Mental Health
My Understanding of Safety: Inside and Out
Brianna Holfoth
September 5, 2025
Is It Safe To Be Me?
Safety. What does that even mean?
For me, it means comfort, yes, but also freedom. Stillness. Spaciousness. It means I can breathe, unclench, and soften into myself without needing to be on guard. Sometimes, to even start defining what safety is, I’ve had to first name what it’s not. Because I didn’t grow up feeling safe in my body. I was always around strangers, always on edge. I couldn’t fully relax. I've had to grow into safety as many people do.
Even now, I catch the tension in my shoulders, specifically my left one, which I hold tight without even realizing it. Sometimes while driving, I notice I’m holding my ankle tight for no reason.
These small things remind me: safety isn’t an abstract idea. It’s deeply physical. It’s whether or not my body feels like it belongs to me. Whether it feels like home.
And home is exactly what our body is. It’s our first house. Our temple. The place we live every moment of our lives. So it makes sense that the first layer of real safety has to begin here. Not in some external idea of protection, but in the quiet, moment-to-moment experiences of being okay here. Inside this skin. Inside this breath.
Of course, external safety matters too. The safety of our homes, our neighborhoods, the spaces we move through. Research shows that when people implement basic home safety measures, they experience 43 percent higher daily feelings of tranquility. Adults who consciously create secure environments report significantly higher life satisfaction. But here’s the thing: if you don’t feel safe inside your own body, how can you really trust the safety of the outside world? How can you expand into new environments, into new opportunities, into joy, if your body doesn’t believe it’s safe to soften?
Learning to relax has been part of my healing. Part of how I’ve come to know what’s truly safe for me. It's what I aim to help others accomplish too.
Assessing What Is Safe For Me
The next layer is discernment. Once you feel safe enough inside, you can start to assess what’s safe around you. It becomes easier to listen to the quiet internal signals that say something feels off, or something is too much. Your body becomes a compass, not a battleground.
For me, that's like paying attention to the difference between discomfort that grows me and danger that harms me. It’s looked like learning my neighborhood, paying attention to my intuition, and taking precautions without slipping into paranoia. It’s also looked like checking in with friends and family, sharing concerns, and strengthening each other’s sense of protection.
Safety is communal too. Group-based safety practices have been shown to amplify individual feelings of security by over 80 percent. People who share their safety intentions with others are five times more likely to sustain those practices over time.
We are wired to co-regulate, to look out for one another, to build something strong enough together that no one has to weather the storm alone. We're meant to grow in a community like Cadre.
Emotional and Relational Safety
Then there’s the relational layer. Can I express what I need? Can I say no, or that hurt, or this isn’t working for me?
Feeling safe to express my needs in a relationship has been a huge, ongoing lesson. For so long, I feared being seen. That kind of visibility can feel terrifying when you’ve spent your life adapting or performing just to survive.
But when emotional safety exists, when I know I can be honest and still held, it changes everything. It opens up space for real connection. For boundaries, yes, but also for mutual growth.
There’s research backing this too. Couples who prioritize emotional safety report over 60 percent higher relationship satisfaction. Individuals who regularly practice healthy boundaries show stronger social connection and overall well-being. So much conflict could be softened with clearer expectations, with kindness, with courage. But we can’t communicate our boundaries if we’re still afraid of being abandoned. We can’t share our truth if we haven’t built the internal structure to hold what comes after.
The same is true in our digital lives. We spend so much time online now that our sense of personal security extends into that realm too. I’ve had to learn how to create boundaries not just in conversation, but in my notifications, my timelines, my inbox. I fell victim to a scam a few years ago, so I learned the hard way.
Digital awareness practices like managing screen time, protecting privacy, setting limits around news and social media have been shown to improve mental well-being by more than 50 percent. Even something as simple as “digital grounding” can reduce overwhelming symptoms within a matter of weeks.
