most of the time, hearing that I always was made tobelieve that there was something deeply wrong or damaged within me, especially considering how difficult it was for me to feel that ‘okay-ness’.
In reality, what I was doing was attaching a feeling to the majority of my thoughts that was a mixture of heaviness, anxiety, and depression. I mentioned to my friend that maybe since I was so comfortable with this feeling, that I must believe it’s a safe way to feel.
He replied: “You’re confusing safety with familiarity, they’re two different things”, which I didn’t understand at first, but the more I considered it the more it did make sense.
Just because you’re used to a certain feeling doesn’t mean it feels safe to you, it just feels familiar. By the same reasoning, just because you’re not used to experiencing pleasant feelings doesn’t mean you feel it’s unsafe to do so, you’re simply familiar with them.
Honestly, safety is kind of a tricky thing overall. The feeling of safety is probably more what we’re after since if you really think about it, it’s never guaranteed out in the world. It can only be felt from within.
It’s all within
