The Real Reason Your Body Won't Feel Safe (It's Not In Your Head)

Nothing is wrong right now. You're safe. You're home. Nobody's coming for you.

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And your chest is still tight.

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Your shoulders are still up at your ears. And some part of you is still braced. That's not you being dramatic.

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And it's not just in your head. That's a body that learned safety was never guaranteed and it hasn't been shown

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enough evidence yet to believe otherwise. This is one of the deepest layers we'll cover in this series. So stay with me.

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There are three things we're going to talk about today. First, why safety is a body experience, not a fact you can just

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know. Second, what keeps the body stuck in a state of bracing even in objectively safe circumstances.

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And third, how safety actually gets rebuilt.

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First, safety is felt, not reasoned. You can list every fact that proves you're

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fine right now, and your body may still not believe you. Because safety isn't stored as information. It's stored as sensation.

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Your nervous system was shaped by lived experience, not logic. So, no amount of correct thinking automatically overrides

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a body that learned at some point that getting its guard down wasn't safe.

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Second, why the bracing continues. If safety was inconsistent for you, a home where the ground could shift without

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warning, a relationship where you never knew which version of someone you get, your body adapted by staying ready for anything all the time.

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That adaptation made complete sense then. It kept you safe. But your body doesn't automatically update its

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programming just because your circumstances changed. It keeps running the old code until something teaches it directly that the code is outdated.

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And then thirdly, how safety gets rebuilt.

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This happens the same way trust gets rebuilt with a person slowly through small, repeated, consistent

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experiences that don't betray you. Every time you let your body soften and nothing bad happens, that d that's a

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data point. And then every time you present with a hard feeling instead of fleeing it and you survive it, that's a

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data point, too. Safety isn't a single revelation. It's accumulated evidence

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gathered one moment at a time until your body finally starts to believe what your mind has known all along that you are

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not in the same danger you once were.

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So to bring this home, what I this has taken me probably

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my since my father's death and I know I talked about this last week as well, but I've really been thinking about all of

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this and what this has meant for me and how long it took

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for me to do to get to where I am Now I think for a lifelong of being over

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anxious, nervous, overachieving,

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looking over my shoulder, I was never good enough, I wasn't worthy enough, all those things.

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Because as I've been doing this show and talking more and more about the nervous system, I have been realizing so many

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things about this. And at times I sit here and go, I can't

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believe I survived my life with the way that I felt because and it all started from childhood. It all started from, you

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know, my parents being what they were and they weren't nice. I mean, I don't remember a lot of my childhood. I'm going to tell you that right now. I have

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no clue about a lot of it. But every now and then there's these memories that kind of trickle up and you kind of go,

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"H, I wonder." And I think about that because my

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my father became an alcoholic and my mother tried to like drink with him and then decided she didn't like

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that and stopped and all that and then got divorced and all that. But see there was a lot of other stuff that went on. I mean there it was it was one of the most

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dysfunctional homes and I thought everybody had one of these homes at least in my that's what I thought but

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discovered that no most people don't have the home that I grew up in. So I was always nervous. My father was a

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perpetual liar and if he didn't believe you like if you were late for like one  late or 30  it was you

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were grounded and even if you could prove it it didn't matter. That's who he was. It was He was right. He He put the iron fist down. My mother thought it was

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ridiculous. And I just remember one time coming home and my father asked where I was and I told him and he didn't believe

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me. So I gave him the the longest, most crazy lie I had ever drumed up in a nancond. And my mother's looking at me

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and I'm looking at her like she's like, "This doesn't make any sense." And I'm like, "I know, but he's buying it." And he did. He bought it. And my mother

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and I knew that this was about as fabricated as it could ever get. But it was what it bought to get out of the trouble that I was in.

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And I just lived like that. I mean, I really lived like that for the and I was miserable. I was suicidal because of it.

