Recognizing When You Feel Safe or Unsafe in Your Interpersonal Relationships

Recognizing when you feel safe or unsafe in interpersonal situations is important to your health, mental health and overall well-being.

Feeling Safe in Your Relationship

What is the Polyvagal Theory?

Before I provide suggestions on how to know if you're safe or unsafe, I would like to discuss the Polyvagal Theory as it relates to this topic. 

Understanding the basics of the Polyvagal Theory can also help you to understand your mental health, physical health, how you react when you feel safe and how you react when you feel unsafe.

Polyvagal theory, which was developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, emphasizes the role of the autonomic nervous system, especially the vagus nerve, in regulating our health, mental health and overall well-being.

The theory describes physiological/psychological states underlying daily behavior, including physical and emotional challenges.

The theory helps us to understand how psychological safety, co-regulation, and connection are essential to our physical and psychological existence.

How is the Polyvagal Theory Related to the Nervous System?

The theory describes how the nervous system responses to danger: Fight, flight or freeze.

The following descriptions provide a look at the three states of the nervous system:

• Safe (Social Engagement): When you feel safe, your nervous system is calm and relaxed. You can connect with others, feel your emotions and be yourself because you're not experiencing a threat.

• Mobilization (Fight or Flight): When your nervous system detects danger in your environment, either a physical or psychological danger, it activates the fight or flight response. Your heart rate and breathing increase and adrenaline is released to prepare you to either fight the threat or escape from it.

• Immobilization: If fight or flight isn't a viable option, your nervous system moves into the immobilization or freeze response. This is a survival strategy where the body automatically shuts down, the heart and blood pressure drop and you might feel numb or disconnected. This is the "play dead" response seen in animals as their last survival response when they are faced with overwhelming danger.

In addition, over time, the Polyvagal Theory was updated to include the fawn and appeasement response.

The description I have provided above for the Polyvagal Theory is very basic. For more information and an easy way to understand the Polyvagal Theory, listen to Polyvagal Theory Made Simple by Claire Weston.

Your Nervous System Acts Like Your "Personal Surveillance System"

Your nervous system acts like your "personal surveillance system" asking the question: "Am I safe?"

When you're interacting with others, if you feel safe and calm, your social engagement system is activated because you're not experiencing a threat in the environment.

If you feel threatened either psychologically or physically, your system goes into a mobilization state while you're trying to figure out if you will need to fight or escape.  

Feeling Unsafe in Fight or Flight Response

If you can't fight because the danger is too overwhelming, your body is activated to run before you're even aware of it consciously. For instance, if you're walking down a dark street and you encounter a threatening group of people who make dangerous gestures towards you, you know you're outnumbered so all you can do is run.

Feeling Unsafe and Immobilized 

Using the same example, if you can't fight or run from the danger, your body will go into the immobilization state. This is an involuntary survival tactic when there is no escape. The immobilization state can be seen in the animal world when, for instance, a deer "plays dead" when it is about to be attacked by a tiger. This is the deer's last ditch effort to survive. The tiger will often lose interest in the deer once it "plays dead" because it prefers live prey and it knows instinctively that, if the deer is dead, dead meat might be diseased.

The immobilization response in humans allows the system to conserve energy. The numbing effect of the immobilization response can also create a decrease in the perception of pain, which can be helpful if an attack can't be avoided.

Once again, it's important to remember that this immobilization response is a survival response--it's not a conscious decision. 

How is the Immobilization Response Related to Trauma?

The immobilization response is also associated with overwhelming or traumatic events.

The following example is a composite of many cases to protect confidentiality:

Jane

One day when Jane was in the company break room, her coworker, Jim, approached her to ask her out for a date.

Since Jane wasn't interested in Jim, she looked away and told him she was too busy to go out.  

She was about to leave the break room when Jim, who was annoyed, cornered her in an aggressive way and said, "What do you mean? You don't ever have time to go out with me? Why don't you like me?"

In that moment, Jane, who had a childhood history of sexual abuse,  automatically froze. She was completely numb and dissociated because Jim's aggressive response triggered how she felt when her father abused her.  She was so numb that she couldn't think much less call out for help (see my articles: Why is Past Trauma Affecting You Now? and What is Trauma-Related Dissociation?).

A few seconds later, their supervisor came into the break room and realized what was happening. He told Jim to go back to his office. Then, he helped Jane to calm down. 

Afterwards, the supervisor and Jane reported the incident to human resources. Since human resources had prior similar complaints about Jim, he was terminated.

Over time, Jane realized she needed help to overcome the original abuse by her father, so she sought help in trauma therapy (see my article: How Can Trauma Therapy Help You to Overcome Trauma?).

People who don't understand the immobilization response or who have never been in a similar situation will often question why someone like Jane didn't either stand up for herself or push past Jim. But someone in Jane's situation can't fight or escape because her nervous system shut down due to prior unresolved trauma.