Sometimes I need to pause and ask: is this relationship draining me or nourishing me? Is this digital space agitating my nervous system or helping me stay present in my life? That’s safety too. And it matters given the amount of stimulus bombarding our systems all too often.
I used to be so sensitive I couldn’t take in much of anything, especially the world’s pain. I had to turn away from the news because I couldn’t absorb it without spiraling. Therefore, I need to create a boundary for a while. Not because I didn’t care, but because I wasn’t emotionally equipped to hold it. Over time, I built up inner resilience and capacity to handle it. I learned how to hold myself. And from there, I could begin to hold others (and even the world at times) more fully too.
It Is Safe For Me To Change
And finally, change.
To me, this is the deepest, most spiritual layer of safety. Because nothing in life stays the same. Change will always come. And if we’ve built even a basic scaffolding of safety (body, relationship, community) then we’re better equipped to meet that change with open hands instead of clenched fists.
This has become my mantra: it is safe for me to change.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean I don’t grieve or resist. But I’ve grown the muscle that says I can let go. I can move forward without needing to control every outcome. I can trust that I’ll know what to do, one step at a time.
This kind of safety takes practice. And permission. And patience. Studies show that people who consciously build safety into transitions experience significantly less anxiety and greater acceptance of life’s impermanence. Ritual-based practices reduce fear about the future. Resilience-building isn’t just about grit, it’s about creating containers of meaning when everything else feels uncertain.
Sometimes I have to ask myself, am I staying in a certain place because it’s actually good for me, or just because it’s familiar? Am I holding on to a version of myself that no longer fits, just because I’m afraid to outgrow it?
We all do this. But when you choose to expand, even when it’s uncomfortable, you build something that can never be taken away: trust in yourself. The kind that makes you resilient. The kind that ripples out into everyone you touch.
Because that’s the final truth here. When you feel safe, others feel safer around you.
And maybe that’s the real gift of doing this work.
You don’t just keep yourself safe.
You help create a world where others can feel safe to be themselves too.
Is It Safe To Be Me?
Safety. What does that even mean?
For me, it means comfort, yes, but also freedom. Stillness. Spaciousness. It means I can breathe, unclench, and soften into myself without needing to be on guard. Sometimes, to even start defining what safety is, I’ve had to first name what it’s not. Because I didn’t grow up feeling safe in my body. I was always around strangers, always on edge. I couldn’t fully relax. I've had to grow into safety as many people do.
Even now, I catch the tension in my shoulders, specifically my left one, which I hold tight without even realizing it. Sometimes while driving, I notice I’m holding my ankle tight for no reason.
These small things remind me: safety isn’t an abstract idea. It’s deeply physical. It’s whether or not my body feels like it belongs to me. Whether it feels like home.
And home is exactly what our body is. It’s our first house. Our temple. The place we live every moment of our lives. So it makes sense that the first layer of real safety has to begin here. Not in some external idea of protection, but in the quiet, moment-to-moment experiences of being okay here. Inside this skin. Inside this breath.
Of course, external safety matters too. The safety of our homes, our neighborhoods, the spaces we move through. Research shows that when people implement basic home safety measures, they experience 43 percent higher daily feelings of tranquility. Adults who consciously create secure environments report significantly higher life satisfaction. But here’s the thing: if you don’t feel safe inside your own body, how can you really trust the safety of the outside world? How can you expand into new environments, into new opportunities, into joy, if your body doesn’t believe it’s safe to soften?
Learning to relax has been part of my healing. Part of how I’ve come to know what’s truly safe for me. It's what I aim to help others accomplish too.
Assessing What Is Safe For Me
The next layer is discernment. Once you feel safe enough inside, you can start to assess what’s safe around you. It becomes easier to listen to the quiet internal signals that say something feels off, or something is too much. Your body becomes a compass, not a battleground.