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I I didn't understand anything. And if it wasn't for going to the Edgar Casey with

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my mother at 16 and having that meditation, I would have been dead by now. I would have died a long time ago.

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But see, that meditation where I was given the rod and the staff by who I thought was God, but turned out to be

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the Archangel Michael, I realized at that moment there was something bigger and grander than what

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my shallow existence was at 16 years old. And I think that's what kept me alive

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because after that I ended up in a drug rehab because, you know, I was suicidal and so I figured drugs would be the easy way out.

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And that's how I lived. That's what I did. Everything I did was geared to die because I didn't want to be on this

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planet. I really didn't want to be on this planet. I um I was miserable. I've always wanted to go home. I've always

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asked to go home. And I'm like, but you are home. And then it was like, "No, I don't know what this is, but I'm not home." And it was those kind of things.

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So, it was I constantly perpetuated it.

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Then I get into the legal field and you know, when I got into the legal field, it wasn't what it is today. Thank

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God. Because when it got as bad as it is today, I left.

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But see, there was so much abuse there also. I mean, we got paid well to be treated like dog crap. And we were treated really badly, too. I always seem

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to get the neurotic lawyers. You know, some people got like the best. I don't know how they managed that, but I never got that. I was never that lucky. And

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so, I did a whole lifetime of this. And then I married my ex-husband and he was just like my father, a raging alcoholic,

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the whole bit. And I never knew what I was going to get with him. you know, did he drink before he come home or not? I mean, we got divorced because of it.

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And so, I was always in a fight orflight state of mind and so was my body.

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And as I look over what I'm going to talk about on the show, I just

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constantly go, "My god, Kath." And yet, I just took it that this is what you do. This was normal. This was

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I'm an overachiever. I have all these accolades. I have all this. They meant nothing. But I had it because I wanted to prove my worth.

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And when I stopped and started healing, and I know it was the detox that was probably the biggest change because

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that's when the nervous system started really rearing its head. So I had it when my father

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passed. I started seeing it, but I didn't understand any of it yet. And the detox was the one that really started

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pushing me into looking at what the de what that detox was doing to my nervous system because like I have been saying,

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I liked my wine and I used wine to soothe me. Not that I was aware of it and not that I drink all the time, but

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it was I just really like my wine. And if I was overstimulated or I'm getting downloaded with energy or

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I'm a paradigm's coming up, what's the first thing I do? It's like emotionally I couldn't handle it. My body couldn't

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handle it. It's like just let me have a glass of wine and get the edge off because it was always about getting the edge off.

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10 s, 1 second

And when I did the detox, I wasn't in that place anymore.

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I chose not to drink. I chose to do the detox. And I was a drill sergeant for myself on this because I wanted to lose

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the weight. I wanted to get my body healthy because there was things that were going seriously wrong with me at the time. And I didn't realize that

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until I got the analysis back of what's going on inside my body. And it scared me a lot. And that's why I chose to be a drill sergeant during this process.

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It's not for the faint of heart what I did. I didn't have a problem that I did.

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I only ate one meal a day. I didn't have a problem doing two smoothies a day. I didn't have a problem with a lot of this

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stuff because I could feel the change in my body. I could feel it. But what I couldn't handle was the nervous system

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going off the charts. And I went down a rabbit hole and it was the day I had to

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talk to the doctor and I was so out of my mind that I was just railing on him

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of like do I sound like a person that is doing well right now. I mean I was like

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cuz I think I had taken some THC like 2 and a half milligrams just to get the edge off because S wouldn't let me get

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wine. So I said, "Then we're getting THC." Because I had to do something because I was out of my mind. Literally, I was out of my mind.

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I couldn't think straight. I couldn't do anything. And I said, "Does this sound like somebody who's on THC right now?" Because it wasn't doing anything. And he

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said, "No." And he and then he just told me, you know, just keep doing it. Just breathe through it. He gave me some things to do to just kind of get through

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it. So I did. And what I did after I railed on him that day is I just started

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to stop really moving and I stopped and started to listen to my body because I didn't know what else to do.

