Once a month or so, I remove the paywall from an old email, to showcase what you can get if you upgrade to a paid subscription, to share something I’m proud of, and to give myself a break. This was pusblished back in October.

The thing about stepping out of your comfort zone is that you need to be safe to do so.

I used to have some real issues with the phrase 'you don't grow in your comfort zone', because I grew more effectively when I was in (what I thought was) my comfort zone. It turns out it wasn't comfort, it was safety, and I had linked the two.

When you grow up not being used to safety, whether that be emotional, physical, financial, etc, a feeling of safety is noticeable, and feels like comfort. So I was growing in what I thought was my comfort zone, but was actually me being safe, because you can't grow in comfort, but you definitely can't grow without safety.

Which means that when you feel uncomfortable it feels unsafe. This could be for a few reasons:

You've never had discomfort that was safe, maybe your safety relied on you being in control, knowing what to do, and being the rescuer, so the discomfort of not having that feels unsafe.

Relatedly: Distress tolerance. If you have trauma you may not be able to respond well to emotional or stressful situations. So any actual or perceived emotional stress can lead to you feeling unsafe, regardless of whether you are actually unsafe or not.

Habit. If you're used to feeling an underlying level of stress, it becomes the norm, and everything else feels unsafe or untrustworthy.

I think mine was a combination of the first and the last, with a hint of the middle. The middle mostly came from never having emotional regulation modelled for me, and instead I was regulating my own and other's emotions (badly, because I was a child).

It's only now, when I've done the work to not only build safety in my life, but also work on believing in that safety that I can see where I am safe but uncomfortable.

This is important.

I find safety hard to quantify - what does safety mean? What does it mean to me to be safe? Is it an absence of un-safety? Is it even possible to be completely safe? Do other people just ignore what could go wrong?

I think I'm getting a better answer. This is linked to my work on excavating my anxiety and no longer being anxious as the default.

Safety being surrounded by people I can trust, and also trusting in myself. I don't need to prepare myself for all sorts of possibilities, because 1) the people around me generally are accountable for their own choices* 2) they won't expect me to shoulder anything alone if I need or want help and 3) I can manage things as they arise.

*I'm not happy with this wording, but what I mean is they don't do what my parents did, which was make an obviously bad choice, choose to ignore it going wrong, and then make it my problem. This doesn't mean I don't help my friends, it means I'm not forced into the position of rescuer constantly.

It's not actually less stressful to plan for situations that may not arise. It's more stressful to constantly be thinking about what could go wrong next and try to plan for that outcome.

I'm not saying don't plan at all: I'm not leaving free and YOLO. It does mean I don't need to plan for things like my partner suddenly deciding he hates me or me breaking my ankle. I can plan for things I know I need to, have a couple of backups for things that are a bit of a stretch, and leave the rest to my abilities and my community.

It's also moving away from expecting bad things to happen.

I find good times hard to trust. This came from having an unstable home life, where chaos appeared often. However, even when I left home, my periods of calm and happiness were often intruded on by a crisis my family were having that I had to fix. I used to dread the phone ringing, because it might be fine, but it might be something that torpedoed all my plans until I fixed it.

So I internalised the fact that nothing good lasts, and I don't trust unbroken periods of calmness in my life.

This combination means I was constantly finding things to be anxious about, needing that level of anxiety to remind myself that I was keeping myself safe, and without that, I was lost.

I've been working towards not needing that, and working from that place of calm being the default.

It's not a belief that nothing bad will happen, but it's not believing that it's an inevitability, and when it does happen, I need to resolve it myself.

I think this is safety. Trusting in myself, and the people around me and our ability to handle things.

I trust my tutors, which means when they push me, I am uncomfortable and safe. I said to a friend that I've never been so lovingly ripped open until my counselling course, and that's the growth I'm experiencing. It's uncomfortable, but it's safe.