Creating an Emotional Safe Space: Looking Within

We spend hours, days, maybe even years searching for an emotional safe space, where we can unconditionally be ourselves. But I’ve noticed that most of the time, we forget to look within.

I first noticed this with myself. 2020 hasn’t been easy for anyone and granted, I had it better than most, it was still an emotional rollercoaster for me.

Before the lockdown, I was out and about daily, making it a point to surround myself with people, noise, and well, distractions. It wasn’t until I was alone in my room, forced into lockdown, where I realized I needed an emotional safe space that wasn’t out and about in the world, but rather within. I needed to be that emotional safe space that I tried so hard to create outside myself.

I’m not going to lie, it took a lot of healing and growing, but most of all it took a lot of learning. I had to teach myself how to be self-aware. I asked myself, over and over again, what is it that I want from this world, and worked from there to maintain my truth, thoughts, and emotions via my actions.

I then noticed that I did not know how to deal with my emotions, and instead focused on numbing them. With my newfound self-awareness, I realized that to control my emotions, I needed to feel them, not be consumed by them.

While working through my emotions, I noticed small moments in day to day life that would set off triggers within; it felt like any time I would move one step forward, I was hurled twenty back. Learning to deal with triggers, and how to set boundaries with yourself and others, is so important.

Lastly, I taught myself how to be self-compassionate, a skill, I believe, we all need. With an internal monologue of self-compassion, I learned how to self-love, self-communicate, and most importantly, grow.

Healing is known to be an unpleasant process, and extremely painful, but I can promise you that it will be worth it. I would also like to point out that healing is not a linear process, each step in creating an emotional safe space can be explored separately, or together. There are no rules for your healing but merely tools you can use.

I would like to remind you that what worked for me, might not work for you, but it could point you in the right direction of creating your own emotional safe space. So throughout this mini-series, Creating An Emotional Safe Space, I will be sharing what I needed to hear, and what I needed to know before going into the emotional abyss of the soul.