Do you feel emotionally safe? Do you close out intimacy because it threatens you? Let's talk about emotional safety.
Thought questions for this discussion include these:
What is emotional safety? What is emotional security? How do they relate to each other and how are they different?
How are emotional safety and security threatened? What happens to us internally when we feel under threat?
Is emotional abuse less “real” than physical abuse?
How can Al-Anon help us recover and regain our feelings of emotional safety and security? What tools help? Which steps? How do we provide a safe environment for healing in our meetings? In face-to-face interactions with a sponsor or program friend?
Resources that we used in this episode include:
- Emotional Safety: How it Works or Doesn't (Psychology Today)
- Emotional Safety: What Does It Really Mean? (Psychology Today)
- Keeping a Relationship Emotionally Safe (SSA Magazine)
- Tips for Enhancing Emotional Safety (National Center for Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health tipsheet)
- Emotional Safety: What it is and Why it's Important (family-marriage-counseling.com)
- Rebuilding Emotional Safety In Your Damaged Relationship (CompulsionSolutions.com)
Our topic for next week is one of the gifts of Al-Anon: “We will discover that we are both worthy of love and loving. We will love others without losing ourselves, and will learn to accept love in return.” Do you feel worthy of love? Can you love without losing yourself? How has this changed in recovery?
Please call us at 734-707-8795 or email feedback@therecoveryshow.com with your questions or experience, strength and hope. Or just leave a comment right here.
Music from the show
Grimes: Oblivion
Mandisa: Overcomer
Christina Aguilera: The Voice Within
Spencer,
The Recovery Show weekly podcast has been a Godsend for me and I would imagine many, many others. Those nights when my emotional safety is threatened and my emotional security is weak, I roll over in bed, place my earbuds in my ears, and listen my way back to sanity through your podcasts. What a blessing in my life! Thank you.
I am a new listener and love the Recovery Show. The Emotional Safety episode explains so many “whys” in my relationships. Thank you so much for all that you do.
Thank you so much for this resource. I am 24 years sober in AA and 10 years in Al Anon, and this is one of my favorite recovery websites and one of my favorite talks on The Recovery Show. Thanks for all you do!!
I don’t remember exactly how I found the Recovery Show and thank God I did. It dots all the I’s, crosses all the T’s and answer all the whys. 4 years later I am in a much better place, living life on life’s terms, often experiencing pure joy, understanding , believing in myself, compassion and so much more. God Bless you and Thank you.