Do you feel safe enough to trust? These 4 Keys will change you forever...

This week, we conclude our series with guest blogger Ruby Usman, who teaches some great strategies for feeling safe.

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During the past few months, the idea of safety has been coming up in many ways. I realize more and more that women (especially those who have been abused) don't feel safe at their very core. And this sense of "feeling unsafe" gets worse by things no one else would think twice of.

When we are feeling unsafe, the trust goes out the window. Our lives then become a survival battle to try and keep safety in whatever ways we can. Some of these ways are:

1. We control ourselves - we keep it in and become self-sufficient (if no one else sees how vulnerable we are then nothing bad will happen to us)
2. We control others - if we can keep a tap on others then nothing bad will happen
3. We don't trust ourselves and we don't trust others. After all, trusting means letting go and how can we if we are feeling unsafe?
4. We avoid living life, taking risks and doing things that we could have dreamt of. What if something goes wrong?

As I am writing about this, I can't help but get connected with that sense of insecurity inside me. In the past, this sense of vulnerability and feeling unsafe was so strong that I became the queen of control. I controlled myself and I controlled others; I kept it all in but nothing helped of course. I was trying to fill this vacuum inside of me and no matter what I did, it kept sucking more and more out of my life.

At the end of it all, I had to confront it; I had to explore and investigate and finally resolve. Since then, I have helped others work with their sense of safety too and have found that the 4 keys described below play a crucial role in regaining that sense of safety.

Key#1 - Recognizing when you are feeling unsafe

The thing with safety is that it doesn't show up as "feeling unsafe" - it always hides behind other forms of emotions like control, anger and anxiety etc. So the first key to recognizing "feeling unsafe" is to be aware of how it shows up for you.

For me personally, the biggest sign for feeling unsafe is that I start acting like a man - meaning I become more masculine, more goal oriented and more rational. With time and practice, I have been able to catch myself when I am behaving in this manner and make different choices (mostly this means staying true to my needs and my femininity).

Key#2: Congratulate yourself

The mere fact that your defense mechanism is working - is amazing!! Yayyyyyyy... Your system (though hyperactive) is active meaning that you can rely on it that it will let you know when any danger presents itself.

Imagine if your defense mechanisms stopped working. You wouldn't know how to defend yourself when the real threat presents itself.

The only issue is that you might not need it and it's getting triggered unnecessarily. Well! that's an easier problem to solve compared to if it didn't get triggered at all, right?

Key#3: Evaluate and Relax with affirmations

Of course, if the situation is dangerous then do whatever you can to remove yourself from that situation.

If that's not the case then, it's critical that we remind ourselves that

* "there is nothing to be afraid of"
* "we are safe"
* "this feeling of unsafety is coming from the past and it's not needed"

It would be a great idea to do a simple meditation or slow deep belly breathing to bring yourself back to feeling ok again. The affirmations above are crucial because your mind needs to realize that it's being hyperactive and hyper vigilant.

With time, your brain will start to re-calibrate when to trigger your defense mechanism and when to stay calm.

Key#4: Find Assurance in love

We are born for love and it's critical to end with love whenever your feeling of unsafety gets triggered. Gary Chapman talks about 5 love languages, which I have found to be very helpful. If you know your love language, you can ask friends or romantic partner to provide that assurance in your love language.

The ending in "love" will help you feel safe again. It will rebuild your trust in yourself and others and with time, you will be able to find that safety and that trust within yourself

Good luck and Blessings

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Hi, I am Ruby Usman, Founder of Healing Wounds Together – A Platform for Female Adults who have experienced sexual abuse in their childhood.

I have lived with abuse for many years of my life. And I have spent many more decades in understanding, recovering and becoming whole again. From my own journey, I have learned valuable lessons not only for myself but for others that were around me and now I have made it my mission to:

* Help the abused take charge of their own healing

* Empower partners of the female survivors

* Help prevent sexual childhood abuse

If this resonates with you, check out my website at www.healingwoundstogether.com, sign up for my blogs and connect with me on these social media sites.

