“I don’t feel safe in my inner world”, “I don’t trust myself.”
Many people feel this way.
I have felt unsafe in my inner world, too. And when my inner life felt unsafe, I did everything to escape those scary and uncomfortable feelings.
However, with time and a lot of practice, I gradually learned to stay with and face what I was experiencing, and now I don’t fear my inner life anymore. At all.
I know that if I react now, I react because of something real in the outer world that I need to pay attention to, or because something old in the inner world has been triggered, something that needs my attention. So, I trust those signals now, always.
But it has taken many years to get to this point.
The only thing you can trust about your inner life is that it will act the way it’s conditioned to act
The only thing you can trust about your inner life before you have made friends with it and shown it that you are trustworthy is that it will think, feel, react, and act the way it’s been programmed to. Or, in other words, the ways it has learned to act.
The reasons your inner world acts in those learned ways are usually many. It might be because of trauma and difficult experiences, but it can also come from things you were told, ways you interpreted something that happened, or from the ways culture expected you to behave.
Those inner programs (the learned ways of thinking, feeling, and acting) will continue to run automatically, unless something happens or unless you take action to change them.
The surface expressions of them may shift depending on the situation. You may, for example, be in a new situation with a new person, so it looks different on the surface, but your old patterns will keep playing out in one way or another as long as they are still there, even if the outer circumstances change.
The first step is self-awareness
The first step toward change is self-awareness.
When you become aware of your behaviors and reactions, you create space around them. Instead of just acting them out automatically, you learn to watch yourself and what you are doing. You can see your reactions as they happen.
After a while, you might even be able to stop yourself when you are about to react. And when you are able to not react when you feel the reaction coming, you might even be ready to go deeper and look at where the reaction comes from.
If you find the place inside where your patterns come from, you will become free. But reaching those inner places is not that easy.
Your inner life needs to trust you
If you want to find the deeper truths behind your patterns, your inner life needs to trust you.
It needs to trust that you can hold and be with whatever it tells you, even when it tells you difficult truths.
Not all patterns and reactions come from difficult experiences, but there are always reasons behind them. And your inner world needs to trust you to tell you those reasons. It needs to know that you can handle what it has to reveal, and that you won’t turn away or react negatively.
Your inner world wants to let go of those patterns. It is not comfortable acting in the ways it’s been programmed to act. It is not natural for you to act that way, and it takes a lot of energy to play out all those patterns again and again.
But for some reason, your inner world is still willing to do that, because in some way it believes it has to.
In many cases, it’s doing it to protect you, or to protect an aspect of you from being seen or getting hurt.
Trust is earned, and building a safe relationship takes time
So, the part of you that’s reacting, overthinking, panicking, overeating (or anything else) wants to let go. But it needs to feel safe first.
Only then can you find out where those patterns and reactions come from.
The part of you that’s acting out must know that you can handle whatever it has to tell you. It needs to know that you are safe and strong enough to take care of the part or old event that it’s protecting.
Until or unless it feels safe to give back control to you, it will act in its old ways.
And in a way, it should. Because you are not yet ready to handle what it’s protecting.
Building a safe relationship with your inner life is like building a safe relationship with anyone. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s not a quick fix.
And it shouldn’t be.
Trust is earned. It is built over time, by showing up again and again. Even in the most difficult situations.
So, you need to start gradually and show up again and again, to be the safe person your inner world can trust to reveal its secrets to.
About Hanna Stenefalk