For me, that's like paying attention to the difference between discomfort that grows me and danger that harms me. It’s looked like learning my neighborhood, paying attention to my intuition, and taking precautions without slipping into paranoia. It’s also looked like checking in with friends and family, sharing concerns, and strengthening each other’s sense of protection.
Safety is communal too. Group-based safety practices have been shown to amplify individual feelings of security by over 80 percent. People who share their safety intentions with others are five times more likely to sustain those practices over time.
We are wired to co-regulate, to look out for one another, to build something strong enough together that no one has to weather the storm alone. We're meant to grow in a community like Cadre.
Emotional and Relational Safety
Then there’s the relational layer. Can I express what I need? Can I say no, or that hurt, or this isn’t working for me?
Feeling safe to express my needs in a relationship has been a huge, ongoing lesson. For so long, I feared being seen. That kind of visibility can feel terrifying when you’ve spent your life adapting or performing just to survive.
But when emotional safety exists, when I know I can be honest and still held, it changes everything. It opens up space for real connection. For boundaries, yes, but also for mutual growth.
There’s research backing this too. Couples who prioritize emotional safety report over 60 percent higher relationship satisfaction. Individuals who regularly practice healthy boundaries show stronger social connection and overall well-being. So much conflict could be softened with clearer expectations, with kindness, with courage. But we can’t communicate our boundaries if we’re still afraid of being abandoned. We can’t share our truth if we haven’t built the internal structure to hold what comes after.
The same is true in our digital lives. We spend so much time online now that our sense of personal security extends into that realm too. I’ve had to learn how to create boundaries not just in conversation, but in my notifications, my timelines, my inbox. I fell victim to a scam a few years ago, so I learned the hard way.
Digital awareness practices like managing screen time, protecting privacy, setting limits around news and social media have been shown to improve mental well-being by more than 50 percent. Even something as simple as “digital grounding” can reduce overwhelming symptoms within a matter of weeks.
Sometimes I need to pause and ask: is this relationship draining me or nourishing me? Is this digital space agitating my nervous system or helping me stay present in my life? That’s safety too. And it matters given the amount of stimulus bombarding our systems all too often.
I used to be so sensitive I couldn’t take in much of anything, especially the world’s pain. I had to turn away from the news because I couldn’t absorb it without spiraling. Therefore, I need to create a boundary for a while. Not because I didn’t care, but because I wasn’t emotionally equipped to hold it. Over time, I built up inner resilience and capacity to handle it. I learned how to hold myself. And from there, I could begin to hold others (and even the world at times) more fully too.
It Is Safe For Me To Change
And finally, change.
To me, this is the deepest, most spiritual layer of safety. Because nothing in life stays the same. Change will always come. And if we’ve built even a basic scaffolding of safety (body, relationship, community) then we’re better equipped to meet that change with open hands instead of clenched fists.
This has become my mantra: it is safe for me to change.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean I don’t grieve or resist. But I’ve grown the muscle that says I can let go. I can move forward without needing to control every outcome. I can trust that I’ll know what to do, one step at a time.
This kind of safety takes practice. And permission. And patience. Studies show that people who consciously build safety into transitions experience significantly less anxiety and greater acceptance of life’s impermanence. Ritual-based practices reduce fear about the future. Resilience-building isn’t just about grit, it’s about creating containers of meaning when everything else feels uncertain.
Sometimes I have to ask myself, am I staying in a certain place because it’s actually good for me, or just because it’s familiar? Am I holding on to a version of myself that no longer fits, just because I’m afraid to outgrow it?
We all do this. But when you choose to expand, even when it’s uncomfortable, you build something that can never be taken away: trust in yourself. The kind that makes you resilient. The kind that ripples out into everyone you touch.
Because that’s the final truth here. When you feel safe, others feel safer around you.
And maybe that’s the real gift of doing this work.
You don’t just keep yourself safe.
You help create a world where others can feel safe to be themselves too.
Is It Safe To Be Me?
Safety. What does that even mean?