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/rubiversity/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIYk6qCCvWERbGHR9UQgAkg

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+RubyUsman

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ruby_usman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubyusman/

You can calibrate your body to experience trust...

This week, we continue with guest blogger Ruby Usman, who teaches some great strategies for using the body rather than the brain to trust.

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What happens in our body when we are feeling sad, upset and untrusting?

We are slumped over with our neck; our shoulders are curved forward and the head is looking down; we are holding the tension in our muscles and in our body (as a sign that we may need to protect ourselves and be ready).

Alternatively, when we are feeling relaxed, our chest is broader; our arms are open and our muscles are relaxed.

In my last blog Beginning the Journey of Trust, I talked about calming the mind so that you can start to tune into the "inner voice" that is you. Granted, that this process initially can be difficult if you haven't meditated and this is where some somatic/body work will help you progress very quickly.

The idea is this:

If you know your body state when you are feeling trusting & relaxed versus when you are not, you have the capacity to engage your body in listening to your inner voice.

Why is listening to the body important? I hear you ask.

Our brain and our body work in very different ways. Our brain works on creating a databank of experiences and it accesses these past experiences when evaluating a situation at hand. This becomes dangerous for adults who have been abused because their past experiences are very traumatic.

The body instead works on sensations and physiological states. It doesn't have stories. In my blog First Steps Towards the Healing Journey, I explain more on this.

Something very amazing happens when you focus on the body - the stories start to disappear and what remains are just sensations. In this state of presence, you can literally differentiate between whether you are living from the past or being present.

And I have done this myself. No matter what stories my brain was creating, I was able to be present in my body and that completely changed my experience of the situation at hand.

To do this successfully, the first and foremost step is to calibrate your body. This means knowing what are your unique body postures that you use to embody emotions. Once you know how your body posture is whether you are relaxed and trusting versus when you are not, you can use this information to gauge and make decisions in the moment rather than listening to the story your brain is telling you.

CALIBRATION

when you are NOT trusting
For me, there was an abundance of these situations where I didn't feel safe so it was easy to be in one. It may be the same for you or different. Just make sure that you are "actually" safe and be responsible for your well-being.

Once you are in, start to scan your body from head to toe. Take note of any sensations, numbness, coldness and any other sensations or feelings that are present or not present. You can also place your hands on various parts of your body to get a more accurate idea of these sensations or feelings.

You may need to do it a few times but this is your gauge. You know how your body reacts whether you are not feeling safe or when you are not trusting of yourself, or others.

when you are trusting
What relaxes you?

Is it being with a friend? Perhaps a solo walk? or may be feeling the sunshine on your body? no matter what it is, create that for you.

Once you are in that situation, do the same thing. Scan your body from head to toe. Take note of any sensations, numbness, coldness and any other sensations or feelings that are present or not present.


USING THIS CALIBRATION IN REAL-TIME

As you experience life, you will need your "inner wisdom" from time to time (or pretty much all the time). When this happens, here are the questions that can help you assess what's going on inside of you:

* What is your mind telling you? I think it would really help is listening to all the "what-if" scenarios and past experiences that your brain is referring to. 

* Next, focus your attention on your body sensations. What is your body telling you?

* Take a few belly breaths and continue focusing your attention on your body.

Your body's state will tell you what's present for you in that moment.

And now, you have all the information you need to make up your mind. If your body is giving you more signals of "relaxation" then you may become more aware of how your brain stops you from living your life and vice versa.
What if I NEVER feel safe enough to trust?

If you didn't know this before about you, then Wow! now you know and you can do something about it!!

There is also another great lesson in this discovery - whether people are trustworthy for you or not, has nothing to do with them and has everything to do with what has happened in your past.

This realization can free you and can bring you more into the present. It can enlighten your journey because with awareness, comes the choice. You can now start to choose differently.

In my next week's blog, I will expand further on safety and how that's related to how much trust we put in ourselves and others...


Stay Tuned

Blessings


Read Part 4: Do you feel safe enough to trust?

