Sense of safety

What is a sense of safety?

A sense of safety, the state researchers call felt safety, is the bodily knowledge that you may leave here, may say no, and have to do nothing. It isn’t a thought but a state of your nervous system, and it is the precondition for everything that comes after: relaxation, arousal, surrender. Your body sets it through neuroception, the unconscious scanning of signals of safety or danger.

Where it comes from

It comes from within, not from the facts around you. Brain researcher Stephen Porges holds that feelings of safety rise from the body itself and reflect a measurable state of the autonomic nervous system. He calls the process neuroception: a neural process, apart from conscious perception, that scans for what is safe, dangerous, or life-threatening. Khiron Clinics describes how your body constantly scans the surroundings for this, far below your awareness. If it gets enough signals of safety, room opens up for rest and connection.

What a sense of safety is not

“If it’s objectively safe, I’ll feel safe automatically.” If only. Your body goes not by the facts but by signals, and those can be skewed after bad experiences. Something can be completely safe while your body still sounds the alarm. That’s not putting it on. It’s neuroception on high alert.

What I see myself

Building a sense of safety is the core of my work as a gigolo, before anything else happens. I tell you what’s coming, I ask and I check, and I mean it when you don’t want something. Small things do the most: a calm voice, no sudden movements, the door you can open yourself, the knowledge that stopping is always allowed. I see it in the body the moment it lands: the breath drops, the shoulders let go. Only then does the rest come, and not the other way around. You can’t force yourself to feel safe, but with enough of the right signals it often comes on its own. How I build such a meeting up calmly, you can read under intimate togetherness.

Sources

• Polyvagal theory: a science of safety. Stephen W. Porges, Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 2022. Gives that feelings of safety rise from the body itself and reflect a state of the autonomic nervous system, and the definition of neuroception as a neural process that distinguishes safety and danger apart from conscious perception.

Related terms

• Vagus nerve. The nerve that translates a sense of safety into relaxation.
• Fight-or-flight response. What happens when the body picks up danger instead.
• Co-regulation. How one person’s calm feeds the other’s sense of safety.