When Familiar Isn't Safe

We’re wired to seek safety and familiarity — and for good reason. But what happens when what feels familiar isn’t actually good for us, and what’s unfamiliar feels too frightening to approach?

This episode explores the space between staying stuck and taking the leap, and considers another possibility: what if you don’t need more courage, but more information?

Perhaps you don't have to leap into the unknown. Perhaps you can make the unfamiliar more familiar.

If today's conversation stayed with you, you'll find more reflections, resources and ways to continue the conversation at lisawestgate.com/exhale I'd love to see you there.

Music credit: Trolldans - Ström

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to Exhale. Across the last few episodes, we've spoken about self-trust, identity, belonging, adaptation, and other related concepts. Today, let's have a conversation about safety, familiarity, and the nervous system. But before we begin, let's breathe in and out. You don't need to solve anything in the next few minutes. You don't need to decide whether you're doing this right. We're just gonna get curious together. I want to begin by introducing an idea that sometimes our reactions, our decisions, our choices make more sense when we understand that we're wired, deeply wired, to seek safety and familiarity. So right at the outset of today's conversation, I want to make it clear that safety isn't a problem, safety isn't the enemy. Wanting safety or being driven by safety is not a weakness, it's not a limitation, it's not some sort of developmental failure. Searching for safety and our drive for that above almost all else keeps us alive. Our brains and our bodies are wired to constantly be scanning for potential threat, and obviously the intensity of that can be different from person to person based on past experience. Familiarity gives us information. We may think, oh, I've been here before. I know what happens here. Or I've been in a similar situation, I know what to expect. Let's make something really, really clear. We don't need to be aspiring to become people who don't care about safety. Okay? Safety is really important. That is the part of you that doesn't want to walk into traffic. It's doing a really good job, right? So we we need that part of us. So the question isn't how do I stop seeking safety and you know, do stuff that scares me or do stuff anyway, push through. And as we go along in today's episode, I want you to notice what comes up for you at certain points during your listening. Notice what um reverberates within you. Notice what creates a little emotional response, and you don't even need to know what it is or why it is, just notice what as you're listening, you know what kind of washes over you, and you don't have a reaction to one way or the other, and conversely, what comes up in this episode that does elicit some sort of response, and again, you don't need to understand it, you don't need to solve it, you don't need to make it go away. The ask is just notice, just notice that interesting, curious, that's information, all right. So the first sort of major idea that I want to explore in this conversation is that familiar does not necessarily equal safe. A situation or a person or a set of circumstances, something can be familiar and nourishing. It can be familiar and neutral. It may be familiar and uncomfortable, it may be familiar and deeply unhealthy at the same time, and the flip side of this same coin is that the unfamiliar is not necessarily risky or dangerous. Something can be unfamiliar and wonderful. Maybe you've, you know, the first time you went to a hot springs or you got a you know, some other self-care thing, and you'd never done it before, it was unfamiliar, but gee, it was really good. Something can be unfamiliar and challenging. Something can be unfamiliar and completely manageable, and something can be unfamiliar and genuinely unsafe. The nervous system that is sending you these messages that I'm asking you to, you know, tune in and listen to specifically for the next 10 to 15 minutes. The nervous system doesn't necessarily have the benefit of your entire rational analysis of a situation. It can simply register, I don't know what happens next, and that can be enough to create a desire to retreat towards what is known. This conversation has been coming up all week in my world, in my writing of my book, in conversations that I've been having with people, and I trust that it's come into my sphere now because it's the right time to talk to you about it. So we want to talk about why we sometimes choose the familiar. We learn very early on that belonging and safety are connected. We've talked about this before. If you've listened to all the previous episodes up until now, we live in families, communities, tribes, we come from, we we've evolved from group living situations, and we learn what gets approval, what creates conflict, what makes us acceptable, what keeps us connected. And it's inherently connected to other people around us. So sometimes outsourcing our decisions, opinions, or desires isn't evidence that something is wrong with us, it makes developmental sense. We learned to look around and ask, what does everyone else think? What is expected here? What keeps me safe? And that strategy may have been incredibly useful once maybe for a while. The interesting question to me becomes whether the same strategy is still serving the life that you're living now. And here's this interesting idea of when our drive for safety, which makes perfect