The Power of Feeling Safe How Kindness Restores Resilience
[Music]
let’s start with a thought experiment
imagine romeo saying to juliet
oh juliet my soul calls out for you
the sound of lovers calling each other’s
name through the night is the sweetest
sound
lovers here what do you notice in your
body
now imagine romeo is saying exactly the
same thing
but with the voice of darth vader
oh julian
i saw ye is calling out
what are you noticing this time
isn’t it interesting that is not what
romeo said
but how romeo vocalized it that creates
such a difference in our internal
experience
as a former engineer i want to know why
and as a licensed psychotherapist i want
to know why this matters
one useful framework is the polyvagal
theory
with the original research by stephen
porges and clinical translations
by dave dana back in the days when we
were living among tigers in forest
we need a very fast way to make
decisions in order to survive
the thinking brain is a bit too slow for
this
imagine a person who needs to think what
is the probability
that this is a tiger and if it is
should i meditate should i run
or should i eat a strawberry pancake
these people usually get eaten and do
not live long enough
to pass on their genes we are here
because our ancestors
is in the top 1 of the most
anxious people dave dana
used the exquisite metaphor of the
ladder to illustrate this imagine a
ladder
with three heart-wise survival programs
at the top of the ladder is the
relational and engagement program
when we are here we feel safe and we are
relational
we still feel the full spectrum of
emotions
from sadness to joy yet there’s an inner
knowing
that we will be okay when we are here we
can be mindful
compassionate productive creative
vulnerable and we open our heart to
loving and being loved
in safe connections it’s like living in
a house
where you feel warm and secure and you
invite your friends over
for pepperoni pizza party or cow salad
party i do want to honor our dietary
preferences
and we play taboo and watch jurassic
park
we feel whole alive safe
so that’s what happened when we feel
safe in our body
but what happens when we don’t feel safe
it’s like when we run into a tiger in a
forest
when we don’t feel safe our bodies shut
down the relational zone
because it’s not safe to engage anymore
and trying to engage
my haste and our demise just ask anyone
who practice non-violent communication
with tigers
so we go to the middle of the ladder
fight-or-flight
program where the only relevant
questions are
can i run fast enough to escape from the
tiger
or am i strong enough to defeat the
tiger the body is on high
alert all the time the logic is
i would rather mistake every stick to be
a snake
than to miss one snake that i mistake as
a stick
just try saying that really fast 100
times before you go to bed tonight
we are scared we become selfish and
everybody is now on their own when we
are stuck in this fight or flight
program
we may feel fearful anxious restless
impulsive impatient irritable insomniac
inattentive
and hyperactive it’s like living in a
house where the alarm is blaring
24 7. we are not going to invite any
friends over and we are not going to be
enjoying
life here the prize for safety is
eternal
vigilance so that’s what happened
when we run into a tiger in the forest
but what if the tiger comes home with us
every day what if the tiger is your
parents who beat you
and you are a kid but you also need your
parents to survive
what if you are gay and get bullied at
school but you also need
to go to school to graduate what if you
are stuck in a meaningless job
with an unreasonable boss but you also
need that paycheck
for your rent what if the tiger is these
haunting memories
from your past that you cannot
unremember
what if you live in a society that
treats you as
less than because of how you look who
you love
what you believe or where you were born
what about that internal voice that has
been telling you
all your life that there is something
wrong with you
and you are not good enough and you are
not worthy to be loved
this last tiger by the way is a tiger
that has been living in my heart since
when i was a kid
these tigers are not so easy to escape
from
and when your body detects an
inescapable
threat is shut down the fight-or-flight
program
and go all the way down to the bottom of
the ladder
to freeze and shut down program
the survival value of freeze and
shutdown
can be found in a movie the jurassic
park when it’s too
late to run away from dinosaurs your
best chance for survival
is if you do not move
because dinosaurs detect delicious
edible human beings
through movement unfortunately when we
are stuck
in this program we may feel depressed
demotivated disillusioned dissociated
disconnected
disembodied fatigued with joint helpless
hopeless
we just try to numb ourselves through
life like a zombie
it’s like living in a house where all
utilities are turned off
and you are shivering along in a dark
room here the price for safety
is eternal aloneness
where we end up on the ladder depends on
how safe we feel
and how safe we feel depends in part
on the non-verbal relational signals
that we send to each other
when we look at each other with kindness
and love
the body moves up when we talk into to
each other
using the voice of darth vader the body
moves down
because in the wild a lot of our
predators
emit low frequency monotonic sounds
just like the sound of darth vader and
our body
responds accordingly how do we apply
this
three things think of a triangle
resilience
safety connection let’s start with
resilience
imagine there’s a rubber band at the top
of the ladder
when you have a stressful day the rubber
band moves down
when you go home and you are able to
relax and your cat jumps up
and purls on your stomach your rubber
band
goes up every day the rubber band swings
up and down the ladder as it navigates
through the stresses
of everyday life without losing its
natural elasticity
and this elasticity is a good analogy
to represent a physiologically based
resilience
that we all have as part of our
evolutionary
heritage it’s like the name of the song
it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got
that swing
there’s good news and bad news here so
think about which one you would like
first
the bad news is there’s an intrinsic
vulnerability of being human
and it’s impossible to go through life
unscathed
from pain or grief the best moments in
your life you cannot hold on to them
forever
and we all go down the ladder sometimes
but the good news is there’s an
intrinsic resilience
heart wide in the body and the worst
moments in your life
they too shall pass knowing this
fact allow us to go through life with a
certain kind of equanimity
to make the best moments livable
and the worst moments livable
we are all resilient but this resilience
is only fully activated when we are able
to feel
safe safety unlocks resilience
but what if we never feel safe
the rubber band may go down and get
stuck
for a long time and it may lose its
elasticity
and even when you release it it may not
go all the way back
up and when this happens symptoms like
anxiety and depression
may become part of our life isn’t it
interesting
that sometimes your mental health
struggles is because
you have something inside that you need
to take a look at but other times
you struggle because you live in a world
that is
messed up and your body is
only responding to what’s wrong in the
world
and there’s nothing wrong with you
i find that a very normalizing and
validating way
to look at our deepest struggles one of
my favorite quotes
is before you diagnose yourself with
depression
first look around and see how many jerks
you have in your life
because depression can be a natural
reaction
to being surrounded by jerkness
sometimes we live in a world that
resembles a zombie
movie a zombie attacks a human
a human becomes another zombie and this
zombie attacks another human
and zombies beget zombies
just like hurt people hurt other people
we start infecting each other with pain
fear anger cynicism indifference and in
humanity
and we start pulling each other down the
ladder
we can turn this around with kindness
and connection when we can be kind
towards ourselves
we create more safety inside and our
body moves up
and we can be kind with each other we
create more
safety with each other in the
relationship
in the connection and together we move
up the ladder
no human is an island and
we are all connected and our letters are
all connected
just like what somni451 said
from womb to tomb we are bound to others
past and present and by each crime and
each kindness
we birth our future every moment
how you treat every person has an echo
in
eternity when we can be kind towards
each other
kindness create connection connection
help us feel safe
and safety unlocks resilience and
resilience
moves our collective future one step up
yes each act of kindness may feel like
just a drop in the ocean but then
what what is an ocean but a multitude
of jobs thank you