For me, it means comfort, yes, but also freedom. Stillness. Spaciousness. It means I can breathe, unclench, and soften into myself without needing to be on guard. Sometimes, to even start defining what safety is, I’ve had to first name what it’s not. Because I didn’t grow up feeling safe in my body. I was always around strangers, always on edge. I couldn’t fully relax. I've had to grow into safety as many people do.
Even now, I catch the tension in my shoulders, specifically my left one, which I hold tight without even realizing it. Sometimes while driving, I notice I’m holding my ankle tight for no reason.
These small things remind me: safety isn’t an abstract idea. It’s deeply physical. It’s whether or not my body feels like it belongs to me. Whether it feels like home.
And home is exactly what our body is. It’s our first house. Our temple. The place we live every moment of our lives. So it makes sense that the first layer of real safety has to begin here. Not in some external idea of protection, but in the quiet, moment-to-moment experiences of being okay here. Inside this skin. Inside this breath.
Of course, external safety matters too. The safety of our homes, our neighborhoods, the spaces we move through. Research shows that when people implement basic home safety measures, they experience 43 percent higher daily feelings of tranquility. Adults who consciously create secure environments report significantly higher life satisfaction. But here’s the thing: if you don’t feel safe inside your own body, how can you really trust the safety of the outside world? How can you expand into new environments, into new opportunities, into joy, if your body doesn’t believe it’s safe to soften?
Learning to relax has been part of my healing. Part of how I’ve come to know what’s truly safe for me. It's what I aim to help others accomplish too.
Assessing What Is Safe For Me
The next layer is discernment. Once you feel safe enough inside, you can start to assess what’s safe around you. It becomes easier to listen to the quiet internal signals that say something feels off, or something is too much. Your body becomes a compass, not a battleground.
For me, that's like paying attention to the difference between discomfort that grows me and danger that harms me. It’s looked like learning my neighborhood, paying attention to my intuition, and taking precautions without slipping into paranoia. It’s also looked like checking in with friends and family, sharing concerns, and strengthening each other’s sense of protection.
Safety is communal too. Group-based safety practices have been shown to amplify individual feelings of security by over 80 percent. People who share their safety intentions with others are five times more likely to sustain those practices over time.
We are wired to co-regulate, to look out for one another, to build something strong enough together that no one has to weather the storm alone. We're meant to grow in a community like Cadre.
Emotional and Relational Safety
Then there’s the relational layer. Can I express what I need? Can I say no, or that hurt, or this isn’t working for me?
Feeling safe to express my needs in a relationship has been a huge, ongoing lesson. For so long, I feared being seen. That kind of visibility can feel terrifying when you’ve spent your life adapting or performing just to survive.
But when emotional safety exists, when I know I can be honest and still held, it changes everything. It opens up space for real connection. For boundaries, yes, but also for mutual growth.
There’s research backing this too. Couples who prioritize emotional safety report over 60 percent higher relationship satisfaction. Individuals who regularly practice healthy boundaries show stronger social connection and overall well-being. So much conflict could be softened with clearer expectations, with kindness, with courage. But we can’t communicate our boundaries if we’re still afraid of being abandoned. We can’t share our truth if we haven’t built the internal structure to hold what comes after.
The same is true in our digital lives. We spend so much time online now that our sense of personal security extends into that realm too. I’ve had to learn how to create boundaries not just in conversation, but in my notifications, my timelines, my inbox. I fell victim to a scam a few years ago, so I learned the hard way.
Digital awareness practices like managing screen time, protecting privacy, setting limits around news and social media have been shown to improve mental well-being by more than 50 percent. Even something as simple as “digital grounding” can reduce overwhelming symptoms within a matter of weeks.
Sometimes I need to pause and ask: is this relationship draining me or nourishing me? Is this digital space agitating my nervous system or helping me stay present in my life? That’s safety too. And it matters given the amount of stimulus bombarding our systems all too often.
