Friday Question: Safe Places

The Friday Question: How it works

Every Friday we will pose a question for you all to discuss or privately consider. You can engage with it publicly here on the RFAS blog, or you can join our forum (details below) for a more private discussion. You can write it down to think about later, journal about it, or bring it in to a therapy session with you.

If you would like to volunteer to become a moderator and host future Questions, please email us at volunteer@asexualsurvivors.org—or join our forum and post in the moderator volunteer thread. If you just have an idea for a future Question that you want to share, we have a brainstorming topic on our forum.

Something to Ponder Today

A feeling of safety can be very elusive after trauma. Hypervigilance can kick in and make you feel like nowhere is safe, and everyone is a potential perpetrator. It can take an active effort to create and sustain a sense of safety. So this week, I want to focus on how we can each find and fortify ourselves within some kind of safe place, and find ways to carry those with us.

One of the exercises my therapist had me do when I first started seeing her was to create a mental sanctuary of sorts where I could go within my mind when the physical spaces around me don’t feel safe. Through a guided meditation, we associated a word with that feeling. Now, I can say that word to myself, close my eyes, and go to that place in my mind.

What about you?

Where do you feel most safe?

• Do you have a physical place that feels safe to you?
• Do you have a mental place (or spiritual sanctuary if you lean that way) that you can retreat into?
• What does it look like? What kinds of things are present there? Is there a scent associated with it?
• How can you bring reminders of your safe place with you in your day-to-day life? Is there anything you can carry with you that helps you feel more safe? Can you decorate your room or your work area with imagery that reminds you of your spafe place?
• Do you have a word associated with your safe place that you can say to yourself to help bring yourself back into that mindset?
• If your “safe place” feeling doesn’t come from a physical space of mental image, then where does it come from? What is connected in your mind with the feeling of safety?

You don’t have to answer every (or any!) question, of course. These are just different ways to approach the topic which might be helpful to consider. You can share as much or as little as you like.

On the Forum

• You can discuss this question privately after registering at the forum
• Here are instructions for how to join the forum
• Here’s the invite request form
• You can also still discuss previous questions as well. There is no time limit for joining the discussion.
• Please abide by our rules in both comments and forum posts.

Please note that we are still working things out in the forum, especially technical issues. We are gradually letting people in now who are not moderators or volunteers, but it can basically be considered “in beta” for now. So if you do join, please excuse our forum being a bit of a mess while we get everything tested. There may also be a little bit of a wait time for sending out invites.

Here are a couple of things you should know about posting to the forum:

• All posts are private, and can only be viewed by members
• It is against forum rules to discuss any personal stories shared on the forum with anyone who is not a member without permission of the person who shared it
• You can post as anonymous, once you are a member

The Spoiler Tag

You can hide especially triggering details behind a spoiler tag—which also works in blog comments. Here’s an example:

[spoiler title=’Triggering stuff’ collapse_link=’true’]Explicit/triggering material would go here.[/spoiler]

To make one, just type…

[ spoiler ] ... [ /spoiler ]

…without the spaces. I hope that this helps everyone safely navigate this conversation.