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Hi, I am Ruby Usman, Founder of Healing Wounds Together – A Platform for Female Adults who have experienced sexual abuse in their childhood.






I have lived with abuse for many years of my life. And I have spent many more decades in understanding, recovering and becoming whole again. From my own journey, I have learned valuable lessons not only for myself but for others that were around me and now I have made it my mission to:


* Help the abused take charge of their own healing

* Empower partners of the female survivours

* Help prevent sexual childhood abuse





If this resonates with you, check out my website at www.healingwoundstogether.com, sign up for my blogs and connect with me on these social media sites.






FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/rubiversity/


Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIYk6qCCvWERbGHR9UQgAkg


Google+: https://plus.google.com/+RubyUsman


Twitter: https://twitter.com/ruby_usman


LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubyusman/

Beginning the Journey of Trust

This week, we continue with guest blogger Ruby Usman, who shares with us two powerful strategies for listening to your own inner gut feeling and intuition (which is a key component of trust).

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Do you feel like that there are thousands of people living inside your brain talking all the time and there is so much noise that it's hard to know which one of these is actually "you"?

You are not alone...

No one protected us when we were sexually abused in our childhood. We couldn't protect us (because we were children but our mind doesn't realize that. It keeps telling us that we didn't). We carry the sadness and the shame of this in our hearts and over the period of time, we keep telling ourselves that we aren't good enough. We control ourselves and we control others - because we don't have any faith in our abilities.

In my blog Someone betrayed you... This is how life will be if you live from that place, I shared how difficult life can be if we live from that place. But I also realize that when you are in that place, it can seem impossible to get out of there.

Here is the good news. It's not only possible but it's not that hard to start listening to your own inner gut feeling and intuition.

It requires two simple but consistent steps:

* Practice Slow Breathing or Meditation every day for 15 minutes or so
* Celebrate your Successes

Slow Breathing or Meditation

Meditation is one of the most powerful ways to start to calm the mind and the noise that it creates. There are many forms of meditation and slow breathing is just one of them.

Slow breathing has existed in eastern culture for centuries but it is relatively a new concept in the West and it became more popular after Dr. Herbert Benson’s book, The Relaxation Response.

Slow breathing is based on deep belly breathing, which means that your belly expands and contracts as you breathe. 

The basic mechanics of slow breathing generally include the following three steps:

1. Inhaling deeply through the nose for a count of 3-4
2. Holding the breath for a moment, and
3. Exhaling completely through the nose/mouth for a count of 6-8

Why breathe? I hear you say.

The brain stops its fidgeting after the slow breathing. It calms down; the noise inside the brain reduces and it is also used as a great anxiety management tool.

Once the noise stops, it's then possible to start listening to what is really going on inside of you. It's possible to stop the constant obsession of the brain with "what if" scenarios or other forms of thought obsessions.

Celebrating Successes

If you haven't trusted your own instincts for a while and believe that you can't, chances are that your brain is ignoring all the times that you have actually trusted yourself and have made the right call.

Think about it!

You have probably gone out, driven to do errands, or had a chat with someone. All of these required tiny decisions that you made in the moment and you are still here. It has worked out :)

If you bring your attention to these tiny successes and start acknowledging yourself, soon you will be able to acknowledge bigger successes. The more successes you register and acknowledge, the story in your brain "I can't trust myself" will start to crack because there will be actual events nullifying the old belief.

With slow breathing, you will be able to hear yourself more and with celebrating these successes, your brain will start to change and soon the new belief will take its place and the belief "I can't trust" will be the story of the past.

I invite you to try!

Blessings

Resources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-b-levin/breathing-health_b_1191566.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/05/14/breathing-and-your-brain-five-reasons-to-grab-the-controls/#2f30f3602d95



Read Part 3: You can calibrate your body to experience trust...

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Hi, I am Ruby Usman, Founder of Healing Wounds Together – A Platform for Female Adults who have experienced sexual abuse in their childhood.

