Do you want to feel secure within yourself, but don’t know how?
There are probably two main forces in your life that have disconnected you from your ability to feel secure within yourself.
The first is the betrayal trauma you experienced. To survive being abused by someone you depended on, you had to quiet your inner voice and put the voice of the person who hurt you on loudspeaker. Betrayal trauma made it impossible for you to feel your feelings, know your needs and boundaries, and live your full life because of the physical and/or emotional consequences you would have faced for doing so.
The second force that has probably disconnected you from your ability to feel secure within yourself is society’s messages about certain types of bodies and minds (that is, white, able-bodied, straight, cis, male, middle-to-upper-class) being more important than other types of bodies and minds. If you have been marginalized in any way throughout your life, you have been shaped to believe that you don’t deserve to feel fully secure within yourself.
Even if you are at the top of the privilege ladder in every way, you have still been shaped by these messages to not be interested in things that are “too feminine,” to ignore when you are feeling pain and need rest, to refrain from close relationships with other men for fear of appearing gay, and so on. These conditions are obstacles to feeling secure within yourself.
The truth is that everyone, including you, deserves to feel secure within themselves. What’s more, by committing to the path of feeling secure within yourself you are joining a community of survivors walking the same trail so that it will be easier for more and more folks to follow in your footsteps.
You don’t need to have a personality transplant, go on a 10-day meditation retreat, or have a particular job or a particular relationship or a particular anything in order to feel secure within yourself. In fact, learning to feel secure within yourself is more about relaxing into your own body and mind than it is about developing anything new. It’s about re-connecting to your internal guidance, even if you had to disconnect from it from the time you were very young.
Your internal guidance always remains intact.
This post will take you through seven steps toward feeling secure within yourself. The first step is a short breathing exercise. The rest of the steps will work better if you do the breathing exercise first. The breathing exercise will help you to get calm and centered so that it will be easier to fully practice the next six steps.
Learning to feel secure within yourself takes time and practice. You can do it by following these steps:
1. Breathe
2. Remember your strengths
3. Remember your thread and your pledge
4. Consider the admission price (and accept it when you are ready)
5. Note your needs and boundaries
6. Become your own penpal
7. Never give up on yourself
These steps make up a road map to feeling secure within yourself. This roadmap works if you follow it consistently over and over for as long as it takes. Let’s go through each of the steps one by one.
1. Breathe.
Breathing is super important because your body is in a constant state of communication with your mind. When your body is tense it sends messages to your mind that something is wrong. Because of the betrayal trauma you have experienced, when something feels wrong, you are likely to feel shame and believe that you are bad (see previous posts for an explanation of how this works). The more at ease you are in your body, the easier it is to feel secure within yourself.
There are many different ways to connect with your breath. I like breathing slightly longer on the exhale than on the inhale because it engages your parasympathetic nervous system which is calming and soothing.
Let’s take three of these breaths together right now:
Inhaling a count of 1….2….3….4….and 5
Hold 1
Exhaling a count of 1….2….3….4….5…and 6
Inhaling a count of 1….2….3….4….and 5
Hold 1
Exhaling a count of 1….2….3….4….5…and 6
Inhaling a count of 1….2….3….4….and 5
Hold 1
Exhaling a count of 1….2….3….4….5…and 6
Great!
2. Remember your strengths.
Betrayal trauma taught you to be hyper-focused on the things that could go wrong and to ignore signs that you have been learning and growing. Give yourself credit right now for at least one thing you have done already that helped you build a secure attachment with yourself.
Please give yourself credit for noticing your needs and/or boundaries whether or not you act on them. The more you notice them, the easier it will be to act on them in the future. You can also give yourself credit for ways you take care of your needs and boundaries that already come naturally to you, like eating when you are hungry or showering when you feel sweaty.
You can choose from the following areas to give yourself credit:
Identifying a need that I had
Examples: I noticed that I was thirsty while I was doing work. I noticed I needed rest at the end of a long day. I noticed I was sad and needed to talk to a friend. I noticed I was disappointed and needed encouragement. I noticed that I was feeling insecure and needed guidance. etc.
Acting on a need I noticed and giving myself what I needed
Examples: I got a glass of water and drank it when I was thirsty. I went to bed early at the end of a long day. I asked a friend to talk (or I did some journaling to myself, or I listened to a comforting podcast) when I was sad. I gave myself encouragement when I was feeling disappointed. I read this blog post when I was needing guidance.
