When Safety Feels Scary EP 116

 [00:00:00] Shanenn Bryant: Welcome back to Top Self, the podcast where we talk about insecurity and jealousy in your relationships. I'm your host, Shanenn Bryant, and today we're talking about why safety feels scary, so let's hop into it. Okay. He's finally texting back consistently, and now you wanna break up?

 Have you ever found yourself pulling away? Just when things start to feel good, you finally get the relationship, the calm, the consistency that you say you've always wanted, and suddenly you're questioning everything. Is it too good to be true? Am I settling? Why do I feel bored?

[00:00:47] That my friend is the whiplash of your nervous system, not knowing what to do with peace. You've been wired to expect chaos, and now calm feels unfamiliar, feels like a threat. So maybe you start sabotaging. You're overanalyzing his tone. You scroll your way into doubt. You pick a fight over absolutely nothing.

[00:01:14] And it's not because something's wrong, it’s because something is finally right and your body doesn't trust it yet. But what if safe? Didn't have to feel scary. What if you could learn to receive the love and calm that you've always craved instead of running from it?

[00:01:36] In today's episode, I'm going to break down what's really happening when safety feels like a red flag, how wiring got that way, and the exact steps to start rewiring your system for trust, not trauma. Okay, so let's be real. You, you want a healthy relationship. Someone who actually shows up, treats you well, doesn't make you cry in the bathroom at 2:00 AM but if chaos is your baseline, then calm is going to feel like a threat.

[00:02:11] If you're someone similar to me, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that my dad was an alcoholic, and it was always chaotic. You just never knew. So, if you grew up in some type of unpredictability, a lot of times that's, um, homes where there, there was an addict. But if you grew up in that unpredictability, your nervous system linked chaos to connection.

[00:02:40] Believe it or not, your body associates drama with aliveness. If you grew up in chaos, inconsistency, or high stress relationships with a partner, with a parent, with anyone, your nervous system got wired to expect intensity. It started reading. You know, drama equals attention equals connection. So then when peace shows up, you feel bored, maybe numb, even on edge, your body is waiting for the drop or the other shoe to fall, as they say, the fight, the betrayal, the abandonment.

[00:03:26] You might subconsciously stir things up to recreate a familiar spark. Even if it hurts and you're not addicted to the pain, you're addicted to the emotional spike that used to mean that you were loved or needed. And this is huge for people who mistake anxiety for chemistry or believe calm equals emotionally flat.

[00:03:58] So when things are good, you feel off. you know, if love used to mean walking on eggshells, then calm is gonna register to you as cold. Even your body is like, Hey, where's the tension? Where, you know, who's about to explode? It's looking for that. That's what it's used to. And without the drama, we might wonder if they even really like us.

[00:04:27] I see this all the time, like, uh, I don't know if they like me or it's our proof, right? They have to do these things to show us that they love us.

[00:04:36] I have heard they never even get jealous or worry about me. If that's a bad thing. So, I hear this all the time with my clients when they're talking about their partner, they're like, they never get jealous. They never worry about me. They're not checking in on me. And we're saying that as if it's a bad thing because to us, oh, that if somebody is, if there's tension or there's stress, or there's, you know, this uptight part, then that equals love to us because that's what we're used to. 

It equals attention. It equals what is familiar to us. So, you might be thinking to yourself or even saying it to your partner interpreting that as they don't really care that much. It's not that you're trying to ruin a good thing, you're actually trying to protect yourself from the pain that you already lived through.

[00:05:36] You have beliefs that are programmed in there like, this won't last, they're gonna leave me anyway. I don't deserve somebody to love me. So, then you test, you pick fights, or you withdraw to confirm the fear. So, I want to give you a non-relationship example of how we store this trauma. Our bodies and how we get into these autopilot habits.

[00:06:06] So again, if you've been falling for a while, you know that I had previously a German Shepherd named s Samson who passed away, um, not that long ago, about seven months ago. As, as of the time of this recording and when he was a puppy, there was this big thing that was going on at the time where it was like this dog channel that you could.

[00:06:30] Turn on and have your dog watch, and it was supposed to keep them entertained and it was supposed to, um, get them used to seeing animals. Well, for Mr. Sampson, it actually did the opposite. It just fueled his anxiety, and he became where he hated it was just too, it was too overstimulating to him. And so, he hated then seeing an animal come on the tv.

[00:06:58] So from then on, every animal, commercial dog, cats, those were the big ones. You know, a dog food commercial. And if you pay attention and watch, you will see there are so many commercials with pets in them because they know pets are going to draw your attention. But every commercial where there was a pet, our dog would, from wherever he was, Samson, would just take off running with this ear piercing, bark towards the tv and would just bark and bark and bark and kind of jump around and really go ballistic. And if you weren't expecting it, because sometimes he'd do it in our bedroom and if you weren't expecting it, because he would get, he would hear like even the instant, the, the song would come on or whatever, which kind of tells, we probably watch too much tv, but.

[00:07:49] He would instantly rush the TV, and it would scare us, like, oh my gosh. Or it, we just knew it was coming. So, we would tense up every time, like, oh, here he goes. We tried everything to stop the behavior, but There was too many examples and too many commercials, um, to get him to calm down.

[00:08:08] We just couldn't get that wiring out of him or didn't. Probably try hard enough to get that wiring because then we quote, unquote, got used to the tension, the, the shock of it. And so fast forward now, we have Little Gunner, our new German Shepherd puppy. He's 12 weeks old as of today, of recording this podcast.