How to Recognize When You Feel Safe or Unsafe in Your Interpersonal Relationships

If you want to assess whether you feel safe or unsafe in your personal relationships, you can pay attention to your internal state:

Assess Your Internal State

• Do you feel calm?

• Do you have an embodied felt sense of being safe or unsafe?

An Embodied Feeling of Calm and Safety

• Do you feel comfortable being somewhat vulnerable when it's appropriate to do so?

• Do you feel comfortable setting limits or saying "no" without expecting repercussions from the other person or feeling guilty or ashamed?

Assess Their Attitude, Behavior and Physical Cues

• Do they respect your boundaries, including your personal space and time without trying to control you?

• Do they respect your thoughts and feelings or do they try to invalidate you if they don't agree?

• Are they attentive when you speak? Do they engage in active listening? Are they there for you in good times and bad?

Active Listening

• Do their actions match their words? Are they emotionally reliable? Do they follow through with their commitments?

• Do they encourage you? Do they celebrate your successes? Do they support you when you have challenges?

• Do they handle disagreements calmly and maturely so you don't have to worry about your personal safety either on an emotional or physical level?

• What does their body language tell you about their emotional state? Pay attention to vocal tone, eye contact, posture and facial expressions because their body language can indicate whether you are safe or not.

In a future article I'll discuss why many traumatized individuals have problems detecting whether they are safe in their interpersonal relationships.

Getting Help in Therapy

If you have been struggling with unresolved problems, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who has an expertise in helping clients with these  types of problems.

Getting Help in Therapy

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed psychotherapist so you can resolve your problems and lead a more meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapies), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

For over 25 years I have helped many individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Article: What Are Glimmers and How Do They Give You a Sense of Ease, Safety and Joy?

8 Tips For Coping With Emotional Triggers

In a prior article, Becoming Aware of Emotional Triggers, I began a discussion about how to become aware of emotional triggers. 

Coping with Emotional Triggers

In the current article, I'm focusing on tips for coping with emotional triggers.

What Are Emotional Triggers?

A trigger is a person, place, thing or situation that causes an unexpected intense emotional reaction that is rooted in the past.  

For people, who have unresolved trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a trigger can lead to their re-experiencing the past trauma as if it were occurring in the present (see my article: Overcoming Emotional Trauma: Learning to Separate "Then" From "Now").

Coping with Emotional Triggers

Any type of sensory stimulus, including what you see, hear, smell, touch or taste, can be a potential trigger.  

The sensory stimulus you experience, which is usually a non-threatening experience in the present, can trigger an trauma response including:

• Fight: The fight response is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system which is part of the autonomic nervous system. You can feel angry, irritable and even rageful. You can experience increased heart rate and heavier breathing as part of your survival instinct to to protect yourself from danger. If you were experiencing a real danger in the present, the fight response would be essential to protect yourself from a dangerous predator. But when you're experiencing an emotional trigger, you're usually not experiencing a threatening situation in the present.  Instead, you're reacting to memories of unresolved trauma as if it were occuring in the present.

Coping with Emotional Triggers

• Flight: In the flight response, you want to flee to avoid perceived danger. The flight response is also controlled by the sympathetic nervous system but, unlike the fight response, the driving emotion is fear (instead of anger) along with the possibility of worry and anxiety. In some particularly intense situations, you might experience terror.  

• Freeze/Immobilization: The freeze response is a combination of the sympathetic nervous system and dorsal vagal activation (dorsal vagal activation is part of the vagus nerve and responds to danger). Fear is the driving emotion with the freeze/immobilization response but, as opposed to the flight response, the desire to run is overtaken by a sense of immobilization. Outwardly, you might appear calm to others because the freeze response often includes emotional numbing, but internally your experience is fear.

• Fawn: With the fawn response, you're trying to avoid a confrontation as you enter into a dorsal vagal shutdown (related to the vagus nerve). You feel overwhelmed and this can  cause absent-mindedness, dissociation or depersonalization (depersonalization is feeling detached from your body). Overwhelming feelings can lead to a sense of helplessness or hopelessness. In a severe case, you might even pass out or lose consciousness. The fawn response is also referred to as the "please and appease" response (see my article: Trauma and the Fawn Response).

What Are Common Emotional Triggers?

Common emotional triggers include but are not limited to:

• Past Trauma:Traumatic events or situations from the past can be one-time events like an accident or physical attack or they might have been ongoing events, like developmental trauma from childhood or complex trauma, including abuse or emotional neglect.

• Painful Negative Memories: Painful negative memories can include memories associated with disappointment, fear, failure and shame and guilt, to name just a few. When you experience a similar situation in the present, these memories can get triggered--even if you don't consciously remember them. In other words, there can be explicit memories that you remember and there can be unconscious memories outside your immediate awareness.

Painful Negative Memories

• Fear and Phobias: Fear can be an emotional trigger. Fear can trigger strong emotional and physical reactions.  Similarly, phobias, such as fear of flying or fear of heights, can also act as triggers.

