How to Feel Safe

I had a very privileged and very terrifying childhood. That may sound contradictory, but I’ve learned the hard way that privilege doesn’t always protect you.

In my case, privilege only kept the outside looking good—it didn’t reach my insides. I grew up in a quiet, suburban neighborhood in Southern California. My parents didn’t beat me, my dog adored me, we even had a swimming pool. But I also had undiagnosed bipolar disorder and suffered from unrelenting bouts of depression. The monsters under my bed were very real, no matter how often my father reassured me that they were all in my imagination.

I knew what it was like to long to die—even at the tender and innocent age of seven—because it simply hurt too much to live.

So I learned early on to be scared, scared, scared. Scared of what other people would think if they knew what thoughts were lurking beneath my pristine Catholic school uniform. Scared of my dark and apocalyptic musings about the forbidden sin of suicide. Scared of what I might do to relieve the psychic pain, but also scared of not doing anything at all.

I never felt safe, not even from myself.

I write this now because for the first time in my life, I’m discovering how to feel safe. After years of therapy where that was the unreachable goal, I’m finally learning that I have it within my power to conjure up the sensation of being protected and immune from harm. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the answer was inside me all along.

Safety lies within my reach because it lies within my breath. That’s all, that’s the great unknowable secret—just breathe, and be aware of it. They call it mindfulness. I call it a breakthrough.

Every Thursday afternoon, I attend a virtual guided mindfulness meditation run by UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. To my continuing surprise, it’s become the high point of my week. I look forward to that brief half-hour between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. like I used to look forward to a dry martini after a long, hard day at the office. It takes me a few minutes to settle into the session, but once the deep breaths start to come and go, my entire body unwinds. It says ahhh yes, thank you, this is just what I needed.

All I have to do is notice my breath: the gentle rise of my chest as I inhale, the subtle sinking on the exhale. The coolness of the air as it comes in, the warmth as I let it go. Over and over and over again, as certain as the ocean’s tide. It happens whether I will it or not—my mind has no say in this matter. For once, I’m free of its demands.

The sensation of safety doesn’t always occur, but when it does I’m astounded by how right it feels. It happens when I’m in the present moment—not ruminating about my past, or anxiously anticipating what’s to come. Just here, now, with the breath. That’s all. In this one moment, I am safe.

Not that it’s easy, and not that it always lasts. As my mindfulness instructor said last week, “Even noticing one breath is not a simple thing.” It takes focus, clarity, concentration, surrender. But all the while, your body is breathing. It wants to give this precious moment to you.

For someone who’s been running scared for as far back as I can remember, a moment is more than enough. I’m happy to find this sensation of peace, for however long it may last. Put together enough of these moments and hey, you’ve got a life.