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So I breathed and I said it was okay and I was safe. I mean these are things I was saying to myself without even realizing I was saying these things to

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myself because I knew I was safe but I didn't feel safe.

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I knew I was okay, but I didn't feel okay. It was like there was such a disconnect with the body, mind, spirit

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during that fa period of time that I I really thought I was losing my mind. And

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so it was like, okay, Kath, you got to stop. You just got to stop. You got to breathe. You got to be patient. You got to not think. You not you get out of your head. All of it.

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and just be like a boob. And that's kind of what I went was I had to calm down.

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When the water heater broke, I saw that I, you know, cuz I was calming down and it it activated again. And that's when

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the things in the nervous system, old thought patterns, things that the little girl went through, they were coming up.

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And I saw again a body mind disconnect because see I felt like I was back to normal until that happened. But what I

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did notice that even though I went off the deep end, I didn't go off the deep end like I did at the last water or the

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first time I had a water loss. I could see there was a progression being made inside of my body that my capacity

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may have been shot and it may have was shot because I started to understand that there's a correlation with the body, mind, spirit. There's a

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correlation with the brain and the digestive tract. I mean, there's this is all known facts, too. I didn't know that

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yet, but it was known facts. So, there was a correlation of things that were starting to go. I started to understand how my body operated differently and

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better, which was very helpful to understand what was going on when I could like not disassociate from it, but

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step back and observe it. Like get off the stage, you know, my famous last words, get off the stage and get out of

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the drama and just observe what the body was doing because I realized that the body wanted to be healed. The body wanted to come along. The body wanted to take care of me.

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So that meant I had to do something to help the body. And what I was doing was helping the body, but I didn't understand the reaction within the body.

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And so sitting down, breathing, saying it's okay, putting my hand on my heart, whatever it was, meditation, whatever I

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had to do during that period of time, I did. And because of that, I started to see things come up. And that's when that peace came in my body.

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Now I and I noticed because I got solar panels and I noticed that there's been issues around the solar panel since July.

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Makes me crazy. But I've noticed that when I was in an argument with them

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about a couple of weeks ago that they're coming out to fix it again. This is the third time they fix the panels.

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I wasn't as the crazy lady that I always was because I would turn into this like really, you know, the Tasmanian devil is how I called it. And I wasn't like that.

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I was still angry. I was still upset, but I wasn't like off the charts insane in my mind. Like I didn't feel like the

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Tasmanian devil. Like there was still a calmness. Like I was calm within the storm. And to me that was a huge huge

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huge difference that the work that I was doing. So yes when I say that this is not something a one and done it's not

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because we don't know what all we buried in there and we are still going to get triggered. But the longer you practice

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and give yourself that 5 s or 10 s or whatever it is that you need to do every single day to just be okay

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by placing your hand on your heart and saying it's okay or sitting in your chair and you feel that the chair is holding you up and you don't have to

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hold yourself up makes all the difference in the world because you start your consciousness starts expanding more. You start releasing

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things from the body. You know, I've noticed I've started losing weight again because I'm letting go of what I had

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been holding on so tightly for so long that it's like because I've been saying, "It's okay to let it go, body. It's okay. You're safe." But see, it couldn't

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understand that. It had to know it was safe by me doing the things that I was doing for it.

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And that's what this is about because you know you we always think we can logically work our way through things but see logic didn't get me where I was.

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What happened emotionally is what got me where I was. It was not understanding what I was observing as a child. So I

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put it in my brain, filed it away until the day I was able to be mature enough to understand it so I can heal it. That is how life works.

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There's no getting around it. We all come down here with stuff. We all have stuff to work through. It could be fast.

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It could be a lifetime. It could be whatever. That's what we're here for. To learn, to grow, to evolve.