• Stressful Situations: Stressful situations can trigger anxiety and stress.  Examples of stressful situations can include personal or work-related stressors. 

• Relationship Problems: Current interactions with certain people can trigger intense emotions including sadness, anger or frustration related to the past.

• Loss or Grief: Certain anniversaries, such as the anniversary of the death of a loved one, can be an emotional trigger for sadness and feelings of loss. 

• Major Life Changes: Major life changes, even positive ones, can elicit anxiety and stress as well as emotional triggers. This can include moving, changing jobs, getting married, getting divorced, giving birth, health issues and so on (see my article: Navigating Major Life Transitions).

8 Tips For Coping With Emotional Triggers

Just a word about coping versus overcoming triggers: Coping with emotional triggers is important to your day-to-day living, but overcoming emotional triggers requires working with a trauma therapist who can help you to work through the underlying issues related to your triggers so you don't continue to get triggered (more about this later on in this article).

Until you can get help to resolve these underlying issues, you can learn to cope with triggers when they occur.

Here are 8 tips for coping with triggers that can be helpful:

• 1. Learn to Identify Physical Symptoms Associated With an Emotional Trigger: Since your mind and your body are connected, every emotional trigger has at least one  accompanying physical symptom. By recognizing and identifying the physical symptoms, you can respond with self care instead of reacting in a way that keeps you stuck or activates you even more. Physical symptoms can include but are not limited to:

• Heart racing
• Heavy breathing 
• Difficulty breathing
• Pain or muscle soreness in your neck, back, stomach or other parts of your body
• Sweating
• Dizziness
• Crying
• Other physical reactions

• 2. Learn to Pause: By learning to pause when you can recognize when you're getting triggered, you're taking a break to allow yourself to respond instead of react to the trigger. Pausing also allows you to use various coping strategies. Pausing is a skill that takes practice because triggers occur in a fraction of a second and it takes practice to be aware of the need to take a break while the trigger is occurring. So, until you learn to pause, practice patience and self compassion.

Coping With Emotional Triggers

• 3. Learn to Develop Healthy Coping Skills: Once you have paused, you can learn to use healthy coping strategies, including breathing exercises and grounding exercises to slow down and to calm your mind and your body instead (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection: Calming the Mind and Calming the Body). 

• 4. Acknowledge Your Emotions: Once you have calmed yourself, acknowledge your emotions--no matter what they are. You might be tempted to suppress your emotions because they feel so uncomfortable, but being aware and acknowledging your emotions is an important part of your healing. When you suppress emotions, they come back even stronger.

• 5. Keep a Journal: Write about your emotions in a journal. Journal writing can help to calm you. It can also help you to detect certain emotional and physical patterns when you get triggered.

Journal Writing to Cope With Emotional Triggers

• 6. Establish Healthy Boundaries: People who have experienced significant trauma often have a hard time establishing healthy boundaries with others. This is often because they experienced boundary violations when they were younger. It's important to your sense of well-being to be able to say no when you need to take care of yourself. In addition to being able to respond assertively to reduce the likelihood of getting triggered, it's also important for you to be able to express your emotional needs to people in your life who are supportive (see my article: Setting Healthy Boundaries).

• 7. Develop a Strong Emotional Support System: Supportive loved ones can provide empathy and give you a different perspective on your situation. Talking to supportive loved ones can also help reduce feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, loneliness and isolation.

Coping With Emotional Triggers 

• 8. Seek Help From a Skilled Trauma Therapist: As mentioned earlier, you can learn to cope with triggers as they arise, but to overcome the underlying traumatic issues related to the triggers, seek help from a skilled trauma therapist. Trauma therapy is a broad category for different types of mind-body oriented psychotherapy, which is also known as Experiential Therapy including:

• EMDR Therapy
  
• 
  
• Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
• 
  
• Somatic Experiencing
  
• 
  
• Parts Work/Ego States Therapy
  
• 
  
• Hypnotherapy (also known as Clinical Hypnosis)

What Are the Benefits of Getting Help From a Trauma Therapist?

A trauma therapist is a licensed mental health professional who has training, expertise and experience in various forms of trauma therapy. 

Unlike therapists who are generalists, trauma therapists are specialists who have gone beyond the basic mental health training to learn specific forms of trauma therapy (as mentioned above).

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy is different from most forms of talk therapy because it uses specific techniques and strategies to help clients to overcome trauma.  

As a trauma therapist, as a first step, I prepare clients for trauma therapy by helping them to develop the necessary internal resources to cope with whatever comes up during the therapy session or  between sessions (see my article: Developing Internal Resources and Coping Strategies in Trauma Therapy).

As memories are processed in trauma therapy, the client can experience a reduction and, eventually, an elimination of emotional triggers related to trauma.

If you're experiencing emotional triggers, you could benefit from seeking help from a trauma therapist to overcome unresolved trauma and live a more meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, trauma therapist (using EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing, Ego States Therapy/Parks Work and Clinical Hypnosis), couples therapist and sex therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.