I used to be so sensitive I couldn’t take in much of anything, especially the world’s pain. I had to turn away from the news because I couldn’t absorb it without spiraling. Therefore, I need to create a boundary for a while. Not because I didn’t care, but because I wasn’t emotionally equipped to hold it. Over time, I built up inner resilience and capacity to handle it. I learned how to hold myself. And from there, I could begin to hold others (and even the world at times) more fully too.
It Is Safe For Me To Change
And finally, change.
To me, this is the deepest, most spiritual layer of safety. Because nothing in life stays the same. Change will always come. And if we’ve built even a basic scaffolding of safety (body, relationship, community) then we’re better equipped to meet that change with open hands instead of clenched fists.
This has become my mantra: it is safe for me to change.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean I don’t grieve or resist. But I’ve grown the muscle that says I can let go. I can move forward without needing to control every outcome. I can trust that I’ll know what to do, one step at a time.
This kind of safety takes practice. And permission. And patience. Studies show that people who consciously build safety into transitions experience significantly less anxiety and greater acceptance of life’s impermanence. Ritual-based practices reduce fear about the future. Resilience-building isn’t just about grit, it’s about creating containers of meaning when everything else feels uncertain.
Sometimes I have to ask myself, am I staying in a certain place because it’s actually good for me, or just because it’s familiar? Am I holding on to a version of myself that no longer fits, just because I’m afraid to outgrow it?
We all do this. But when you choose to expand, even when it’s uncomfortable, you build something that can never be taken away: trust in yourself. The kind that makes you resilient. The kind that ripples out into everyone you touch.
Because that’s the final truth here. When you feel safe, others feel safer around you.
And maybe that’s the real gift of doing this work.
You don’t just keep yourself safe.
You help create a world where others can feel safe to be themselves too.
Is It Safe To Be Me?
Safety. What does that even mean?
For me, it means comfort, yes, but also freedom. Stillness. Spaciousness. It means I can breathe, unclench, and soften into myself without needing to be on guard. Sometimes, to even start defining what safety is, I’ve had to first name what it’s not. Because I didn’t grow up feeling safe in my body. I was always around strangers, always on edge. I couldn’t fully relax. I've had to grow into safety as many people do.
Even now, I catch the tension in my shoulders, specifically my left one, which I hold tight without even realizing it. Sometimes while driving, I notice I’m holding my ankle tight for no reason.
These small things remind me: safety isn’t an abstract idea. It’s deeply physical. It’s whether or not my body feels like it belongs to me. Whether it feels like home.
And home is exactly what our body is. It’s our first house. Our temple. The place we live every moment of our lives. So it makes sense that the first layer of real safety has to begin here. Not in some external idea of protection, but in the quiet, moment-to-moment experiences of being okay here. Inside this skin. Inside this breath.
Of course, external safety matters too. The safety of our homes, our neighborhoods, the spaces we move through. Research shows that when people implement basic home safety measures, they experience 43 percent higher daily feelings of tranquility. Adults who consciously create secure environments report significantly higher life satisfaction. But here’s the thing: if you don’t feel safe inside your own body, how can you really trust the safety of the outside world? How can you expand into new environments, into new opportunities, into joy, if your body doesn’t believe it’s safe to soften?
Learning to relax has been part of my healing. Part of how I’ve come to know what’s truly safe for me. It's what I aim to help others accomplish too.
Assessing What Is Safe For Me
The next layer is discernment. Once you feel safe enough inside, you can start to assess what’s safe around you. It becomes easier to listen to the quiet internal signals that say something feels off, or something is too much. Your body becomes a compass, not a battleground.
For me, that's like paying attention to the difference between discomfort that grows me and danger that harms me. It’s looked like learning my neighborhood, paying attention to my intuition, and taking precautions without slipping into paranoia. It’s also looked like checking in with friends and family, sharing concerns, and strengthening each other’s sense of protection.
