The Balanced Life, Huntsville Alabama

As social creatures we long for safe connections with others.  And yet often this experience eludes us and leads to feelings of isolation and loneliness.  What creates this disconnection? And how can we make a shift towards connection with safe others?  While this shift is very possible, I also recognize that it is very hard work. The hard work is well worth it when we find safe relational connections. 

Bessel Van Der Kolk M.D. in his book The Body Keeps the Score says, “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”

So, how do we find safe connections with others? 

From our earliest relationships our brain begins to collect and store data points that serve as safety cues in relationships.  A smile is generally gathered as a cue for safety, while a scowl or “stink eye” is generally stored as a cue for social threat.  Over time, as we experience a variety of relationships, our data storage gets quite full of cues, both safe cues and cues for social threat.  Our brain then continues to use these cues to help us determine if our present relationships are safe or not.  Our brain is simultaneously storing cues and establishing patterns to respond to these cues from very early on in our lives.  When we perceive a safe cue we move towards another person for connection.  However, when we perceive a cue of threat we move away in protection.  While this system is helpful in some situations it can be very frustrating in other situations. These data points and patterns that our brain and body become accustomed to, may not serve us well today.  The cues may have become confused and wounded by painful relationships, abuse, trauma, and neglect. We may be so accustomed to moving away in protection from threat cues that we are not sure who is safe or even more distressing, no one feels safe to move towards for connection.  

How do we shift these patterns of disconnection in service to our need for connection? 

Well, good news, you have already begun. By learning what sets the pattern we can learn to take more agency in our responses to these cues.  Awareness brings us more choices. We no longer have to react with our past patterned responses.  We can pause and notice and name cues of safety and threat in our present relationships. As well as making decisions about moving closer to someone in connection and moving away in disconnection.  We no longer have to rely on old patterns. Let’s look at two ways to increase agency in our response to social cues. 

First, one of the primary tools for creating safe connections is boundaries.  Some may argue that boundaries put barriers in relational connection. Boundaries have the potential to allow us to move towards connection, with the tools to navigate the cues of social safety and threat, in a way that keeps us safe.  We are more likely to risk the possibility of connection with someone if we have the confidence that we can keep ourselves safe as needed. I like to picture social boundaries like this.  Imagine you have an invisible bubble around you that has many doors and windows of all different sizes.  All the doors and windows have handles on them and the handles are on the inside of the bubble.  You decide the opening and closing of the doors and windows, what size opens, how far it opens, how long it stays open, and when it closes. I invite you to sit with this picture for a moment.  Would that help you to feel safe enough to move towards others in connection? This puts you in the driver's seat of your safety.  If you are having coffee with someone and you begin to share some vulnerable information with them and they respond with eye contact, a head not, some empathetic words like “that must have been difficult” then your emotional brain runs through the database and lets you know they are safe, and you keep the window open and continue to share and enjoy connection.  However, if you begin sharing and the other person does not acknowledge your experience but shifts the focus of the conversation and speaks judgmentally toward someone who had a similar experience, your emotional brain remembers that these are cues for social unsafety and you can close that window a bit and lessen your sharing in a way to protect these vulnerable aspects of yourself.  This perspective on boundaries has potential to bring increased personal social safety and increased connection with safe others. 

The second way to increase agency in our response to social cues is to evaluate the cues we are noticing and see if it is one that has caused pain in the past. If there is past pain connected with a social cue of threat, then we are more likely to respond with automatic disconnection unless we spend time offering ourselves the healing we need from the past experience.  This offers us an opportunity to reset cues and we can have another chance to determine how we would like to respond.  This offers us another opportunity to potentially choose connection.  Often in committed romantic relationships there are repeated cues of social threat that need to be brought to awareness and worked on to heal.  This work has the potential to restore connection. 

We can keep ourselves relationally safe with boundaries and we can increase connection by processing cues of unsafety that we have received from others that may move us repeatedly towards disconnection. There is hope of connecting to meet our human need for safe connection and increase our satisfaction in life. 

If you would like to explore this work more thoroughly with a therapist, reach out to The Balanced Life by email at info@thebalancedlifellc.com.  

Other resources on this topic are Deb Dana’s book Anchored or Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson. 

If you are a psychotherapist looking for CEU’s on this topic I will be offering a training on December 1^st, 2023, entitled “Relationships: Helping clients find safe connections with the self and others”. See the clinical training tab on our website for details and registration.