By Elayne Savage, PhD
© Can Stock Photo / artinspiring
Seems like lately conversations, emails and texts end with “Be Safe.” Have you noticed this too? I’m trying to figure out what it takes for me feel safe. And wondering if feeling safe is the same thing as actually being safe?
The recent threatening wildfires are bringing back memories of 30 years ago when a wildfire that started near me was fueled by strong winds and burned thousands of homes killing 25 people and quite s few animals.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fire-sweeps-through-oakland-hills
I’ve lived here almost 50 years and experienced lots of Red Flag warnings.
But this year it is different.
Wildfire threats seem to be commanding more attention than usual and I’ve been coming face to face with renewed considerations of safety with each warning. I’ve been carefully considering my choices and opting for the safest path.
Every time we get a warning email, text or phone call, there has been a caveat: warning us not to count on driving our cars down the narrow, winding streets. “Plan to walk the 1 1/2 miles down the hill. And if your health is compromised and prevents you from walking down, consider evacuating early.”
So since the end of August my cat Josie and I have evacuated 7 times in two months! Mostly because I want us to feel safe. We have gone to pet friendly motels (she loves La Quinta!) or to stay with my college friend, Bette and her Treeing Walker Coon Hound who has been determined to befriend Josie but is consistently rejected. Josie has been a really good sport about the upheavals, and I am trying hard to be.
Yes I am exhausted from it all - especially packing and unpacking and repacking the car. Oh yes, then there is the emotional exhaustion. Whernkever I am I still keep teletherapy appointments with clients and try hard to answer correspondence.
This last warning was the most threatening: The National Weather Service expected winds up to 40 miles per hour and wind gusts up to 70 mph. Surely uprooted trees and large falleno limbs could block traffic on our narrow roads. O
This time the Mayor of Berkeley wrote: “We encourage hills residents to consider preemptively evacuating to the homes of friends, family or to hotels until dangerous weather subsides. They even sent out a list of motels offering discounts for pre-emptive evacuees. And lots of us did just that.
Luckily the dangerously high winds never did materialize. The next day on the neighborhood listserve some folks blamed the mayor for unnecessary alarmist fear mongering and berated those of us who evacuated for “living in fear.”
Actually I think of it as living in reality and carefully assessing and reassessing what it would take for me to feel safe and be safe. This was not a time for me to try to puff myself up in order to appear fearless. That’s an old familiar role for me and this was not a good time for a repeat.
With the advent of the pandemic safety measures have been part of the mind set of most of us. Measures that we never dreamed of absorbing into our daily lives: masks, constant hand washing, safe distances and the hardest of all: respecting what others need in order for them to feel safe even though we may not believe in that safety measure for ourselves.
Amanda Mull in The Atlantic writes about the difference between feeling safe and being safe:
“Safety is among the most powerful motivators of human behavior, which also makes the drive to feel safe a potent accelerant for confusion, disinformation, and panic. Staying safe requires an accurate, mutually agreed-upon understanding of reality on which to assess threats and base decisions.”
She goes on to explain: “To understand how humans think about safety, you have to understand how they think about fear. To be safe, people need to be free from the threat of physical or mental harm. But to feel safe, people need to be free from the perception of potential harm, confident that they understand what the likeliest threats are and that they are capable of avoiding them. Whether their perception is accurate is often incidental, at best, to the feeling itself.”
You are most likely aware how fear elicits primitive fight-flight-or freeze responses. It’s hard to recognize that in the face of danger we do have choices. We can be pro-active in our thinking and actions to deal in the best possible way for us to feel safe.
Here is the full article from The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/10/pandemic-safety-america/616858/
So I keep checking in with myself: ‘What do I need to feel safe? And what do I need to be safe?’
Last month I looked at a bit different aspect of all this:
Needing Comfort and Reassurance – Getting Chaos and Fear Instead
© Elayne Savage, PhD
Until next month,
Elayne
Elayne Savage is the author of ground-breaking relationship books published in 9 languages.
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