I have lived with abuse for many years of my life. And I have spent many more decades in understanding, recovering and becoming whole again. From my own journey, I have learned valuable lessons not only for myself but for others that were around me and now I have made it my mission to:

* Help the abused take charge of their own healing
* Empower partners of the female survivours
* Help prevent sexual childhood abuse

If this resonates with you, check out my website at www.healingwoundstogether.com, sign up for my blogs and connect with me on these social media sites.

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/rubiversity/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIYk6qCCvWERbGHR9UQgAkg

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+RubyUsman

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ruby_usman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubyusman/

Someone betrayed you...This is how life will be if you live from that place!

This month, our guest blogger is Ruby Usman, a powerful speaker and advocate for survivors who draws on her own journey healing from abuse to provide guidance and hope for others. This week, she shares with us the impact of living life with a lens that everyone is out to harm us.

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Many times, when people (who don't know me well) hear me laughing, connecting with people, making jokes and be adventurous and then later learn about my traumatic past, are shocked! They say to me "after all this, how can you be so trusting?"

This got me thinking about trust, optimism and our relationship with trust in this life... How do we look at this world? Do we see people from our own projections or do we experience them in the moment? Do we generalize and put people in boxes or do we stay open and explore?

It's impossible that in life everything would go according to plan. People will disappoint us; they will hurt us and we will feel angry or sad from time to time. 

The question is this: will we keep the situation isolated to the person who caused it or will we extrapolate to their gender, race, or any other demographic?

I used to say - "I don't trust men" or "All men are selfish" etc. If you think about it, it's impossible to know if "ALL men" are selfish. For this to be true, I need to experience 4 billion men on this planet, which is plain impossible. Technically and strictly speaking, the people who we experience in our lives are a tiny proportion of the world population so any generalization is most likely not applicable in all cases. But we jump to these conclusions very easily, sometimes after one experience and sometimes after a few.

The brain does something really funny (maybe not so funny) when one says these things to self as absolute facts. Next time, they see any member of that group (in this case a "man"), their brain will interpret it as a threat and cause a fight or flight or freeze response (the intensity of it will vary but nonetheless the response will remain the same). To understand why this occurs, you can read more about brain's handling in my blog The Anatomy of Childhood Sexual Abuse Trauma.

When I was operating from that mode, this is how my life was:

* I was always on guard (ready to fight, flight or freeze)
* My muscles were constantly in an "ON" position
* I was always on the lookout for who would hurt me next
* I didn't get close to people and I didn't allow them to get close to me
* I wasn't vulnerable

It was "guilty until proven innocent" mode for me. Life from that place was hard. I was spending so much energy just being alive. Many of these people were harmless but it didn't matter for me.

With therapy and healing work, my mindset started to change. I started to see the value of "innocent until proven guilty". I learned to recognise that the men that were around me weren't the men who abused me. This was a great realization.

Men who were around me weren't the men who abused me!

I started to relax and started to give men a chance. My adrenaline started to calm down and my fight/flight/freeze response started to improve.
Granted that sensibility and reasonableness is important. If you don't have any reason to doubt then don't. but if you do, then don't keep being in that place. 

The important thing is to start that internal relationship with yourself where your ability to discern improves. Instead of a blanket "I trust all" or "I trust none", you could start to listen to your inner sense rather than being driven from the past.

In my next week's blog, I will share how you can listen to your inner voice in the mayhem of millions of thoughts that circle inside our brain. Stay tuned...


Blessings


Read Part 2: Beginning the Journey of Trust

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Hi, I am Ruby Usman, Founder of Healing Wounds Together – A Platform for Female Adults who have experienced sexual abuse in their childhood.

I have lived with abuse for many years of my life. And I have spent many more decades in understanding, recovering and becoming whole again. From my own journey, I have learned valuable lessons not only for myself but for others that were around me and now I have made it my mission to:

* Help the abused take charge of their own healing
* Empower partners of the female survivours
* Help prevent sexual childhood abuse

If this resonates with you, check out my website at www.healingwoundstogether.com, sign up for my blogs and connect with me on these social media sites.

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/rubiversity/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIYk6qCCvWERbGHR9UQgAkg

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+RubyUsman

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ruby_usman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubyusman/