Wellness Calendar: Friday 12 December

The twelfth revolution

[Hostile and nurturing environments; what makes us safe; creating safe spaces]

The ‘rat park’ experiments conducted in the 1970s and 80s by psychologist Bruce K. Alexander demonstrated that given a sociable and stimulating environment, rats were content to choose to drink pure water, whereas if they were placed in isolated cages they opted for water laced with morphine.

Similar conclusions are drawn from studies about the human condition. If we exist in a hostile, oppressive world, then we as a population will reflect this with our behaviour. The same would apply if we lived in a nurturing and liberated environment. Treat us like caged rats and we display signs of depravity and dysfunction. Free us from hostilities and over time we will prove that we’re trustworthy and can live peacefully and functionally.

Safety: protecting yourself from risk or danger; keeping yourself free from harm.
Security: the state of being free from threats.
Stability: the strength to stand; firmness; the opposite of chaos; consistency; reliability.

Recognising how hard it is to turn our lives around if we don’t have a safe place to do
so is where the twelfth revolution comes into play: namely the focus on four spaces we may occupy that can help increase our prospects of feeling secure. Here they are for your consideration.

i. Your physical world. This includes anywhere you are at any given moment in time: the street you walk down, the chair you sit in, the bed you lie in, a room, a home, a place you work in. Is there an environment you can go to where you don’t have to worry about where you are? A place that makes you relax?

ii. Your cultural world. Is there any aspect of your cultural identity that can help you feel held, contained and connected? Such as values and beliefs, spirituality, material possessions, symbols, icons, clothing, music, food, language?

iii. Your interpersonal world. Is there a person or people you can be with who will not judge or belittle you?

iv. Your intrapersonal world. This is a fancy way of describing everything that takes place inside you: your mind, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions and reactions and how these interact with each other. Is this a kindly place to inhabit or it is troubled with, say, low self-worth and high, unobtainable standards?

While we cannot guarantee all four zones to be safe all the time, we might be able to lean on some of them more than others in times of need.

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