Identifying a boundary I had
Examples: I noticed my body tensing up when talking to a certain friend. I noticed feeling a sense of dread when my neighbor asked me to watch their big dog for a whole month. I noticed feeling angry when a coworker made a racist comment. I noticed when I had had enough to drink. I noticed when my schedule was starting to feel overly full.
Acting on a boundary by setting a limit or saying “no.”
Examples: I declined an invitation to get lunch with a friend I consistently feel uneasy around. I told my neighbor that it doesn't work for me to watch their dog. I said, “That comment didn’t feel very good to me,” when my coworker said something racist. I only had one drink because I realized that was enough for me. I stopped adding new responsibilities when I noticed my schedule felt overly full.
Not giving up on myself.
Example: I am reading this post even though sometimes I don’t think I deserve to feel secure. I keep trying to take care of myself even when I get derailed for a while. I reminded myself that I have my own back.
3. Remember your thread and your pledge.
Fill in the blanks with three things good things you think could happen if you became secure within yourself to create your thread:
I follow the thread of ________, __________, and _____________.
For example, if three things you would want to happen if you felt secure within yourself were:
- I want to feel like I belong
- I want to know when to say “yes” and when to say “no”
- I want to trust myself
Your thread would look something like this:
I follow the thread of belonging, recognizing my “yeses and nos,” and self-trust.
Once you have written your thread, it’s time to commit to it. You can do so by saying the following pledge out loud:
I follow the thread of ________, __________, and _____________.
I pledge to commit to my thread, and to re-commit every time I catch myself doubting it, losing hope in it, or forgetting about it. I hold onto the thread even, and especially, when it feels like nothing is changing. I hold onto the thread even, and especially when, other people seem to want me to abandon it. I take the leap of faith and continue to trust my thread. I pledge to do this with as much kindness to myself as possible.
4. Consider the admission price (and accept it when you are ready).
This is a tough one. Most of the time, healing betrayal trauma by building a secure attachment with yourself comes with some sort of admission price.
Sometimes the admission price is just the discomfort of trying something new. Sometimes the admission price is losing relationships with people in your life who don’t want you to choose yourself, or who, for whatever reason, are no longer a good fit for you once you have learned to listen to yourself.
The path of healing betrayal trauma comes with the beauty of discovering what really matters to you, what you really love, and what you really need; it also comes with the grief of saying goodbye to whatever can’t come with you on your path of healing.
5. Note your needs and boundaries.
As often as you can, get into the habit of asking yourself, “What do I need right now?” and “Am I honoring my boundaries right now?”
Start a list of needs and boundaries that you start to notice on a regular basis. You may not know what you need or what your boundaries are at first, and that is okay. Just keep checking in and eventually it will become clear.
6. Become your own penpal.
Becoming your own penpal is one way to build a secure attachment with yourself by writing letters to your future self to look back on as they progress along the path. We will come back to this practice at the end of this post.
7. Never give up on yourself.
The path to feeling secure within yourself is winding and filled with obstacles big and small. I encourage you to take breaks and rest on your path, but always, always come back to it. You will find a whole world worth loving inside yourself, but only if you don’t give up.
To love a person is to learn the song in your heart and sing it to yourself when you have forgotten. Arne Gorborg
This week's belonging reminder:
Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are.
― Rachel Naomi Remen
This week's practice suggestion:
You are invited to become your own penpal this week.
Each day this week, write a brief note to your future self about your commitment to building a secure attachment with yourself. You can write about why you are choosing to commit to this path, about the obstacles you face, about your needs and boundaries, and about your fears and hopes.
Tell your future self what it is like for you to follow your thread every day. You and your future self may not be well-acquainted yet so take this as a chance to let your future self get to know you.
If you continue your self-penpal practice, you will have a treasure trove of letters to look back on in the future when you are struggling and need to be reminded what this is all about and how far you have come on the path to feeling secure within yourself. I recommend you date your letters and make them easily searchable for future reference.
With this exercise, you have a process you can repeat over and over to help you feel secure within yourself. You can use this exercise by itself, or you can go through all seven steps outlined above.
For an assessment of your strengths and areas for growth in building a secure attachment with yourself, read my previous blog post called Home Base: Building a Secure Attachment with Yourself.
For the full exercise in identifying your thread and your pledge, see my post called Instructions on Not Giving Up.