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And the body comes with us. The body is part of us. We created this body. If you don't like what the body is doing, then

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deal with it. You know, change your thoughts. Be nice to your body. Do good things for it. Give yourself permission

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to self-care because, you know, as overachieving women who have families and careers and everything else, that is the last thing we do is o is self-care.

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And that's the thing that you need to do the most. And that was the thing that I started doing. Like I quit being crazy in my head that I was worthless if I

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wasn't doing something, if I wasn't working or making money or whatever it was. It was like I started to be okay

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with relaxing. And what's interesting is I watch S. It's like I try to get him to relax. It's almost impossible. He's the same way. He's getting better.

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18 s, 32 

But I observe how he's always moving and it's like and he makes me tired just watching sometimes and it's like, you know what? I'm fine right where I'm at.

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If I'm tired, I'm tired and I'm not going to push myself and plow through it like I've always done in the past. I'm

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going to honor the body and it's like, okay, I need to just be quiet today, read, journal, watch a movie, whatever it is, but just do nice things for me.

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Make a nice meal. A lot of times just making a nice meal. I cook more now than I have in a long time. I still don't know what I want for dinner half the

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time, but I'm cooking and I'm really enjoying it. makes me feel good to be cooking a nice meal for both Sal and I

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because he's working hard all day. I could be working hard all day. I mean, yesterday I plowed through a lot of stuff and yet here I am and I'm like I

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have the energy to cook instead of being I'm so tired I can't do this. That is what this is when you start healing your

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nervous system and you start allowing your body to just release what it's been holding on. These are the things that happen. you actually have more energy

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and it's a good thing and that's what why this practice

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has gone on like this for the month is I mean yes this is the longest practice I've ever done but see it deserves the

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attention because so much of who we are lies within that and so I wanted to just

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really bring this home for you to understand I'm not a medical doctor about this. I'm doing what I know that my intuition told

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me to do to heal my nervous system and it's working for me. I don't believe in medication. I don't I I do doctors if I'm in a life crisis situation.

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Otherwise, I don't do doctors. I do everything organically as much as I can.

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I take the right supplements for what I can and what I need to do. I do everything. I keep my head on straight.

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So when I heard that my body when I got the diagnosis of what was going on on my body, it freaked me out because that is not me.

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But it was years and years and years of just plowing through and holding on and pushing the nervous system.

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And that's why I stopped today.

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And that's why I feel like I'm coming back. So even though I'm as old as I am, which still blows me away some days when

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I think about it, I don't feel it, I don't look it, and I don't act it because I'm healthy in my mind, my

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body's getting healthier, and my spirit of course wants to just keep on moving.

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So that's what I wanted to bring home today is for you to understand that you are in complete control. Your body is

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designed to keep you healthy. It's what are you thinking? And what is it are you thinking that you don't even know that you're thinking? And the only way to

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find that out is to stop moving and allow yourself to just be.

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So, I'd like for you to go ahead and close your eyes if you are able.

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Otherwise, just soften your gaze and whatever works best for you.

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Taking a deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth.

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Do this one more time. Inhale and exhale.

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Find one point of contact with something solid.

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Your feet on the floor, your back against a chair, your hands on the wheel.

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Just notice that solid thing is holding you.

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You don't have to hold yourself up alone right now.

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Say out loud or silently to yourself, "I am allowed to feel safe

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even in small moments." Say it one more time.

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I am allowed to feel safe even in small moments.

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Take a deep breath in and slowly let it out.

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And as you exhale, let one part of your body soften.

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Your jaw, your shoulders, your hands.

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just one part.

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You're not asking your whole body to trust all at once.

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You're giving it one small piece of evidence right now that it's allowed to let go.

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This is exactly the work we hold space for inside the I am the light sanctuary together. One small moment at a time.

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I'm offering a 7-day free trial. So, come feel what that support is like. I will have the link in the show notes.

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I will see you Friday for the permission slip and again next Tuesday for the final episode of this series. This is

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Kathleen Flanagan and you don't have to do this alone.