sense, becomes a cage. Some may resonate with you, some may not, and all of that is okay. So notice what does ring a bell for you and be okay with letting go of a suggestion or something I say. If it's not for you, that's okay. Here's some examples of when safety may not be working for you anymore. Staying in a situation just because you know how to manage it. Not asking for what you actually want because you already know how someone might react. Choosing the predictable option even when you know it isn't what you want. Looking for everyone's opinion before trusting your own? Telling yourself you're not ready when what you really mean is I don't know what happens next. What if some of the things that you've called indecision, resistance, or lack of confidence and punished yourself for or blamed yourself for are actually your system saying, I don't know this yet. Have you had conversations with well-meaning friends or family, or you know, found yourself in a a real or short spiral that's around the advice of just take the leap, you know, feel the fear and do it anyway. Um what's that other one? You know, jump and build the wings or the plane on the way down. We have lots of ways of referring to this jumping into the unknown in our collective vocabulary. And honestly, sometimes that's what someone needs to hear, and sometimes that's terrible advice. If something feels completely unknown, asking yourself to blindly leap into it can understandably feel terrifying. So I have an alternative suggestion, which you know, as everything I put to you, take it if it works, leave it if it doesn't, that's fine. My alternative to this blind faith leap into the darkness is make the unfamiliar more familiar, which sounds pretty straightforward when I say it out loud. But what does that mean? It means if you are in a situation that's familiar but not serving you or uncomfortable or toxic or dangerous, and you're entertaining the idea of stepping into the unfamiliar and it's scaring the crap out of you. Here's some ideas of ways to make the unfamiliar more familiar. You can start by gathering information about the alternatives, about what else is out there. You can ask questions of people who are in the unfamiliar, but to them it's not, it's very familiar. Ask some questions. You can do some research. Um, if you are looking at leaving a work role and looking at another job, maybe research, you know, is there another qualification that you should get to bridge the gap from one to another before you quit your current job? Talk to someone who's already done it. Maybe it would be helpful for you to visit somewhere before committing. If part of this for you is a shift in geography, in geographical location. Maybe it's moving out of Melbourne to a small town, maybe it's moving out of town to a city, maybe it's moving into state or further. Another way that we can make the unfamiliar more familiar is trying something on a smaller scale. Can you do a mini version of it? Practicing creating a plan building some support structures on the unfamiliar side of the equation. What do you need to get in place? And identifying what you would need if things didn't go according to plan. Right? It's that old story of if plan A doesn't work, you've got twenty five other letters. None of those things means that you're avoiding the thing. Right? If you're doing those things, asking questions, getting more information, none of that means you're avoiding the change. You're giving your system more information. And more information can create more familiarity. You don't always need more courage. Sometimes you need more information. So rather than me telling you what your nervous system is doing, I'd rather give you a few questions and let you notice what happens when you ask yourself these questions. So just again, just noticing what comes up for you. Where in your life might familiarity be getting mistaken for safety? Is there something you've been calling not ready that might actually feel frightening because it's unfamiliar? What information, preparation, or support might make that unfamiliar thing feel a little more knowable? Where are you genuinely protecting yourself from something unsafe? And where might you be protecting yourself from something simply because you don't know what happens next? What is one small way you could become more familiar with something you're currently afraid to approach? Not do the whole thing. Just become more familiar with it. As you go through, and maybe you want to listen back to that last section of questions, or you want to write them down and work on them later. I want you to notice where your body feels a little more settled when you imagine taking one small step towards something unfamiliar. You don't have to know exactly what comes next, just notice where there is a little more space, curiosity, or possibility. Notice what happens when you stop asking yourself to leap and start asking yourself what would help you feel ready. And ready is just a decision. You might have discovered that there are places where your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. You might also have noticed somewhere that familiarity has become a little too powerful. Neither requires judgment. You don't need to override yourself, you don't need to force yourself into the unknown. You can just get curious. You can gather information, you can make the unfamiliar more familiar, and you can take one small step. As always, listen to me for the questions and really listen to yourself for the answers. Until next time, take your breath and exhale.