[00:08:33] And he doesn't do that. Because he's not been exposed to that. That's not been something ingrained in him. So, he's not rushing and barking at the TV like we're used to. And the weird thing is though, because there's an association with me and my husband both. We both do it with the German Shepherd, the tv, a commercial coming on, and we are just so used to that.

[00:09:00] Lunge and loud bark at the tv. We are still tensing up expecting Gunner to do it and so it is stored there in us and it's probably gonna take a long time. Hopefully Gunner never will get to that point where he's doing it and then we can kind of, then that becomes our new normal. Just like how we reprogram here at Top Self, where you know that, that, um, consistency. Emotion.

[00:09:28] Emotion. So, once we have that consistency where Gunner isn't doing it, I'm sure that will go away. I share this story to say we store that kind of stuff. Even if we hate it, even if we don't like it, even that it stresses us out. That becomes the norm and that is stored there. So, if we're not feeling that right, then we go, oh, we might still tense up.

[00:09:53] We might wonder like, what the heck is going on? Because my normal, my comfort zone is still the drama and the trauma. 

[00:10:05] And I experienced this with my, I. You know, in my relationships with my husband, and I've talked about this before, where when we first started dating and things were pretty calm. I mean, there wasn't a lot going on. I did start to go, hmm, this feels kind of tame. There's not too much drama going on.

[00:10:29] And so I would poke, and I may have been guilty of poking the bear or poking and testing to stir up that drama, even though I hated it. And so, what sabotage might look like in disguise if you think maybe this is you, it's. The quick hits of behaviors like overthinking everything they say.

[00:10:57] If you start finding yourself doing that, it's like, why am I overthinking every single thing that they're saying? Or maybe you are withdrawing affection. if you are the fearful avoidant or a dismissive avoidant, you might be withdrawing affection or attention.

[00:11:16] And then kind of seeing what happens. Again, you're testing, you may start scanning for flaws that weren't there, that you didn't notice, that you didn't see initially, and now it's like, oh, I can find all these flaws with a person you're fixating on kind of the ick factor, creating imaginary distance to justify your detachment.

[00:11:41] So it's not always. Throwing a grenade and really just blowing everything up all at once. Sometimes that sabotage is just a slow withdrawal masked as, uh, I'm just not feeling it anymore. I can't tell you how many relationships I ended because I was like, uh, I don't know. I'm starting to find all these things.

[00:12:06] I don't really care for it. if you're interested. I have a PDF that has five signs that you are subconsciously sabotaging. If you want that PDF, you can go to top self.com/sabotage and you can download it for free there.

[00:12:22] So, okay, this may be as you, you think maybe you're exhibiting some of those behaviors. So how do we rewire the reaction? Well, you can't heal in the same chaos that hurt you.

[00:12:40] So we have to start doing things differently. We have to start shifting. So first of course is awareness. I talk about this all the time, is catching the pattern before it hijacks. So, what are the things that you're doing? remember, think, do say, what are you saying to your partner? What are the thoughts that you're having?

[00:13:02] What are the things that you're doing that might be sabotaging the relationship? I gave you some examples. If you're starting to find all the flaws, if you're just feeling yourself withdrawal, I encourage you lean into that and go, hey, I'm noticing these patterns and these things that I'm doing. Hmm. Is it my partner or is it my pattern?

[00:13:23] And then of course regulation. If you are feeling these things, always breathe, walk, move. We don't want to react immediately and a lot of times we will go straight to breaking up or doing the distance thing, canceling plans, um, or poke, poke, poke, starting a fight. So, if you're starting to feel those things, breathe, go for a walk, move some.

[00:13:51] Try not to react to them immediately. Get very used to feeling that coming on. And then it's kind of this reality check that we have to do this balance. Am I responding to them or to my past? one of my favorite sayings is if it's hysterical, it's historical, and this is where people get hung up the most.

[00:14:16] Just constantly not being able to trust themselves to determine if it's them or if it's their partner. Are they with the wrong person or is this just because of their attachment style and their fears? This is probably the hardest part. And this is a little bit off topic for what we are specifically talking about here, but if you, if you go back and forth, is it me or is it them?

[00:14:48] You are definitely not alone, but unfortunately that's a whole episode of that back and forth. But recognize, have the awareness that that is a pattern of yours. I'm constantly questioning, is it me, is it them? Is this my attachment style?

[00:15:04] Would other people feel this way? That is a pattern.

[00:15:09] Safe doesn't mean boring. Calm is not rejection. Peace isn't a trick. So, the next time you're spiraling because things feel too good, say this. Peace isn't the problem. My pattern is if you have done what I just walked through and you notice that there are patterns there that you are doing in your relationship, go to that statement.

[00:15:39] Peace isn't the problem. My pattern is. Just because they're not holding my hand every single second of the day doesn't mean that they don't care about you. Just because they're not falling all over you all the time, it doesn't mean that they're not into you or they don't like you, or they don't care enough about you.

[00:16:04] Most likely that is just peace. That is someone who doesn't equate chaos and drama with connection. So, peace isn't the problem. My pattern is.

[00:16:22] And don't forget, you can download the PDF the five ways you are subconsciously sabotaging. you can download it there. And if you don't mind, if you enjoyed this episode or any of the episodes, please go on. Give us a five-star rating and review this podcast. 

[00:16:39] It helps other people who are suffering just like you find the podcast. And if you're tired of pushing good love away, you don't have to figure that out yourself. I do offer one-on-one and group coaching, so schedule your free discovery call. You'll find the link in the show notes. Schedule that free discovery call today and see how I can help. Until next time, take care and remember, you're not alone.