Safety is communal too. Group-based safety practices have been shown to amplify individual feelings of security by over 80 percent. People who share their safety intentions with others are five times more likely to sustain those practices over time.
We are wired to co-regulate, to look out for one another, to build something strong enough together that no one has to weather the storm alone. We're meant to grow in a community like Cadre.
Emotional and Relational Safety
Then there’s the relational layer. Can I express what I need? Can I say no, or that hurt, or this isn’t working for me?
Feeling safe to express my needs in a relationship has been a huge, ongoing lesson. For so long, I feared being seen. That kind of visibility can feel terrifying when you’ve spent your life adapting or performing just to survive.
But when emotional safety exists, when I know I can be honest and still held, it changes everything. It opens up space for real connection. For boundaries, yes, but also for mutual growth.
There’s research backing this too. Couples who prioritize emotional safety report over 60 percent higher relationship satisfaction. Individuals who regularly practice healthy boundaries show stronger social connection and overall well-being. So much conflict could be softened with clearer expectations, with kindness, with courage. But we can’t communicate our boundaries if we’re still afraid of being abandoned. We can’t share our truth if we haven’t built the internal structure to hold what comes after.
The same is true in our digital lives. We spend so much time online now that our sense of personal security extends into that realm too. I’ve had to learn how to create boundaries not just in conversation, but in my notifications, my timelines, my inbox. I fell victim to a scam a few years ago, so I learned the hard way.
Digital awareness practices like managing screen time, protecting privacy, setting limits around news and social media have been shown to improve mental well-being by more than 50 percent. Even something as simple as “digital grounding” can reduce overwhelming symptoms within a matter of weeks.
Sometimes I need to pause and ask: is this relationship draining me or nourishing me? Is this digital space agitating my nervous system or helping me stay present in my life? That’s safety too. And it matters given the amount of stimulus bombarding our systems all too often.
I used to be so sensitive I couldn’t take in much of anything, especially the world’s pain. I had to turn away from the news because I couldn’t absorb it without spiraling. Therefore, I need to create a boundary for a while. Not because I didn’t care, but because I wasn’t emotionally equipped to hold it. Over time, I built up inner resilience and capacity to handle it. I learned how to hold myself. And from there, I could begin to hold others (and even the world at times) more fully too.
It Is Safe For Me To Change
And finally, change.
To me, this is the deepest, most spiritual layer of safety. Because nothing in life stays the same. Change will always come. And if we’ve built even a basic scaffolding of safety (body, relationship, community) then we’re better equipped to meet that change with open hands instead of clenched fists.
This has become my mantra: it is safe for me to change.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean I don’t grieve or resist. But I’ve grown the muscle that says I can let go. I can move forward without needing to control every outcome. I can trust that I’ll know what to do, one step at a time.
This kind of safety takes practice. And permission. And patience. Studies show that people who consciously build safety into transitions experience significantly less anxiety and greater acceptance of life’s impermanence. Ritual-based practices reduce fear about the future. Resilience-building isn’t just about grit, it’s about creating containers of meaning when everything else feels uncertain.
Sometimes I have to ask myself, am I staying in a certain place because it’s actually good for me, or just because it’s familiar? Am I holding on to a version of myself that no longer fits, just because I’m afraid to outgrow it?
We all do this. But when you choose to expand, even when it’s uncomfortable, you build something that can never be taken away: trust in yourself. The kind that makes you resilient. The kind that ripples out into everyone you touch.
Because that’s the final truth here. When you feel safe, others feel safer around you.
And maybe that’s the real gift of doing this work.
You don’t just keep yourself safe.
You help create a world where others can feel safe to be themselves too.
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Copyright ©2021-2024 Cadre LLC. All rights reserved.
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Download the app
Copyright ©2021-2024 Cadre LLC. All rights reserved.
Subscribe to the newsletter
Download the app
Copyright ©2021-2024 Cadre LLC. All rights reserved.