Why is it important to feel safe?

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you seemingly have everything, you've achieved some important goals, but it's still not enough for you? There's still a feeling of emptiness, you still want something more, better, stronger? Maybe you expected – okay, when I achieve this goal or that goal, I'll finally feel happy, good, satisfied, enough? And that didn't happen again?

I myself found myself in such a situation more than once and it was not clear to me what to do, how to help myself. And for years I thought that the answer was to set another goal, to do something even bigger and more important. It turns out that the same solution will not lead to a different outcome of the situation or life. The answer was, in fact, the same all along.

While our Resource Acquisition System is activated, our goal is to obtain some resources - to achieve a business goal, earn some money, secure housing, etc. In fact, we are looking for something, achieving something that is important to us, thereby securing the resources necessary for a comfortable life, which looks slightly different in everyone's mind, but some basics are similar.

At the same time, part of the process may be driven by the Threat System, which tells us – if you don't secure this many resources for yourself, you won't survive, others will think you're small, weak, and it is driven by emotions like fear, anxiety and motives like am I better than others, am I somewhere like the others?

And which system is currently not doing anything? The calming system, sometimes called the green system. It is activated whenever we feel safe and content, connected to ourselves and others, in meaningful contact with ourselves and those close to us with whom we feel safe. When it is activated, we don't need to do anything in particular, we can just be there, as we are, without the need for intervention or change. Imagine a cat sleeping peacefully in its box and purring. It is a good visual reminder of this state.

Why is this calming system important? Namely, in some people it is very rarely active, which can be seen, for example, in situations like the one described above - after they achieve a goal, they just go to the next one and the next one and the next one, because they can't really stop and feel the satisfaction of what they have achieved and be with themselves now, without some exaggerated goals or next steps.

We all have all three of the systems described within us, and that's fine, but for many people, one or two systems are significantly more active than the others. How active each system is depends partly on our previous experiences, partly on biological processes, and partly on the situation itself. The system that is least active for many is the green one. It gives us space to be with ourselves, to listen to our needs and desires, to feel connected and loved just as we are, to stay in the now. And to be safe in the now, where everything is fine and nothing bad is happening.

If now the Calming System is something you have very little or almost nothing with you, that's fine. The good news is that it can be practiced and can start to exist little by little in everyone's life. And when we get to that, then after the achieved goal (System for obtaining resources), the Calming System can appear, in which we allow ourselves to be in the fact that there is no current goal, that we are satisfied and safe in our environment.